NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND | Breaking Down the NORDC OIG Report

In this episode of Philanthropy N The Black, Celly Cel breaks down the New Orleans Office of Inspector General's report on youth athletics at the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission — NORDC.

This isn't just a story about sports. It's about money, governance, safety, equity and accountability — and what happens when the systems designed to protect kids don't work the way they're supposed to.

We're talking about:

• Why booster clubs matter — and what happens when most playgrounds don't have one
• Registration fees and money collected directly from families
• Concessions, sponsorships and fundraising accountability
• The lack of an electronic payment system
• Volunteer coaches versus NORDC employee coaches
• Background checks and SafeSport requirements
• Spectator behavior and game security
• The OIG's recommendations — and NORDC's response
• How Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs and other neighborhood organizations could help strengthen community recreation without replacing NORDC's responsibility

And most importantly, we ask what all of this means for the children playing at New Orleans playgrounds.

Because governance isn't the policy sitting in a binder.

Governance is what happens Tuesday night at the playground when nobody from headquarters is watching.

This is bigger than NORDC. It's a lesson for every nonprofit, booster club, neighborhood organization and public agency that collects money, relies on volunteers or serves children.

Good intentions don't replace good governance.

Philanthropy N The Black
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SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's good? It's your guy, Sally Stell, back with another episode of Philanthropy in the Black. You know our goal, our mission, our vision to help nonprofits stay in the black, not only financially, but socially and morally. So listen, this is a big show. This is a big day. I don't know where you've been, but you didn't missed it. And if you watch and you see the new background, you see, you know, I had a new studio. You understand? I mean, I ain't got no sponsors, but you know, we try to do a little something, something for the people, keep it that that old uh big ticket in the basement field. Cause you know, in non-profit, we get it out the mud, baby. We get it out the mud. This is another episode. We're gonna get into this situation with the OIG, our park system, our kids, and the whole idea of fundraising right and fundraising wrong. So I appreciate y'all for stepping into the basement. I can't call it that. It's probably got some kind of um uh infringement on rights, but you know what it is. Listen, go to YouTube if you don't have uh if you're not following on YouTube, you can check out the the new setup. We just we're trying to get you a little flavor on this show. That's what we try to do. We ain't doing too much. But listen, this show right here, it uh is very New Orleans. So my apologies to anybody listening outside of the great state of Louisiana, but it applies to the nonprofit sector as it relates to money handling, fundraising, and such. It also applies to you if you or your kids or your family have ever participated in public organized sports in your community, particularly with um what do you call it, the um youth in our community, you know. So, you know, for me, I grew up here in New Orleans, you know, I played a little bit at the parks. My kid, he played at the park, you know. My grandkids will probably play at the parks. And so when I saw this report, it was um it was fascinating to me. So I had to give it to y'all. I have to break it down for y'all as quickly as I can because I know y'all got a short attention span. But I thank you for rocking with me, all right? So today we're talking about the playground. You know, ha that's enough because I don't want no copyright problems. But we're talking about the playground, people. All right, I'm talking about your neighborhood parks, right? The place where generations of New Orleans kids, and wherever you're from, this is where we learn how to throw a ball, catch a ball, win a game, lose a game, make friends, get yelled by somebody, mama. Don't hit my baby like that. And hopefully the park also kept a lot of us out of trouble, right? But here's the thing about the playground that we all should always try to be mindful of. Somebody has to pay for all of that that's going on out there. You know what I'm saying? I'm talking about the uniforms, the equipment, the uh officials, concessions, all of that has to be paid for. And somebody surely needs to make sure that the adults standing around these children are actually supposed to be there. We're gonna touch on it. So this month, the OIG office here in New Orleans released a report examining youth sports at the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission, Nord C, a department commission. Nord, they put a C on there. You know, we still call it Nord. I don't know why they wanted to throw that C on there. That ain't gangster. Y'all ain't cripping, but I digress. And here's what they found, right? It wasn't just a uh a booster club money problem, it was not just a coach problem or a coaching problem or a governance problem. It was really an accountability problem. And and here's what's important when accountability disappears in youth sports, eventually somebody gets left behind. And