Service dog group lost $5,000 on failed ball

[unhappycamper]

Service dog group lost $5,000 on failed ball
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jan 28, 2009 17:00:04 EST

A nonprofit organization that helps treat mental health problems for service members and veterans through the use of trained service dogs is pleading for money after losing $5,000 after an inaugural ball it helped fund was abruptly canceled.

The Arlington, Va.-based Psychiatric Service Dog Society was one of several nonprofit groups that signed up to help sponsor the Veterans’ Inaugural Ball in Washington — an event that never happened after the promoter vanished without warning.

The promoter and organizer, Dante Hayes, has not given his side of the story, other than to acknowledge that the plug was pulled on the planned Jan. 20 ball for financial reasons.

Hayes identified himself as the head of a nonprofit organization called the Congressional Education Foundation for Public Policy, which has multiple addresses and does not appear to have filed fundraising and expense statements with the IRS for many years, making it difficult to track its activities.

Hayes’ ambitious plans involved getting sponsors, many of them small charities, to pay for the event with the promise of the publicity it could bring them. In addition to the charities, Hayes had invited performance artist Michael Israel, who was going to do paintings of prominent people including President Obama, as well as other musicians and a collection of beauty queens and pageant winners who were promised all-expense-paid travel and lodging for the inaugural.


Rest of article at: http://armytimes.com/news/2009/01/military_veteransball_dogs_012809w/%2e