Troubled S.F. charity Helpers selling off its goods to fund new group home
A San Francisco charity being investigated by the state attorney general’s office is rapidly selling off a trove of high-end costume jewelry and designer apparel that lay unsold for years, a purge intended to raise funds to help it return to its purpose of running group homes for developmentally disabled adults.
More than 100 pieces of vintage jewelry collected by Helpers Community Inc. and bearing labels such as Chanel, Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent will go under the gavel at Michaan’s Auction Gallery in Alameda on March 10. Another assortment of the jewelry was auctioned off Tuesday.
The jewelry and apparel, which is being sold separately online, are among what is left of thousands of high-end fashion items that were donated to Helpers over the years. A Chronicle investigation found the nonprofit had long deceived donors by funding its longtime director’s posh lifestyle while spending relatively little on the people with developmental disabilities it purported to serve, prompting the state investigation.
Since then, the once-lauded, $6 million charity discharged its longtime director,
Joy Venturini Bianchi, installed a nonprofit consultant, Jan Cohen, as interim executive director, and donated $1 million in grants to four local nonprofits that assist adults with developmental disabilities.
The items at auction were culled from an estimated 1,000 pieces that had been stuffed into display cases, drawers and boxes at Helpers House of Couture, a now-shuttered resale shop in a stately home on Fulton Street along Golden Gate Park. The pieces were priced, catalogued and grouped by the auction house into 55 lots ranging in price from $100 to $800.
“It blows my mind what was there,” said Helpers board member Cati Gallardo, a former Bloomingdale’s public relations woman who spent two months sifting through the items for the auction house. “There are still some really wonderful things left. They just didn’t meet the higher-end criteria for this auction.”
Meanwhile, other designer apparel, donated by wealthy, wellheeled socialites the world over, are being sold through the tony online consignment store, www.therealreal.com.
More than 100 gowns in Helpers’ collection were donated last fall to the Princess Project, which provides free prom gowns for teens. An estate sale is planned for the remainder of the clothing before year’s end, and a sale of furniture, paintings and unique household items is slated for next month.
Helpers Community Inc., formerly known as Helpers of the Mentally Retarded, housed people with developmental disabilities for decades in four homes it owns on Fulton Street. But once Helpers ended its residential services in 2002, it did little charitable work while amassing millions of dollars in assets and donations. It paid Bianchi roughly $200,000 in annual compensation as she traveled to celebrity functions and became a high-fashion fixture on San Francisco’s society scene and Instagram feeds.
Helpers gave nothing to residential programs for 13 years, The Chronicle reported in late 2016. From 2003 to 2008, the group spent nothing on any charitable cause, financial records showed. Bianchi has insisted that she served the charity well and that it was difficult to find nonprofits worthy of receiving Helpers’ funds.
In a reorganization, Helpers closed the couture house, and with Cohen’s help, the nonprofit created job training programs with the Pomeroy Recreation & Rehabilitation Center and the ARC San Francisco. Under the programs, Helpers Bazaar, another resale shop run by Helpers at Ghirardelli Square, is staffed by adults with developmental disabilities and offers for sale art created by the developmentally disabled.
In consultation with the state Department of Developmental Services, Cohen said, Helpers has determined that its property at 2626 Fulton St. is the property most ready to reopen as a group home, and renovations are under way. It is the first of two homes Helpers is working to reopen this year, Cohen said.
Helpers is also in discussions that would enlist the Pomeroy Center to manage and operate the home, Cohen said. Pomeroy, which already operates licensed overnight respite programs elsewhere with staff on duty seven days a week, has begun the process of applying for new licensing at 2626 Fulton, Cohen said.
Helpers, which last year was ordered by the city assessor-recorder’s office to repay $31,000 in back taxes owed for misrepresenting the use of its properties, will apply anew for tax exemptions available to nonprofits, Cohen said.