usually, and unfortunately, it's the child who can least afford to be left behind. So let's talk about it. And I call this episode No Child Left Behind because if you remember in the early 2000s or something, there was this no child left behind education thing. And for real, all IS got left behind. I don't know who who that uh program was for, but they left a hell out of IS. They left a hell out of a lot of us with the no child left behind, which was later replaced by every child succeeds or whatever they called it. But none of that is important. Let me tell you what Nord is, right? So Nord is the um, like I said, the New Orleans Recreation Department Commission or Development Commission. And they're responsible for recreation programming, recreational programming, and managing our facilities, our recreational facilities in the city. And you have one in your city too, right? Their mission centers on the physical, mental, and social well-being of New Orleans through recreation, athletics, and cultural experiences. Now, understand something. That's beautiful. It sounds so, so sweet. Don't you agree? Sounds so beautiful, don't you agree? But this ain't a little thing, right? This is a publicly funded operation. I'm talking to the tune of almost 20 million bucks, which is 2 million higher than the year before. That's money, money, y'all. That's what the silly, the city allocated to Nord for all of its programming. Almost $20 million, people, right? And in 2025, youth athletics served apparently close to 5,000 or over 5,000 registered participants in all of the different sports, right? And the vast majority of those teams were run by parents and volunteer coaches. We're gonna get into it. Hold on, don't get upset yet. And it's okay because we need y'all. We need our parents and our volunteer coaches, right? So the thing was the city was supposed to provide the infrastructure, right? Put things in place to keep our kids safe, to make sure the money's coming in and handled the right way, so on and so forth, right? And the community provides the human capital that makes the system work. That's the that's the that's the relationship, right? And I'm gonna talk about my cousin Man Man in a minute. But first, that's Nord, let's talk about OIG. You gotta love this office because they out here snitching, they dry snitching, wet snitching. Listen, their whole thing, in all seriousness, is it's an in it's an independent, nonpartisan oversight agency. Basically, they look under the hood of city government all the time, right? And they say, like, hey, is this thing working how you said it was working? And when they looked at our youth athletics, they they found four problems. I'm gonna deal with two of them. Two I'm not gonna too much address. I'll drop the report in the link and you can check it out. And here they are. Nordsee wasn't Nordsea, Nord, wasn't adequately maintaining booster club records and constant and consistently enforcing their own booster club policies, right? That's number one. Number two, there weren't adequate strategies for creating booster clubs or written rules for what happens if a park don't have one. That's number two. Number third, the third thing they found were registration fees and team money weren't consistently controlled, and that's why y'all own Philanthropy in the Black, because that's key. And lastly, rules involving coaches and spectators weren't consistently enforced. That's big, and I advise everybody to read the report, okay? But let's start with these booster clubs, right? What is a booster club, right? And this is according to the report and Nord. Booster clubs were supposed to be a cooperative effort between the community and Nord. Sounds good. And why would they need a cooperative effort between the community and Nord? Because Nord itself acknowledged that they cannot financially cover every expense at every playground. So booster clubs fill the gap. Makes sense, right? They can the booster club can coach teams, buy uniforms, purchase equipment, help with facilities, raise money, blah, blah, blah. But this isn't supposed to be, yo, man, man, remember my cousin? Man, man, we're gonna collect some money for the football team. It wasn't supposed to be like that, people. All right. Now, nothing's wrong with my people helping kids raise money, but there's supposed to be some kind of structure around man man collecting money, dog. For real. Right? So for Nord, they were like, this is what you gotta do to become an officially recognized booster club. Pay attention right here. So in their own policies, to become an officially recognized booster club by the city of New Orleans through Nord, you had to have this. One, you had to recruit at least 20 members to your board. Two, um elected officials, you elected officers, you know, treasurer, vice president, elect officers to the 20 people. You also were supposed to have an established bank account and submit an application. A bank account that's not man man's and an application to Nord, which they provided online. So the money wasn't supposed to disappear in the Cash App. There was a there was a infrastructure for it, right? And the money wasn't, again, supposed to just disappear. And I'm not saying this happened in a lot of situations, but the report says they can't account for things. Nord can't. That's where the governance was supposed to help my cousin Man Man, y'all, right? It was supposed to tell Man Man, hey, you got your board, you got your your financial controls. Hey, who's your