Shady Bronx community groups get Yankee charity cash

Shady Bronx community groups get Yankee charity cash

By CANDICE M. GIOVE, KEVIN SHEEHAN and GARY BUISO

Last Updated: 7:23 AM, September 25, 2011

Posted: 1:33 AM, September 25, 2011

 

EXCLUSIVE

That’s foul.

The nonprofit in charge of doling out nearly $1 million a year in New York Yankee cash to Bronx charities is throwing it away on shady organizations, for-profit businesses and barely effective but politically connected community groups, a Post investigation found.

The questionable groups supported by the New Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund included:

* ALFRBA, which bills itself as a free manners and etiquette course but hawks such hip-hop sportswear as do-rags, bucket hats, sweat suits and T-shirts online. It received $3,000 in 2008 and 2009.

ANGEL CHEVRESTT

MAKING IT RAIN: Question-able beneficiaries of a community fund created in the deal for the new Yankee Stadium include the formerly for-profit El Maestro gym (pictured) and the apparel seller ALFRBA, run by Barbara Gibson.

ANGEL CHEVRESTT

Barbara Gibson

* El Maestro, which was a for-profit boxing gym in 2009 when it applied for and received $5,100 for equipment from the fund, which is supposed to support only nonprofits. In 2010 the gym secured nonprofit status, but it still charges members a $100 initiation and $30 to $50 in monthly fees.

* Flo-Bert Ltd., a tap-dance troupe that performs an annual recital in Manhattan. The group got $2,000 in 2009 even though it hadn’t filed paperwork with the IRS since 2007. The feds canceled the purported nonprofit’s tax-exempt status last month.

* Praise, Peace and Pride, which didn’t bother to explain its mission on a 2007 tax form. The charity later explained it in a 2009 filing, but the form showed it didn’t spend a dime on its “youth services.” It filed no tax forms in 2008. Yet it received $5,100 in Yankee money in 2009. It scored another $20,000 in 2010 and 2011, an organizer said. In March, the group announced an effort to “provide medical-health and dental-care assistance for all hip-hop pioneers and their families.”

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/bronx_bummers_It5UzNjOX8xe9OkoCh9bNO#ixzz1YyHRRxhL