Settlement Requires Animal Charity to Return $4-Million in Katrina Gifts

A California animal-rescue charity that raised $8.4-million to care for animals left behind following

Hurricane Katrina — and subsequently spent more than a third of the money expanding its own operations — has settled a state investigation by agreeing to turn over the $4-million that remains.

Noah’s Wish, a charity in Placerville, Calif., sent employees and volunteers to help rescue animals in Slidell, La., a New Orleans suburb, and raise money to rebuild the city’s animal shelter. With shelter officials focusing their efforts on the animals, Noah’s Wish hired a public-relations expert to help publicize the shelter’s challenges, and Terri Crisp, the charity’s founder and former executive director, did several television interviews on behalf of the shelter in the weeks following the disaster. But as the money poured in to Noah’s Wish, the charity rapidly expanded its own staff, moved into new offices in California, and bought expensive rescue equipment.

The group, which had just $500 in the bank when the hurricane struck, increased compensation for Ms. Crisp from $6,200 in the fiscal year ending June 2005 to more than $140,000 the following year.

The charity spent nearly $1.5-million on Katrina relief efforts, but the rest of its spending since the hurricane — nearly $3-million — appears to have been used to expand the operations of Noah’s Wish, according to the settlement.

Ms. Crisp, who describes herself as a scapegoat, says she would have preferred to see the charity take the case to court.

She believes the donors who sent money after Katrina wanted to support her organization’s work wherever it was needed.

“People knew the money would go to help animals in disaster — they didn’t care if it was a dog in Louisiana or a dog in Alaska,” she says.

Board Training

Under the agreement Noah’s Wish worked out with California’s attorney general, the charity must turn over to the state $3.8-million by August 17, and an additional $200,000 within a year.

The settlement also requires the charity, which now has just one paid employee, to expand its three-member board (two board members recently resigned) and provide governance training to all board members.

The California attorney general’s office oversees charities that operate in the state, and may take legal action to ensure that assets are used for charitable purposes.

The settlement prohibits Ms. Crisp, who was fired by the charity’s board in March, from serving as an officer or director of any nonprofit group for five years.

The settlement states that the $4-million turned over to the state will go to organizations that “support and assist the animal victims of Hurricane Katrina.”

Damian Anti, assistant director of Slidell Animal Control, says an engineering firm recently estimated the cost of a new animal shelter to be nearly $3-million.

Even though the settlement only guarantees the city of Slidell $1-million, the California attorney general’s office has been in contact with Slidell officials and has agreed to provide $3-million to cover the full cost of rebuilding, according to Gareth Lacy, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office.

“I’m very confident that we can build an outstanding state-of-the-art facility for that,” Mr. Anti says. “The community is ecstatic.”

Noah’s Wish, which Ms. Crisp founded in 2002, rescues animals that are threatened by natural disasters, and shelters them until they can be reunited with their owners. The charity has responded to numerous forest fires and hurricanes in the United States. It also has worked internationally, responding to the December 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka and to flooding in Romania in 2005.

By all accounts, the money flowing in following Katrina virtually overwhelmed the charity, which was struggling financially at the time of the hurricane.

Ms. Crisp says an accountant advised her that any donations that did not specifically state that they were for Katrina relief could go into the charity’s general fund.

Noah’s Wish, which had been operating out of a trailer on land owned by Ms. Crisp before the hurricane, hired 11 full-time people in the year following Katrina, and rented a suite of offices.

The charity also bought new equipment, including three vehicles and several trailers, some of which were stocked with generators, feeding dishes, and other supplies.

The settlement requires the charity to review its inventory of vehicles to determine whether a valid charitable reason exists for keeping them. If not, proceeds from the sale of the vehicles will go into the fund that benefits Louisiana charities.

Donna Ganguet, the only remaining employee, whose title is executive office manager, referred questions to Amy Maher, who has been president of the group’s board of directors since December 2005.

Ms. Maher, who is also a state prosecutor in Illinois, says the rationale behind the spending was to better prepare the organization for the next big disaster.

“We realized how far in over our heads we were with Katrina,” Ms. Maher says. “We were trying not to get ourselves in that position again.”

Ms. Crisp argues that the $8-million the group raised is more than the city of Slidell needed.

She believes it was logical for the charity to spend some of the money to improve its capacity to respond, and she wanted the case taken to court to clarify how such a situation should be handled.

“If there is a disaster where you bring in a lot of money and it ends up being more than is needed on that particular disaster, what do you do with the money?” she asks. “Do you send it back to them?”

Donors’ Wishes

Several volunteers and former employees at Noah’s Wish say they believe Ms. Crisp seized on the opportunity to expand the charity’s operation, even though it was clear that the vast majority of donors intended for their money to aid animals in Louisiana.

“In the four or five months after Katrina, the money was coming in droves,” says Mina Johnson, who was hired as a bookkeeper after the hurricane but no longer works for Noah’s Wish. “They basically had no money coming in beforehand, and they had no money coming in after that period. The money was obviously for Katrina.”

Ms. Crisp and the board made other questionable decisions, according to volunteers and former employees.

Noah’s Wish hired Ms. Crisp’s daughter, Jennifer, as communications director, and Jennifer’s boyfriend as an information-technology worker. The group also opened a New York office to handle publicity, and staffed it with three employees. That office has since been closed.

Ms. Crisp says the organization hired her daughter immediately after Katrina because all of the charity’s employees were in the New Orleans area, and she needed someone she could trust in California to handle the donations that were coming in.

Ms. Crisp blames the organization’s board — on which she served — for many of the decisions for which she is now being criticized.

“A lot of this might have unfolded differently if we had had a different board of directors,” Ms. Crisp says. “We didn’t have the depth of knowledge and experience that we should have had.”

“I’m not going to get into a tit for tat with Terri,” responds Ms. Maher, the board chair. “We are where we are.”

Volunteers Offer Support

Ms. Maher says the charity will stay in business, and that some donors have vowed their continued support. “We’re going to watch every penny,” she says.

The organization still has a network of volunteers around the country who coordinate efforts to rescue animals during disasters.

In June and July, volunteers traveled to Lake Tahoe and sheltered 118 animals who were threatened by fires in the area.

“We took a hard hit,” says Rebecca Oliver, a volunteer coordinator who lives in Grizzly Flats, Calif. “It’s refreshing to see that the spirit and the devotion of all the volunteers is still there.”

Even though the settlement prohibits Ms. Crisp from serving as an officer, director, or trustee of any nonprofit organization — or handling the duties of such positions — for five years, she is already heavily involved with a new organization, Animal Resources, in Placerville, that has a mission similar to Noah’s Wish.

No one at the new charity is being paid, but Ms. Crisp says the plan is for her to eventually assume a paid position in which she would travel to disasters and provide preparedness training.

Ms. Crisp describes the settlement’s restrictions on her work as “vague,” and says that she is not being reckless in helping to get the new organization off the ground. “The vast knowledge that I have related to managing animals in disasters is desperately needed,” she says.

Mr. Lacy, the spokesman for the attorney general’s office, says the restrictions on Ms. Crisp are “very clear.”

“We’re monitoring that situation,” he says. “Our goal is to make sure that the terms of the settlement are met, and we will do that.”