treasurer? Where's your bank account at that's not that don't have your mama name on it? It was supposed to have two signatures on checks when you paid expenses. All the things like this is governance. Y'all know I love governance. I was about to say that wrong. I love when policy is in real life and not just in a binder, but I digress. Because, you know, when you start collecting money from families and businesses in the name of our children in a public playground, good intentions just ain't enough. You know, my grandma had this saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Preach, grandma. That's what that was, right? So that's OIG, that's Nord, that's booster clubs. Three definitions of the three entities working together, right? So let's talk about what happened and what was supposed to happen, right? There's two things, but this report through these investigations and talking to literally talking to Nord leadership, volunteer coaches, employee coaches, fam. Like they went in and talked to everybody. So go read the report. So Nord designed much of the system around the idea that every playground would have a functioning booster club. That makes sense, right? We got a park, we got a team, we got a booster club. Perfect. But according to the report, of the 42 active parks, only two had officially recognized booster clubs. For my mathematician people, that's about 5%, right? Go check the numbers and make sure I'm right. It's about 5%. So that means like 95% of the parks didn't have 95% of the parks didn't have an officially recognized booster club. And if you're from New Orleans, you know, probably know exactly those two booster clubs in those parks. You know exactly who they are. I ain't about to tell you. Go read the report. So the report found that not only that, but there wasn't even any written team management rules explaining what happens if the park didn't have one. Right? Think about that. The system depended on booster clubs. It said we cooperate with you to help our children, but most parks didn't have a booster club. And there wasn't an adequate replacement system for the parks that did not have them. That's not a problem, that's a structural problem. And this is this is very important for us as a um nonprofit sector as we raise funds and help the community. Okay, so we didn't talk about the different entities, we didn't talk about what was and what was not. Let's talk about the booster club parks versus the parks that didn't, because this this is a key part of what was disappointing about this, eye-opening, terrifying, but you know, there's a way to fix, right? That's the that's the end result. So at the park with an authorized booster club, there was supposed to be a structure around the money. I keep telling you, this is in the report, a board, a separate bank account, financial reports, concession agreements, fundraising rules. However, however, at a park without a booster club, the report found coaches and teams were often left eliminating with little or no guidance. They were just out there willy-nilly and itch. Don't cuss. They was out there willy-nillion that-ish. All right. So now here's his his how here and if the leadership of Nord acknowledged that teams were collecting even more money. So there was no guidelines, but teams were still collecting. Let's talk about it. Here's here's let's paint a picture. So now two children can participate in the exact same city recreation system and have completely different experiences based largely on which playground they call home. One park might have parents who know how to get the money, right? They know how to fundraise. Hell, they might have the money. They might that park might have businesses willing to sponsor, or somebody at least on the team who understands accounting. They might have better uniforms and and better equipment, but the other park in the same city under the same system might not have none of that. Same city, same system, different resources, different experiences. And the res this report says that those differences became even more um visible on the actual playing field because some teams had the NFL like uniforms or the college uniforms and equipment, while others relied primarily on whatever Nord could provide. And I'm not knocking Nord, like I'm sure they had uniforms, but I remember going to school back in the G and having books that were four, five years or more older, because in the front of the book you could see the name of the person and the date that they used it. I'm that old, but not knocking them. They provided equipment for those who couldn't get the high-level stuff, right? So in the report, one of the volunteer coaches um said that the kids were frustrated by that, right? You go here and they looking like they LSU, and you come and you're looking like, I don't know, Nunes Community College, and no knock on Nunaz. And that made some of the kids quick. Just because the look, you know our kids, though. You know our children. So now we're not talking about an accounting problem. We're talking about equity. And that's big when you look at what this means in a city that is still predominantly African American, right? And I'm gonna switch gears because this is philanthropy and the black, and it's not black based on race. And if you think that your race is a bias, something you got problems. Philanthropy and the black is about how we keep our nonprofit sector and nonprofits, I'm sorry, nonprofits in the black as opposed to in the red, but not just