Email from an EV reader, Patriot, informed me that “Operation Military Pride,” an Illinois organization that claimed to raise funds for military members and their families, has been ordered to pay back over $300,000 in funds raised by the group. Evidently, the organization did not register as a charity or fund-raising group as required under state law, nor did it maintain records of how donations were spent.

“We never claimed to be a charity,” [Arlyn] McClaughry [the group's founder] said Thursday. “I didn’t realize we were a charity in the eyes of the law. It was just a bunch of people doing a good deed.”

Despite collecting money for military care packages, McClaughry never registered as a charity or as a professional fundraiser, said Therese Harris, chief of the state’s Charitable Trust Bureau.

That prompted a lawsuit demanding that she prove where more than $300,000 had gone.

Harris said McClaughry never provided proof in court, and so a Cook County circuit judge entered a judgment of $310,586 against her Feb. 21.

The order forbids her from collecting any more charitable contributions, Harris said.

McClaughry disputed that her organization ever collected $310,000. The figure includes money from personal bank accounts never connected to Operation Military Pride, she said.

But she would not say how much she did collect to put together care packages that included such things as DVDs, books and toiletries. She said she ran out of money to pay for a lawyer, and miscommunication about court dates hampered her ability to prove her case.

Harris said McClaughry had more than enough time to submit proof that the money was spent on care packages or other charitable purposes. She said using the military as a vehicle to promote donations during wartime made the case worse.

“It seems to be particularly egregious when it happens under these circumstances,” Harris said.

EV had previously encouraged readers interested in supporting the military to consider making donations to Operation Military Pride. Given the lack of clarity of the group’s purpose and new doubts about the fiscal responsibility of the organization’s leadership, we now retract that recommendation.

Furthermore, we are saddened that Operation Military Pride’s leadership claims not to understand the correlation between soliciting funds on behalf of others in need and being a charitable group accountable under the law. While we do not have sufficient information ourselves to declare such actions outright avarice, we are deeply disappointed that greater care was not taken by OMP to avoid any and all appearances of impropriety.

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