How Big Bam Spent Charitable Cash

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The director of a prominent breast cancer charity used donated money to pay for trips to Hawaii and Nantucket, dry cleaning, and hundreds of dollars in calls to a telephone astrologer, records obtained by The New York Sun show.


In the past year, fund-raising efforts for the charity, the Big Bam Foundation, have been assisted by Major League Baseball; the city’s public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum; a star of the New York Giants, Tiki Barber, and an actress from “Sex and the City,” Kim Cattrall. The nonprofit organization, which has received more than $1 million in tax-exempt donations since its founding in 1999, finances free mammograms for underserved women in poor neighborhoods and surgery and treatment for women who can’t afford them. “Bam” in the group’s name stands for Breast Awareness Movement.


Contacted by the Sun, Janice Bonadio, founder and director of Big Bam, acknowledged having used the foundation’s bank account for personal expenses. But she said the expenses came to only about $2,000 in 2003, and she said she reimbursed the agency last year for that money. Accidental billing for prior years has not yet been examined, she said, and she may reimburse the agency further.


“You have to do it by the book,” Ms. Bonadio said of the personal expenses. “It was a huge, huge error in judgment. But hey, I’m human too, and I made a mistake and we fixed it. There’s nothing to hide here. We went through the records with an accountant and fixed everything.”


Ms. Bonadio also provided the Sun with an audit performed by the accounting firm Cote & Company for the year 2003. (The organization’s fiscal year coincides with the calendar year.) The audit said $218,418 – or 67% of the budget – went to program services; $33,756 to fund-raising expenses, and $71,779 to management costs. On promotional material handed out at fundraising events, Big Bam claims that 85% of its funds go directly to services.


Audits for 2001 and 2002 have not yet been conducted, according to Ms. Bonadio. Tax records on file with the Internal Revenue Service for 2001 and 2002 do not list any spending on services, and there is no statement of program accomplishments.


Instead, 100% of the money raised – which totals more than $300,000 for the two years combined – was used for expenses, according to the tax filings. Ms. Bonadio said the forms filed with the IRS for 2001 and 2002 are incorrect and corrected versions will be filed soon.


The tax records do not list line-item expenditures, but bank records, obtained by the Sun from a former volunteer with Big Bam, detail the charity’s spending in 2002, 2003, and 2004. They show numerous transactions that raise questions about the financial controls of the organization. Among those expenditures:



  • $1,600 in six separate charges to the “Magick Lady,” a Los Angeles phone astrologer, over the course of 2003;

  • $1,159 to Pleasant Holidays, a travel agency, in December 2002, along with $400 for plane tickets to Hawaii in December and January, with an additional $583 in roundtrip airfare to Hawaii in 2003, plus $36 for “beach activities”;

  • $537 for a trip to Nantucket in 2002;

  • $729 for an unspecified airline ticket, for a trip that former Big Bam supporters said was a romantic getaway to the Caribbean islands;

  • Numerous expenditures made to dry cleaners, Time Warner Cable, Neiman Marcus for unspecified items, Banana Republic, Barnes & Noble, drugstores, Mercer Kitchen restaurant, sushi restaurants, a massage therapist, and a trip to the ocean-side town of Bristol, R.I.

“There are a million red flags here,” a former assistant New York attorney general who was in charge of the Charities Bureau, Daniel Kurtz, said when shown the documents by the Sun. “Obviously this raises lots of troubling questions about the activities of this organization and their compliance with state and federal law.”


Ms. Bonadio said the three trips to Hawaii were necessary because the organization was considering having an event there, but she declined to elaborate or to provide any contacts who could verify her account.


The calls to the astrologer were billed to the wrong credit card, she said, and the problem will be fixed.


The trips to Neiman Marcus were for business meetings in the cafeteria, Ms. Bonadio said.


Asked about the trip to the Caribbean in 2002, she said she had not yet reviewed the 2002 expenses.


It is the responsibility of an organization’s board to monitor the spending of their charity, and directors are required by law to meet at least once a year, a former deputy bureau chief of the Charities Bureau, David Samuels, said. Mr. Samuels works with the New York City Bar association and practices charity law privately.


According to former employees and volunteers, Big Bam’s board of directors did not meet for more than three years, and some members listed on the board did not know they were on it.


Ms. Bonadio did not dispute that, but she said her organization elected a new board in August and it has been meeting at least every other week since. “We’ve learned a lot over the last couple of months,” she said. “We did not hold as many meetings as we should have. Certainly, we have done everything possible to make sure we got everything back on track.”


The confusion comes during a busy time for groups that work to combat breast cancer. This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and stores across the city are soliciting money on behalf of Big Bam and other nonprofit organizations working on the issue. The appeal of Big Bam, leaders of other groups said, is that it targets a younger audience. Ms. Bonadio is herself a breast cancer survivor who discovered she had the disease at age 27.


“It scares me to know most women in their twenties feel they are too young to do a breast self-exam or simply don’t know how to do it,” one Big Bam pamphlet quotes Ms. Bonadio saying. “And that there are so many uninsured women who cannot afford a mammogram. I had to do something to change this.”


A community relations coordinator for the San Francisco Giants, Jayme Fulford, said Ms. Bonadio is a strong advocate for the cause and confirmed that the baseball team has raised more than $60,000 for the Big Bam Foundation by selling puka-shell necklaces at SBC Park. A Giants pitcher, Jerome Williams, lost his mother to breast cancer and wears a puka-shell necklace she gave him before she died. After the press focused on Mr. Williams’s necklace and story, the team began selling puka-shell necklaces at the park and giving the money to Big Bam, Ms. Fulford said. In addition, Major League Baseball auctioned off a pink vase on Mother’s Day and donated the proceeds to the charity.


Big Bam has powerful allies on the East Coast as well. Ms. Gotbaum served as host for a fund-raising affair for Big Bam with Ms. Cattrall last April in the Biltmore Room. The public advocate was unavailable for an interview, but her office said she was approached by a friend who asked that she host the event. In addition, her office issued a statement on Mrs. Gotbaum’s behalf, which said: “Big Bam! Is an organization dedicated to promoting awareness, detection and prevention of breast cancer among young women and high risk groups. It is critical that the education process for fighting this disease begins as early as possible and I am more than willing to aid in their efforts.”


In addition to Major League Baseball, the Big Bam Web site lists Saks Fifth Avenue, Ford Motor Company, eBay, and Self magazine as corporate sponsors. Glossy promotional pamphlets show sparkling pictures of actresses and quote heartrending statistics about breast-cancer mortality.


Some money did go to underwrite the cost of providing screenings at clinics in New York City and San Francisco and to print breast-cancer self exam cards, bank records show and several agencies confirmed.


Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women except for skin cancers, according to the American Cancer Association. About 275,000 new cases will be diagnosed in America this year. It is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, behind lung cancer.


The New York Sun

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