financially, but most socially and morally. So let's talk about why I decided to talk about this, aside from it being a city thing and a kid and being part of the park system and so on and so forth. Money, registration fees, concessions, sponsorships. Because somewhere in this story, the money was changing hands all the time. So let's start with registration fees. This is very interesting. Pay attention. According to city code, it contained a structure for registration fees. Again, the the structure was there, the structure was in effect. So for an average income household, it was tiered, right? Three tiers, you know, below average above, right? But for an average income household in New Orleans, the seasonal sports fee for children was identified in the report as $43. That's average. Keep that in mind. Based on some IRS numbers, average income in New Orleans, $43 for your child. Doesn't seem excessive. But the parks, or at least not the parks, Nord, Nord itself wasn't even collecting that money, dog. For real. That's crazy. According to the report, uh Nord previously collected nothing and eventually started just saying, hey, five dollars. Five dollars, y'all. And guess what? Guess what? They weren't collecting the damn five dollars either. That's crazy. And what the report reflected, 55% of teams didn't submit registration fees in 2024. In the first half of 2025, the number was 75%, not submitting these registration fees. $5 or 43, right? They estimated that if the North would have just collected the average income fee from registrants, they probably would have raised or generated, I should say, $150,000 in 2025 for youth sports. Come on, man. Come on. Come on. But but but but because individual individual teams were collecting money directly from parents, the OIG documented that some teams was charging 150 or more. Come on, bro. Listen, listen. 95, 943, some teams collecting money directly from parents or collecting registration fees of 150 or more. And there are volunteer coaches, and then there are Nord employee-led teams, right? Even the employee-led teams was recharging as much as $120 for registration. So the official system struggled to collect $5, right? While the some individual teams was getting played, paid. But here's how ridiculous it was, right? And again, this is in the past and they've adjusted some things, but the report is the report. I can go online and buy food, crawfish, pay bills, everything online. But at the time of this report, parents could not go online to pay these registration fees, dog. Come on. Come on, dog. In 2025, 2024, I could do everything through my phone, but I could not pay. And here's the here's the lighter side to that. The the city's IT department was like, yo, we have a whole electronic cashiering system, cable that are knocking it out, and even Apple pay all the things. We could do this quick, right? So they are moving forward with allowing families to pay online. But at the time of this report, what were we doing? How y'all was getting cash? Cash out? You know what? Let's move on. Come on, bro. But what if a family can't pay? So we talked about the average income family, right? But what about those below the um poverty level? And that's why I call this No Child Left Behind, because I was in that number of children that did not have those financial my grandparents who raised me didn't have those kind of financial luxuries. So This is why this episode matters to me. Because the policy was intended for no child to be excluded because of financial hardship of their parents. That's a damn good policy, man. Right? There's just a problem with the prop with the policy. It wasn't communicated clearly enough. Like to the to the to your own people, uh, to the people running the parks. Some coaches reported that did the exact thought the exact opposite, right? They thought if a family couldn't pay, the child couldn't participate. So now we've got a policy designed to protect poor kids that the people actually implementing the program don't understand. What kind of policy is so the OIG mourn that families could simply assume they couldn't afford youths, youth sports, and their children could miss out. This is why administration matters, y'all. Bad administration doesn't stay in somebody's office. It eventually has to reach my grandma's table so she knows it's $5. And I'm using myself as an example. But you got policies to help us, but nobody knows. Your people don't know, the parks don't know. And this is why we talk about this. The shirt says educating is activism. All right. So that's registration fees. Let's talk about concession stands. All right. If you grew up around these parks, you know you're going to get them nachos, them hot dogs, and them sodas. It's fundraising, right? People, it's fundraising. That money helps with the uniforms, equipment, things our kids need. Okay. So our authorized official booster clubs could operate concession stands, but they had responsibilities attached to it. Listen to this. They had to have food permits, food safety requirements, financial reporting, proper handling of money. Hell, they even had to have like a food manager or inspector on deck, right? But when parks without booster clubs informally operated, informally operated these concession sands, the report says that Nord didn't have a mechanism to make sure food was safe and that the rules were being followed for that and money. So let's let's picture this. So y'all not tracking the money, and you're trying to kill me. I already