Looking back and stepping forward in wake of PTO discovery

BY DANI TIETZ
dani@mahometnews.com

Things were looking up going into the fundraising season for Mahomet-Seymour’s Parent Teacher Organization.

But Friday’s discovery that Ken Keefe’s, a five-year M-S PTO board member and Corresponding Executive, was the owner of Fund For Us, LLC, a company that handled credit card and Paypal donations for the Dawg Walk fundraiser, threw a wrench into the momentum.

The PTO planned on launching the Dawg Walk campaign by distributing envelopes to students on Wednesday. Now, the board is finalizing its plans and revamping the donation envelopes before handing them out on Friday.

“We would like to continue with online donations because it creates a whole other way for people to give us money,” PTO Vice President Anna Webb said.

The group said it has seen an increase in donations through online availability.

PTO President Ashley Webber said that the group believes it is still going to have a great year now that this has been brought to light, and that they can work as a team with more checks and balances.

“We’re still going to be able to do all the things that have been done in the past,” she said. “We’re kind of a positive mentality board. So we’re going to keep thinking positively, and we’re going to do everything we can to make it positive.”

To do that for present and future generations, the group is examining its past practices to create some long-lasting change.

In 2014, Keefe began developing software and a website that would allow for the PTO to be more online-friendly and to help it cut down on its hours of work making spreadsheets, during the fall months leading up to the Dawg Walk celebration.

Keefe spent over 100-volunteer hours developing the software, never receiving compensation.

With previous PTO boards, there was discussion of how effective the software was, how there was not anything comparable on the market and that once it was out of its testing phase, it could be utilized for profit with other non-profit organizations.

Keefe entered into agreements with two other non-profit organizations that wanted to use the software for the spring of 2020.

As time went on and boards changed, Keefe remained consistent in talking about the software and website updates and how they worked within the Dawg Walk fundraising efforts.

Keefe was in charge of the website and managed the donations with the software, but the PTO just used Paypal to collect online donations. Paypal captures 2.9-percent and $.30 per transaction.

“It’s been this way for five years,” Webber said. “We’re all on the same page.”

The PTO board also said that the software Keefe developed is amazing. It was not only the reliable software, but the countless hours that Keefe volunteered with the organization, that won their trust.

“I believe the best of volunteers,” Webber said.

“Your intent for volunteers is always pure, and they truly want a better school, help the kids, help the staff.”

Aware of the software and that he was involved with its development, Keefe said he updated the PTO regularly over the course of the years he was on the board.

“I talked about code that I was working on and changes I was making to the site to enable new features or change how existing things were done, like not showing donations totals next to classroom teachers on the front page,” Keefe said.

It wasn’t until last Wednesday that the group got an email from Keefe saying, “I realized we have a potential conflict of interest risk with the use of Fund For Us and the Dawg Walk. If I wasn’t on the board, the PTO could vote to use the Fund For Us, and there would be no conflict of interest concerns.”

“But he doesn’t go on to say, ‘I own this website,’ he just says there is a potential conflict of interest,” Webber said. “To me, as a person, I think of it as like, a relative, a friend, somebody you know, may work there or have a tie there. I don’t think you own it. And that’s just not where my brain goes.”

It wasn’t until Friday, when Webber talked to Keefe, that the ownership of Fund For Us came out.

Keefe’s roles within the PTO have been website operator, correspondence and treasurer at one point or another over the years.

The PTO board said if they had known that there was a change going away from the Paypal model, they would not have approved it because the 5.9-percent and $.30 per transaction is a greater loss for the organization that donates their money to the school district, providing interactive learning opportunities for the kids and gives stipends and grants to teachers.

Webb said that there are checks and balances in place within the organization, but the donation process had been done the same way by the same people for so many years that they didn’t even think about anything being done differently.

“There was no reason to expect that it had changed in any way,” she said.

Nathan Seymour, the treasurer of the PTO for 2019-20, said that he hopes this truly was a miscommunication issue for Keefe because on the PTO’s end, they feel like there was no communication about the change at all.

“I want to believe that it was a miscommunication because I don’t want to believe the opposite,” Seymour said. “I know that I didn’t know.

“As soon as he told me, I went to the website and there’s an awful lot of Terms of Service and agreements and stuff.”

