Community leaders in Long Grove have concerns with how organizers rolled out a fundraiser coming to the downtown this summer, while the organizers have said they’ve worked to correct their initial mistakes.
All parties involved in the debate agree the fundraiser “Loving Long Grove: A Celebration” will attract visitors to local businesses and raise money for the Northern Illinois Food Bank, but some question how closely connected the organizers are to a political action committee in the village.
The organizers are a part of a recently formed community group called Long Grove Neighbors. Its main organizer, Long Grove resident Marcia Marshall, also controls One Long Grove, a state-registered PAC that helped a village board incumbent and two newcomers win village seats last year.
Despite questions over political ties to the community fundraiser, Marshall asked the public to take into account that her new group is new to charity work.
“We’ve gotten to an understanding of the process and working through the speed bumps, so to speak,” Marshall said. “I’m very pleased that people are willing to work with us.”
Long Grove Village President Angie Underwood stressed that the Neighbors’ fundraising campaign appears to be above-board, but she said the village is distancing itself from the group to avoid the appearance of siding with a PAC.
“Our attorney is not satisfied,” Underwood said.
Community groups, from scout troops to local businesses, currently are adding themed decorations to handmade bridges, the featured items of the “Loving Long Grove” fundraiser that will be placed throughout the downtown. At the end of summer, the Neighbors group will round up the bridges and auction them, with proceeds benefiting the Northern Illinois Food Bank, Marshall said.
All 25 wooden spans, Marshall said, have been claimed by homeowners associations, schools and more. But the roll out to the fundraiser — the first of its kind for Long Grove — also has some in the business community questioning the event.
“We can’t participate,” said Ryan Messner, president of the Long Grove Business and Community Partners.
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The trepidation, Messner and Underwood both said, comes from the Neighbors group’s’ ties to the One Long Grove PAC and how members used the PAC name early in the fundraising campaign after announcing it in March.
The two also have questioned the group’s use of an intermediary nonprofit to collect donations. Since the fledgling Neighbors group isn’t registered yet, they are asking residents to write checks to a different community nonprofit, set up by one of their members.
The nonprofit, Food for Others, was defunct until late May, when organizer Rita O’Connor, a Long Grove real estate agent and member of both One Long Grove PAC and the Neighbors group, completed paperwork to reactivate it, according to the Ilinois Secretary of State’s office.
Marshall said every penny participants give to the fundraiser and Neighbors group at the end of a September auction will end up with the Northern Illinois Food Bank.
“Anything that goes in will go directly — 100 percent — to the food bank,” she said.
At the food bank, Communications Director Jennifer Nau declined to comment about the amount of attention the Long Grove fundraiser is attracting. But she said the food bank believes the Neighbors will keep their pledge after event organizers reached out about the idea.
“We often work with third parties for them to use our name, logo, etc., to benefit our organization,” Nau said.
It wasn’t until later in the spring when the members of the Neighbors group learned of the barriers between PACs, such as One Long Grove, and nonprofits, Marshall said. In 2015, One Long Grove supported a village board incumbent and two newcomers in a six-man race. The three candidates won 70 percent of the vote.
In April, shortly after Marshall announced the bridge campaign and tied it to One Long Grove, Underwood and Messner both said they doubted their organizations could work with a state-registered political group.
Marshall said her organizers quickly created the new Neighbors group, a “grassroots, community effort” that isn’t registered as a PAC or nonprofit since the group is too young to have any official paperwork.
“This, like anything that is a first time, is a learning curve,” she said.
After initial concerns about the group’s ties to the One Long Grove PAC, community leaders had more questions about the Neighbors group’s connection with Food for Others, the once defunct nonprofit started by O’Connor in 2009 that was deactivated by 2013 until it was reactivated in late May.
The Neighbors’ web sites have asked contributors to make checks payable to Food for Others, instead of the Neighbors group or the Northern Illinois Food Bank, since the fundraiser involves the auction and possibly two other community events during the weekend of Sept. 17 and 18. The events planned by the Neighbors group would require expenses for a public address system, printing materials and more, Marshall said.
If the Neighbors group receive more donations for these events than it needs, the excess will also go to the food bank via Food for Others, Marshall said.
Underwood, who has sparred several times with the three candidates supported by the One Long Grove PAC, said Village Attorney Vic Filippini looked into the Neighbors’ origin and ties with the PAC, and also the group’s use of the once defunct Food for Others. He concluded the circumstances seemed “curious,” she said.
But since the group is not violating any laws, village officials can’t stop the bridge fundraiser from happening, Underwood said.
“This is an event on private property, so there was nothing for us to approve or deny,” she said.
Marshall said the “Loving Long Grove” campaign is meant as a dual celebration of the 180th anniversary of the first German farmers arriving in the area and the 60th anniversary of the village’s incorporation. Five-foot-long, three-foot-wide footbridges will be placed around downtown by early June, Marshall said.
Displayed all summer, the mini-bridges are meant to replicate the village’s covered bridge, which carries Robert Parker Coffin Road in the downtown over the Buffalo Creek. The “Loving Long Grove” celebration will conclude on Sept. 18 with a gala and auction at the Grove Country Club.
O’Connor said she maintained the Food for Others bank account even after the nonprofit was deactivated in 2013. She initially founded the group in 2009 to try and help the increasing number of families that were relying on food pantries following the economic recession. The idea involved Food for Others arranging donation cards at restaurants, which would collect offerings and serve poorer families, O’Connor said.
But she couldn’t find enough restaurants to participate. When Marshall was looking for a neutral account to place donations generated from the Neighbors’ fundraiser, O’Connor offered the Food for Others account, she said.
With questions surrounding the Neighbors’ fundraiser, Marshall said she met multiple times and face-to-face with numerous business owners to clear up confusion.
“We went almost door to door,” she said.
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