The Girls’s Most cancers Fund raised $18.3 million by vowing to assist sufferers, telling donors that their cash would assist pay the residing bills of ladies going by means of remedy for the illness. However a brand new lawsuit from the FTC and 10 states allege that the majority of the cash as a substitute went to pay the charity’s president and for-profit fundraisers. 

The lawsuit, filed on March 11 in federal courtroom, alleges that the Girls’s Most cancers Fund raised the cash from 2017 to 2022 by making misleading and deceptive claims. In actuality, the majority of the donations went to the $775,139 wage of the charity’s president, Gregory Anderson, and to pay for-profit fundraisers $15.55 million, in addition to overhead bills, the lawsuit alleges. 

“[O]f the $18.25 million donated to the Girls’s Most cancers Fund solely $194,809 – roughly one p.c – was spent instantly on serving to ladies with most cancers,” the lawsuit claims. 

Whereas charities incur overhead bills, it is usually thought-about good follow to spend solely a fraction of their funds on overhead, with CharityWatch giving its “extremely environment friendly” ranking to nonprofits that spend lower than 25% on working prices. The lawsuit alleges that donors who opened their wallets to present to the Girls’s Most cancers Fund had been deceived by the group’s advertising and marketing efforts. 

The Girls’s Most cancers Fund, also called Most cancers Restoration Basis Worldwide, additionally used the donations to pay for bills like lodges and journey, the lawsuit alleges.

“Most cancers Restoration Basis Worldwide and Anderson abused the generosity of American donors in essentially the most egregious manner” mentioned Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Shopper Safety, in an announcement earlier this month. “The FTC is dedicated to aggressively pursuing such unlawful conduct, which hurts donors and deprives official charities of wanted funding. We’re grateful to our state companions for becoming a member of on this effort to guard the general public.

The states that joined the lawsuit are: California, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. 

The Girls’s Most cancers Fund didn’t instantly reply to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for remark.