At the beginning of the year and upon their dissolution, the disgraced and dissolved onePULSE Foundation deleted all of their content from their website and social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
This, of course, made it more difficult for anyone to track their designated donations, history of false claims, and years of gaslighting.
To assist auditors, the media, and the public, we are sharing the onePULSE Foundation's self-published audits, 990s, and other key financial and organizational documents. These can be downloaded below:
990s
Although they have been erased from the onePULSE Foundation's website, these tax filings are also available via ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer. In these filings, you can track the nonprofits changing mission statements, as well as their financials, revenue, and expenditures.
Audits
Remember, the onePULSE Foundation only conducted and published audits after we openly criticized the nonprofit in 2019, spurring politicians to speak publicly about the secretive nonprofit. The audits provide an additional level of detail not available through the 990 Forms. However, they also raise several unanswered questions.
Other Important Documents
In these documents, you can determine the onePULSE Foundation's shifting mission statements and Board of Trustees, as well as a letter from their lawyer stating that the nonprofit paid for the property taxes on land privately owned by its CEO and Founder Barbara Poma. She, her husband Rosario Poma, and their friend Michael Panaggio sold the property to the City of Orlando for more than twice its market value ($2M) in the Fall of 2023.
Quarterly Reports
The onePULSE Foundation was required to submit Quarterly Reports to Orange County to be eligible for continued funding through the Tourism Development Tax (TDT) grant. Through these reports, we can see that the Foundation misrepresented its financial standing, its ability to build a $100M memorial-museum complex, and its progress in fulfilling its mission to memorialize the 49 murdered at the Pulse Nightclub on June 12, 2016. This is one of the many reasons why we believe the onePULSE Foundation was a fraudulent nonprofit.
OnePULSE Foundation Documents Acquired by Pulse Families and Survivors for Justice
As Founder and CEO of the onePULSE Foundation, Barbara Poma ran her nonprofit without a travel policy. During this time, she traveled extensively on the nonprofit's dime. Barbara Poma and the onePULSE Foundation said they were building a memorial and continued to collect donations on this premise. A portion of these donations were instead used so Barbara Poma and others could travel across the country and collect six-figure salaries. A travel policy was later established to rein in and limit Poma's excessive travel expenses. She was subsequently kicked out of her own nonprofit. The press releases that the onePULSE Foundation put out at the time falsely asserted an amicable severance. These were nothing more than additional fabrications propagated by the nonprofit in a bid to salvage its diminishing reputation.
We Want To Know:
What happened to the money designated for scholarships? There should be hundreds of thousands left over in donations designated for this specific purpose (see our preliminary tabulations below, which are based on the numbers published by the onePULSE Foundation through their tax documents and audits).
How was the onePULSE Foundation allowed to change its mission statement three times, excluding help for survivors and victims' families with each new iteration?
How was the onePULSE Foundation able to continue to collect donations advertising that they are providing financial help to survivors and victims' families through "community grants," even after they removed these from their mission and did not use the new donations for this purpose? Below is an advertisement used by Tijuana Flats' Just in Queso Foundation to raise money for the onePULSE Foundation in 2022, years after "community grants" were removed from their mission statement.
Why isn't onePULSE, its executives, and its Board being held accountable? The State of Florida has gone after fraudulent nonprofits like the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The Federal government has gone after the fraudulent "We Build the Wall" fundraising scheme.
As of today, no criminal action has been taken against the onePULSE Foundation for its failed promises to build a memorial and museum that is made to victims' families, survivors, and the public over the past 7 years.
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