can't eat salad. I don't know if I could eat call drink coffee or beef. And I can't go to the park and get a hot dog because I don't know if this man. Never mind. I'm kidding, but here's the thing. With that situation, you have two risks sitting in the same damn natural tree. You have a public health risk and you have a financial accountability risk. That's number two. Number three, and then finally, uh, sponsorship money, right? Local businesses, I do believe, really, really want to help our kids. I do. I do I do believe the barbershop, I've seen it, the barbershop, restaurants. Now, listen, y'all, we ain't getting enough of these corner stores to sponsor, but I'm gonna save that for Facebook or Twitter. I'm gonna talk about that. But funeral homes, construction companies, lawyers, your church, corporate partners, I believe they actually want to help. But legitimate sponsorship needs infrastructure. Because who receives the check on the team? Where does the money get deposited on the team? Who decides how it is spent, right? Does the sponsor, me as a sponsor, do I get documentation? Can anybody tell me what my money actually accomplished? This is fundraising questions. These are the things, right? If you can't answer those kinds of questions, you don't just create financial risk, you damage philanthropic trust. You get it one year, but you're gonna lose it the next year because you haven't hollered at me since I wrote the check. And when a community, when community donors stop trusting where the money goes, everybody loses, particularly our kids in this situation in our parks. And let me let me side note. Let me side note. Social aid and pleasure clubs, come your ass to the front. Listen, and I'm not saying y'all not doing it. I just don't remember seeing it. As we all know, our clubs were initially created to help benevolent societies. They were benevolent societies. They help us when we couldn't bury or marry or do insurance issues. We raise money, we helped. In 2026, these clubs parade our second line in and out of some of these exact same parks. They hold fundraisers, reunions, school giveaways in these same parks. So why can't some of that civic infrastructure help strengthen youth recreation? Now hear me clearly. I'm not saying Nord is Nord's responsibility should be dumped onto social aid and pleasure club. And I'm not saying the social aid and pleasure club's not doing it. I just know anybody's using the parks the way I see in my community. It is absolutely social aid and pleasure clubs. And there's an opportunity there. This is not a knock, this is an opportunity. But governance still has to govern, right? Like you can't just um anticipate help, but there's no structure that's being monitored, tracked, reported. But I think there's a huge opportunity for our social aid and pleasure clubs to adopt the part, partner with a booster club, and get on track and get our kids what they need. I digress. No, I'm not. Because imagine these kind of intentional partnerships fully. Might be a few doing it, but the school, the the the giveaway, great. The book giveaway, the toy giveaway, good. There's a deeper level. So imagine if these intentional partnerships, what if a club adopts the this own neighborhood playground? Uh here's what could happen. Members could help recruit, boost the club leadership. Because y'all know the people in the community, social aid and pleasure, experienced members, mentor new volunteer board members, the second line fundraiser that helps buy uniforms. Our older members can teach teenagers about the cultural history, young athletes volunteer at your events. Like the park now isn't just somewhere you practice football, it's a community institution again, the way it used to be. That's social capital. And if New Orleans has anything, we got social capital people. What we don't always have is the infrastructure connecting it. So this is my plea to the social aid and pleasure clubs. Like, I know some of you are doing wonderful work, not knocking it, but you have an infrastructure that some of our parks don't have. They could utilize some of that experience. That's that. All right. So let's wrap this up. I want to be clear to make sure uh that I say that volunteer coaches are not the enemy or the villains of this story. Not at all. We need people like Ray Ray, Skillet, Coach Slim. We need them. The problem comes when an organization relies on volunteers without giving them consistent systems and training and supervision. And don't put everything on the volunteers anyway, right? Because the report says even some teams uh led by Nord employees charged money. Dog. There were rules and policies people just didn't know. So this isn't about the volunteers don't know what they're doing. They do. The problem is just organizational. Because whether somebody gets a paycheck or volunteers, if they're operating under Nord's banner, parents, you and I should expect Nord standards. That's real talk. And the last two things in this report talked about background checks, which is not a funny thing of our coaches and so on and so forth. Like read the report, but I'm gonna stick to the money right now. But just making sure our kids and our coaches and our families are protected. That's part of this report. One the last thing that was on this report was basically spectators. And I'm talking about, I'm talking about, yo, you know, we've all been to a game or watch some social media nonsense where our kids are playing and we hit this. No, no, fuck this.

