UPDATE: Coaches Care Project Releases Report on Charitable Giving

“We fell short,” James Komosinski said about his Coaches Care Project and last June’s “Success Summit.” “We couldn’t muster enough of an audience to raise the funds we had hoped.”

According to a financial report released to the Coaching Commons, the Success Summit and other contributions accepted via the Coaches Care Project website, brought in a total of just $9,911.68—just as Komosinski estimated last year, when he said the Summit brought in “roughly” $10,000.

Komosinski had hoped the Summit—a five day teleconference event that began June 22, 2009—would turn a profit and allow the Coaches Care Project to make contributions to a group of coaching-related charities, something Komosinski has described as “the transformational gift of coaching…to (those) most in need.”

The Coaches Care Project is described as a “charitable giving program” of the for-profit Practice Pay Solutions, the business that Komosinski created in 1997.

The Project—not registered as a non-profit and not obligated to release financial information—committed to donate 90 percent of the net proceeds from the Success Summit to charity, and to provide a public disclosure of money raised and distributed.

While the Coaches Care Project website promised to release that financial information “upon request” in December, a request made by the Coaching Commons on December 2, 2009  did not result in a financial report—but rather an update to the wording on the Coaches Care Project website, changing the reporting deadline from “December” to “January 31st.”

The filing—officially released on January 27th—provides no details on the costs associated with the Success Summit, or whether the effort was profitable or not.

In an interview last year, Komosinski said just 25 of the 125 attendees of the Summit paid admission, while payments to “web coders, designers, copywriters and consultants” hired in advance of the event totaled $75,000.

According to the financial report, Coaches Care did make contributions to five coaching organizations—donations that totaled $18,500.

SEALNet, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, received $1,000. According to the SEALNet website, the group’s mission is “to bring service to Southeast Asia and to promote the spirit of service leadership in the region…by building and nurturing a community of service leaders who are passionate about social development in Southeast Asia.”

While the word “coaching” doesn’t appear on the SEALNet website or in press materials describing its work, Coaches Care selected the group on the basis of its “collaboration between enthusiastic SEALNet youth and…local change agents (resulting) in powerful solutions.”

Efforts to reach representatives of SEALNet were unsuccessful.

Another group, The Coach Initiative, received $2,000. The effort recruits volunteer coaches who donate their time and effort to support nonprofit initiatives through pro bono coaching—“giving the gift of coaching.”

[NOTE: The Coach Initiative has also received a grant from the Harnisch Foundation, which funds the Coaching Commons.]

According to the financial report, Mirus Coaching—a nonprofit devoted to offering “high quality affordable coaching to women and men involved in social change,”—received a donation of $1,000.

Coaching the Global Village—another 501(c)(3) nonprofit—is an effort led by Patrick Williams, who believes coaching is the “missing link” to empowering people in remote corners of the world, like Nepal, where the group held a two-day coaching workshop in October. The group received a donation of $4,500 from Coaches Care.

The largest single donation, according to the Coaches Care report, was a ten thousand dollar gift to Coaching Kids, a nonprofit led by Reuel Hunt, who is also Executive Director of the Coaches Care Project.

Komosinski says he remains fully committed to his vision for the Coaches Care Project and its signature Success Summit—all as a way to raise money to fund coaching charities, which Komosinski sees as a “legacy to my career in terms of giving back to the coaching profession.”

What that vision will look like in 2010 remains unclear.

Last October Komosinski told us he’d have “some really exciting news in the next thirty days,” though that announcement has—like the financial report—been delayed.