“We didn’t sign a contract or anything,” Webb said.

Keefe’s lawyer, Tom Bruno, said that there are transactions that happen all over the world without a contract all the time.

“In many of the things people do in life, deals are made and arrangements are made without a written contract,” Bruno said.

Bruno believes that Keefe got a fair exchange for the services rendered.

He also said that the website with its terms were available.

The PTO said they did not know about the website, though.

“There are so many factors that we didn’t even know,” Webber said.

“I think that’s where it’s hard for all of us: How did we miscommunicate when we never heard of this company?”

Seymour said that he had never heard of Fund For Us.

When he was talking to Keefe about the deposits that were coming through to the PTO bank account, he didn’t understand that anything was being handled differently. Seymour said as the treasurer he was trained by Keefe.

“I was counting on him to show me the ropes,” he said.

“I don’t know how to say this because I’m not trying to attack Ken directly, but I was clueless,” Seymour said. “I didn’t understand because he’d say you’re going to get a deposit for this, they’re sending this dollar amount, make sure you confirm it.

“And it just comes through on our transaction as a wire transaction fee on our bank account.”

Seymour said over the last couple years, the PTO would put its financials up and the wire transactions were included.

Seymour said that Keefe referred to it as the conflict on the “Dawg Walk website thing.” To Keefe, the website and the software had always been one and the same as they discussed the development.

Keefe and Seymour were talking about different things.

“The ‘Dawg Walk website thing’ to me is making sure the kids are organized in each class and the donations get to the kid,” Seymour said.

As Keefe assumed the role of the person who took care of the website and Facebook page, Webber said, “it wasn’t out of the norm talking about the website because it’s our website.”

Seymour said that when Keefe was corresponding with him, he used third-person pronouns, such as they.

Having worked beside someone for five years, the PTO board said that they are still shocked to learn about Keefe’s ownership of Fund For Us.

“I still have respect for him,” Webb said. “But I, you know, I would not have expected this. And I’m still having a hard time believing it. But there’s facts and there’s numbers.

“He has owned up to it, so it’s not like it’s, you know, still a myth of is it true or not?”

Keefe’s lawyer said he is “really disheartened that this situation has arisen and wants to move on from it because he’s convinced he’s done nothing wrong.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Bruno said. “Volunteers put in a lot of time and effort to make the school district a better place. It’s disheartening to see people always see the glass half empty.”

Bruno described Keefe as an optimist at heart who wants to continue to help make the community and the schools a better place.

The PTO board is also looking to take ownership of its past practices that may have led to its oversight of this fact by looking ahead to right the wrongs in the present, while also reviewing the processes and procedures to ensure that PTO boards in future years don’t have to go through the same thing.

“The wow factor of ‘oh my goodness’ is kind of wearing off, and now it’s like we need to get our feet on the ground and get this moving; moving along to this year and for future years,” Webber said.

Webber and the PTO team began the practice of constant communication last spring.

With only a handful of volunteers to run a huge fundraiser and in-school activities throughout the year, previous boards compartmentalized just to get all the tasks done. But this year’s board is committed to operating a little differently.

Together, they have decided on this year’s Dawg Walk prizes, have worked to secure more corporate sponsors than ever before and now are thinking about new software that will handle their needs, among other things.

“Everything for this year’s Dawg Walk has been sent to the board,” Webber said. “Here’s the options. Here’s the vendors, here’s this, what are your thoughts, and everybody’s eyes are on it. So if someone says, ‘Hey, I caught this, or that,’ or ‘I don’t think this is a good decision or choice,’ their opinion is noted.”

Seymour said that with the availability of in-time apps, like Google doc and spreadsheets, they are sharing the latest information with each other.

The group is also working to take past PTO presidents’ folders and make the processes and procedures in digital format, along with the justification for the changes available for future boards.

But, to get all of the work done, the PTO needs more volunteers.

“Join us,” former PTO president Jodi Freeman said.

Webber said during a call for volunteers earlier this year, one person showed up. But after the Aug. 5 PTO meeting and Back to School night held at Middletown Prairie and Lincoln Trail, they are excited about parents’ willingness to get involved.

“That’s what we want,” Webber said. “We want to be the voice of everyone, not just what two or three people think. We want the community involved.”