unknown 30:47

Both you motherfuckers are crazy.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

I'm going to my car. Give my other gun. Shoot everybody's ass. We've all we've all been there. So the the report talks about hey, I respect our parents sign a code of conduct, but in most cases, our parents and volunteers end up securing the park. That can't be a thing. Go read the report, it's just not sustainable, right? So OG gave recommendations, OIG gave recommendations on what they should do. Um, Nord responded and said, Hey, I hear you, but you know, they they took some accountability. They are making changes while the reporting investigation was happening, definitely after. So there's some changes there. But the nonprofit, this is this is why we're talking about this on Philanthropy and the Black, y'all. This is what happens when organizations confuse community involvement with organizational oversight. You want volunteers, you want this, but volunteers don't replace internal controls. Fundraising doesn't replace budgeting, right? It assists. A dedicated coach doesn't replace a financial system. He probably can raise money, but we need a plan, right? And putting policies on your website does not mean those policies exist in practice. That's the lesson. They had all the damn paperwork, y'all. But governance ain't the paperwork sitting in the binder. Governance is what actually happens Tuesday night at the playground when nobody from headquarters is watching. That's the real deal. That's what we're talking about, bro. When community organizations mishandle money, people remember. $125, yo. They remember. When the business don't get no love or get no holla back, they remember. When the parent thinks somebody else stole, somebody stole money, they remember. And what you start hearing at our parks and in these booster clubs and in these sit neighborhoods is I don't give money to nonprofits. I don't trust these organizations. I don't trust Man Man. They all crooked. Listen, now one poorly governed organization has damaged the credibility of organizations that had absolutely jacked to do with the thing in the first place. This is why transparency isn't administrative busy work. Transparency is fundraising infrastructure. And that's why, especially, it's important in communities where organizations may already be operating with limited sources, uh, resources, and where losing community trust can take years to rebuild. Because if my grandma ain't trussy and my auntie ain't trussha, guess what? I don't trust you. They just ate. They just want to play some damn ball. But when one park has uniforms at 150 and another doesn't, when one neighborhood has a functioning booster club and all the signs and light, and another one doesn't, like eventually that that all that lands at the feet of our children, that is the part we cannot lose sight of, our children. Look, New Orleans, I love it. We don't have a shortage of people who care about kids. We got coaches, parents, grandparents, nonprofits. Hell, we sell plates, we do all the things. That's not the problem. The problem is expecting goodwill to compensate for weak ass systems. It cannot. Good people still need good governance. Volunteers still need training. Coaches still need a background check. Concessions need to be safe. And every parent deserves to know what exactly something costs when they're paying for it and where the money is going. Where you're from as a child or your neighborhood should not determine your opportunity. Your mama's bank account shouldn't determine whether your team looks like a travel squad or some people from on the block. Whether your playground happens to have 20 adults willing and able to organize a booster shouldn't determine whether your family's money is protected. If we're going to call this public recreation, right, then every New Orleans child deserves a reasonable standard of safety, transparency, and opportunity. Because when the adults can't get the governance right, somebody gets left behind. And too often it's the kid who didn't have much to begin with. Listen, y'all, I'm Sally Sell, man. I love y'all. I appreciate everybody who rocks with the podcast. Listen, governance is important. Making sure your binder of policies is checked regularly. That you are making sure people are protected and safe is important. If you don't do that, we're losing. So for my nonprofit brothers and sisters, look at your policies. Check them quarterly. Make sure that some tracking and some backup. Make sure you're able to report, report, report, and train your people and coach your people. And particularly in this instance, it's important because our kids matter. They're out there giving their all, man. That part can save so many kids. Those coaches, volunteer or employed, has saved kids. Don't let money be the reason we get jacked up or they lose out. No child left behind. Every child deserves an opportunity to play. So let's make it happen. I'm Sally Sell, Philanthropyandheblack.com. Peace.