Hope Florida Foundation to amend tax return to show golf tourney made more money

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis held a two-day golf tournament at a high-end resort in Panama City Beach last year to raise cash for the Hope Florida Foundation, the nonprofit associated with the first lady that is under investigation.

The May 2024 event at a resort that bills itself as the “true gem” of Florida’s Gulf Coast lost more than $17,000, according to the foundation’s delinquent federal tax return filed in April — six months past its due date.

But now the foundation said it will amend its tax return by attributing more donations to the golf fundraiser, ones it previously failed to report to IRS. The event, it claims, was an “extraordinary success,” though by IRS rules it still lost money, even if the foundation’s 990 tax form is amended.

The problems with Hope Florida’s tax return underscores the financial challenges that have plagued the two-year-old foundation and prompted state lawmakers this spring to launch an investigation into the charity, trumpeted by Ron and Casey DeSantis as way to help Floridians get off government assistance.

“The incompetence is astounding,” Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, said by email when he was told about how the group’s tax return was to be amended.

Andrade used his House Health Care Budget Committee this spring to investigate the Hope Florida Foundation, which was used as a pass through for $10 million from the state’s Medicaid settlement. That money wound up in the account of a political action committee set up by DeSantis’ former chief of staff, James Uthmeier, to defeat a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana. Andrade said it was illegal to shift state money that should have gone to help provide health care for the poor to a political operation.

Uthmeier, who DeSantis has since appointed Florida’s attorney general, has denied any wrongdoing.

The House investigation also showed that the Hope Florida Foundation had not filed its tax return, produced a required audit or kept up with other paperwork.

Andrade ended his investigation in April saying he there was evidence that DeSantis administration officials and others tied to Hope Florida had committed “conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud” in moving the Medicaid money. The DeSantises and others involved also deny any wrongdoing.

Andrade handed over information, he said, to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Leon County State Attorney’s Office, which confirmed it is investigating the allegations.

The golf fundraiser coincided with a press conference where DeSantis and his wife handed out $140,000 in checks to seven local nonprofits and churches.

But it was not announced in advance by the governor’s office or the Hope Florida Foundation and seemed to have little social media presence.

Now the Foundation is spinning the initial loss claimed for the fundraiser into gold.

“The Governor’s Cup was an extraordinary success that was not paid for at taxpayer expense and raised a net profit of nearly $700,000 for the Hope Florida Foundation,” the foundation said in a recent statement provided by Jeff Aaron, the outside legal counsel hired in October to help fix the foundation’s finances and other problems.

Aaron provided a list of donations that were not part of Hope Florida’s tax form and said an amended form would be filed soon.

Aaron said the tournament raised $785,000 donations and had $95,547 in expenses for a total profit of $689,452.

But the foundation’s tax return tells a different tale. It shows the Governor’s Cup only made $22,000, and with $40,000 in expenses reported a loss of $17,000.

The IRS requires the donations to be subtracted from the gross revenues to show how much the revenue the event generated selling event-related goods and services. So while the tax return notes the foundation received about $400,000 in contributions, that money is not counted as revenue for the fundraiser.

And because the tournament didn’t produce enough revenue to cover the expenses, the expenses come out of the donations, said Laurie Chaney, CEO of Charity Watch, an independent nonprofit watchdog.

“That isn’t a good thing,” Chaney said.

While the new numbers provided by Aaron show the golf tournament garnered more donations than originally reported, it still wouldn’t help the bottom line, according to the IRS. Rather, the additional expenses Aaron flagged would mean the event lost even more than the foundation’s 990 tax form shows, a total of $73,000.

Chaney said she hasn’t seen many successful charity-run golf tournaments.

“For organizations that use golf tournaments as their primary means of raising funds, it sometimes appears that charities are using them more to subsidize their board members’ golf hobbies than as an efficient means of raising donations to support their charity’s mission,” she said.

The foundation’s tax return was prepared by Carroll & Company, the same Tallahassee accounting firm that handled the books for the political action committee Keep Florida, the one set up by Uthmeier that got money from Hope Florida.

It also did accounting for DeSantis’ Florida Freedom Fund, another political committee set up to combat the marijuana legalization initiative as well as a ballot amendment to overturn a six-week abortion ban and expand women’s reproductive rights.

Kelly Kundinger, currently a senior advisor to Sen. Ashley Moody, was the chief operating officer for the Florida Freedom Fund and responsible for the golf tournament’s billing. She did not return an email seeking comment.

“At its most basic, the accounting of the event should match the 990,” said Glen Casel, a former Central Florida nonprofit executive with 30-plus years of experience, who called the addition of hundreds of thousands of dollars “alarming.”

“It is not normal to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in corrections,” he said.

Among the donors to the golf tournament was Centene Corp., the state’s largest Medicaid managed care provider, which has played a notable role in the Hope Florida foundation controversy. It was Centene that made the legal settlement with the state, totaling $67 million, that spun off the $10 million the Hope Florida Foundation channeled to two political nonprofits aligned with efforts to defeat the marijuana initiative.

Centene gave the golf tournament $100,000 more than was reported to the IRS, according to Aaron’s list of donors.

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