Is it for charity?

Daniel Rauschenbach and his partners at The Soap Gallery arts facility face a ton of challenges in their first half-year in business in downtown Youngstown.

But one challenge Daniel vented sounded familiar to me.

“Nonprofit is so cool these days. Everyone wants to be in a nonprofit,” he said. “We are ‘for profit.’”

The Soap Gallery is an art gallery that also serves as an event center. It opened on Champion Street last fall and, as an event place, has generated some nice buzz of conscience and culture – filling a downtown space created by the original Lemon Grove bar/eatery.

But as a for-profit art distributor, they are working hard, with harder work still to come. Getting people and businesses to invest in art is not easy, especially when art is so often tied to nonprofit and charity.

It sounded similar to me only in that we run into like challenges as we produce a pretty cool summer sporting event – Greatest Golfer of the Valley.

Now in Year 7, Greatest Golfer engages more than 3,000 golfers every summer, men and women, girls and boys, age 12 to 80, and from five counties.

Greatest drives increased business directly to 15 Valley golf courses due to the events. And indirectly, it drives business to every other golf course whose members play in our Greatest competition and work to take their game to another level to match up against the entire Valley. That’s achieved through practice and play at their home courses.

Operating all this is a challenge. But, gosh, it’s fun.

To meet the challenge, we seek investors.

We’ve been thrilled since Day 1 to have Farmers National Bank sponsoring Greatest. They have been joined in recent years by Superior Beverage and Covelli Enterprises. This year, Flynn Auto Group invested as well.

With each investment, we expand Greatest – scrambles and long-drive competitions, more trophies, more winners and more prizes for Valley residents. And more golf for the Valley golf industry.

But with all that going for it, we get one consistent question from new investors we approach.

“Is it for charity?”

I think, as a society, we are often charity fools as much as we are charity funders.

We throw around “charity” without much regard.

We buy into events, causes and activities just at the mere sight of seeing “charity” or “not for profit” or “fundraiser.” In the immediate-gratification world we live in, too many people kick into charity – any charity – to buy a bit of conscience.

And it’s to a tremendous cost to our society and to the charities truly doing work for the needy.

Just last week, the entire “Donald Trump vs. the media” battle over veterans donations was due to the maybe-next president having the same societal flaw others have. In January, Trump boasted that he’d raised $6 million in one night for U.S. veterans.

Who wouldn’t believe him, right? He was loud and confident. He picked a proud and rightful destination. And people moved on.

But The Washington Post was suspicious, as were some veterans groups. Questions were pressed; Trump rebuffed them and denigrated the media. More media piled on as the dodging continued. And that led to last week’s showdown where Trump, again, attacked. But he did come through with the money, with a lot of it donated only after the media pressure had begun.

This happens all the time in America – the surge to tout charity; the rush to rally a group, then the slow disappearance of the truth. Then finally, in too many occasions, a fraudulent trail on what was to be a golden path of good.

The running industry has been dismissive toward the “5K fun runs” that now fill our weekends – throwing around lots of color or mud, along with charity. The truth of many such events is that so little of the funds go to charity. They are for-profit organizations masking as charities. The benefit charities could earn more if they looked for dropped coins from the runners instead of a check from the organizers.

The Wounded Warrior project grew to an $800 million venture to aid veterans. After years of complaints, the board finally fired the top executives this year because they benefited themselves to an obnoxious level – based on “charity.”

Sadly, I think too many donors are duped by efforts tied to sports superstars.

ESPN had a fantastic 2013 story of how the PGA Tour has waved the charity flag for years with questionable results.

The PGA Tour has generated millions and millions of tax-sheltered dollars for itself and its players. But the charities it supposedly benefits got pennies to the dollars. In 2011, ESPN reported, an average of just 16 percent of PGA charity-event funds went to charity. By contrast, successful charities on average produce 65 percent to the good. In a couple of PGA events, the charities lost money.

This happens locally, too.

In Cleveland, football great Reggie Rucker drew thousands of Northeast Ohio public and private dollars for Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance. In July, he will be sentenced for fraud.

And here, Inspiring Minds is digging itself out of a hole it created when its Youngstown boss was nabbed in a drug incident. The fallout showed that its president was drawing a $200,000 salary – a $120,000 increase from the year before when he earned $80,000. Even that lower salary put him at the top of Valley charity wages.

That charities of all kinds are a source of abuse is not new and will continue.

But what is stunning is how willing people – including smart, smart people – are easily duped to pay out, despite the walk not matching the talk.

So when Greatest was asked by potential investors, “Is it for charity?” I laughed and said, “Give me a day; I’ll make it for charity.’’

It was a joke. But I also knew it was easily achievable, and would also make Greatest more easily fundable.

But that would be a conscience bogey.

Greatest would be cool to one day be a strong charity vehicle. We have it in our list. To date, we try just to ensure the golfers’ commitment, the courses’ partnerships and our work all meet a justified ends to those efforts and the sponsors’ investments.

Charity? No. A good program that shares? Yes.

I think the same for Daniel and The Soap bunch.

And I hope the same: Find sustainable sources soon so as to seed what I think is a great vision and a great conscience.

There is not always good in “charity.”

But there is not always bad in “profit.”

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. Email him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on Vindy.com. Tweet him, too, at @tfranko.