As COVID-19 roared on in October 2020, Somali community leaders in Columbus, Ohio, formed a small nonprofit organization aimed at assisting their community through the pandemic. Two years later, it managed to secure well over $2 million from the Biden administration to assist in the distribution of relief funding, a mission that an unreported independent audit later found was rife with unaccounted-for funding, fraud vulnerabilities, and skirted legal requirements. Despite this, Ohio politicians with financial links to the charity have continued to push cash in its direction.
Elon Musk, who President Donald Trump tasked with improving government efficiency, recently criticized taxpayer-funded nonprofit organizations for maintaining poor auditing practices and ultimately costing the public unnecessary money. Indeed, reports of corruption and mismanagement have emerged at many nonprofit organizations that receive public funding, particularly those responsible for providing community services. The case of Somali Community Link underscores how, even after an organization fails to display good stewardship of public funds, officials often continue handing them money anyway.
In 2022, Somali Community Link received $2.3 million from the Department of the Treasury to help administer its Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Nonprofit organizations that receive over $750,000 in federal grant funding are required to contract an independent auditor to review their legal compliance. The audit of Somali Community Link’s use of relief funds raised multiple red flags.
According to the investigation, $187,111 in grant funding that Somali Community Link received to distribute as rental assistance was not spent for that purpose or returned to the Treasury Department. An additional $10,000 in funds the organization received for a food assistance program met the same fate.
“The organization’s failure to perform regular budget‐to‐actual comparisons and establish adequate cash management controls contributed to unspent funds remaining unreturned,” the audit says.
Missing funding was just one defect among many relating to the Somali nonprofit organization’s handling of public funds.
Auditors found that Somali Community Link did not have reporting procedures in place that they were legally required to have as recipients of federal funds, including relatively basic documentation of payroll, disbursements, and grant management. Additionally, the organization failed to adequately mitigate the risk of fraud, which increased “the likelihood of mismanagement, noncompliance, and potential misuse of federal funds,” according to the audit.
Despite its shortcomings, Somali Community Link has continued to pull in funding from state and local governments. In the summer of 2024, Republican Ohio state Sen. Michele Reynolds and Democratic Ohio state Rep. Ismail Mohamed, a member of the Columbus Somali community, announced they secured $350,000 in funding for the nonprofit organization to “help construct a community center to serve the Somali community and underserved population of immigrants and refugees.”
Mohamed helped Somali Community Link obtain state funding in 2023. The city of Columbus allocated an additional $100,000 to Somali Community Link in 2024 to fund its housing assistance, after-school, business development, and newspaper programs.
The politicians cutting checks to Somali Community Link all have financial ties to the charity and its leadership.
Reynolds and Mohamed received thousands in political contributions from Somali Community Link and Newspaper PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the eponymous nonprofit organization, campaign finance records show. Columbus Mayor Andrew Gither received a further $5,000 from the PAC.
Somali Community Link Executive Director Mahdi Jama also made contributions to politicians that would later approve funding for his organization, according to campaign finance filings. Between 2022 and 2024, Jama gave $7,250 to Reynolds, $1,000 to City Councilwoman Shayla Favor, and another $1,000 to City Council President Shannon Hardin.
After all this, it is unclear if Ohio and Columbus will receive the services it paid Somali Community Link to provide.
Jama died in June 2024, and Somali Community Link has yet to update its website to reflect that fact. Somali Community Link’s social media accounts all appear inactive, with the most recent posts appearing in July 2024. The webpage for the organization’s state-funded news outlet has been deactivated.
Somali Community Link did not respond when the Washington Examiner reached out for comment.
Somali fraud dominated headlines in 2024 after members of Minnesota’s Somali community pleaded guilty to defrauding a federally funded pandemic-era child nutrition program of millions of dollars through a fraudulent nonprofit organization and shell corporations. Offenders used the proceeds of their scheme to purchase luxury vehicles and real estate.
The Columbus City Council, Reynolds, and Mohamed did not respond to requests for comment.