SF nonprofit subpoenaed after community groups report millions in donation money missing

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The San Francisco Parks Alliance which folded abruptly earlier this month, is getting subpoenaed by the city.

The nonprofit was in charge of managing millions of dollars for community groups. It was a blow that caught about 80 San Francisco neighborhood park groups by surprise.

"When we heard that our funds had been spent by Parks Alliance, we had close to $200,000 in reserves with them. We immediately sprang into action," said Ildiko Polony, executive director for Sutro Stewards.

"As rumors of fiscal mismanagement by the San Francisco Parks Alliance spread, city supervisors called for a hearing Thursday but Parks Alliance did not show up. They have dissolved and so all we have available to us as the Board of Supervisors is our subpoena power," said Shamann Walton, San Francisco Supervisor. "We need the Parks Alliance to come in and report on what they have done wrong."

On its website, Parks Alliance categorizes itself as the only city-wide parks nonprofit in San Francisco "working for over 50 years with communities to sustain parks and public spaces..."

One of those community groups is Sutro Stewards.

"SFPA provided a really easy on-ramp and acted as our bank so we could legally raise money, deposit it with SFPA and then SFPA would also be the vehicle by which we would pay our expenses for the work," said Polony.

The Buena Vista Neighborhood Association president is asking the city to step up.

"It was the city that pressured a lot of the community organizations to partner up with the San Francisco Parks Alliance more than 15 years ago. This precedent was set to utilize Parks Alliance to manage our money so in a sense the city is also responsible," said Rasheq Zarif, president of the Buena Vista Neighborhood Association.

He says he noticed an issue in mid April telling us that's when the CEO first mentioned financial issues.

"I asked to potentially remove our entire $103,000 to another nonprofit - it was mentioned to me that that would not be possible because the funds were not available at that time. At that point it was a red flag for us," said Zarif.

Smaller groups like SF Urban Riders also want answers.

"Park Alliance holds tens of thousands of dollars in reserve for us and over $10,000 of that has already been spent or promised to other people and we have been waiting," said Matthew Blain, chair of SF Urban Riders.

In all, the city says the nonprofit may have misspent $3.8 million in donations. The city attorney's office released a statement saying in part:

"The financial mismanagement at the Parks Alliance has done real harm to San Francisco, which is why we are continuing to work on a joint public integrity review of the matter."

"It is horrible, and it is wrong for something like that to happen and most certainly Parks Alliance and anybody who was a part of this needs to be held accountable," said Walton.

We contacted Parks Alliance and have not received a response.