Boosters aim to regain nonprofit status

A nonprofit organization tasked with supporting the Cloquet-Esko-Carlton varsity boys hockey program is hitting reset after falling out of compliance with its federal and state government filings.

Calling it “pure oversight,” the Lumberjack Blue Line Club reported its revoked nonprofit status on Facebook earlier this week.

“We are in the process of submitting the required forms and past information for our organization to be reinstated,” the social media post said.

The Lumberjack Blue Line Club is among many volunteer- run, nonprofit organizations that fell out of compliance during the Covid-19 pandemic. Last month, the Pine Knot reported on the Cloquet Amateur Hockey Association regaining compliance after it, too, had seen its status revoked for failing to file financial statements with the Internal Revenue Service for three consecutive years.

“Covid didn’t help,” Blue Line Club treasurer Pat Duskin said. “Changeover of the board, too. It’s a completely new board. Regardless, I feel a big part of that. … I hate to say it’s been an unfortunate learning curve.”

Dushkin and three other members of the Blue Line Club — secretary Trina Storck, voting member Jack Kuhlman and former parent liaison Melissa Rauner — met with the newspaper in Dunlap Island Park last week to discuss the matter.

“We didn’t know what we didn’t know,” Rauner said. “It was completely accidental.”

The club has stopped taking donations until it gets reinstated federally, as well as re-registered with the state and the attorney general’s office. Since the status wasn’t revoked until August, every donation up until that point could be claimed on taxes.

“A lot of our fundraising comes from local businesses and sponsors, and we want to make sure that if they help us out, they can claim and deduct it,” Kuhlman said as a reason for the suspension of fundraising.

The Blue Line Club began in the summer of 2016, said Kuhlman, who’d just finished playing his senior year prior to the advent of the club. He described how then-coach Dave Esse and assistant Kyle Young forged the club with the help of a local business owner. Since its inception in 2016, the club has raised $307,000, topping out at $69,799 in 2019 — the last year the club filed its 990 financial report.

“They were bulldogs,” Kuhlman said of the original founders. “They had connections and influence. We’re building ours.”

For the years 2020-2022, the club is in the process of filing its previously unreported earnings of $17,000 in 2000, $39,700 in 2021, and $38,700 in 2022. Three unreported years means an automatic revocation of nonprofit status, according to the IRS.

The club originated as an effort to take fundraising off the coaches’ plates. The program features three coaches, including a junior varsity coach. Coaches had been responsible for organizing the program’s 21-year-old golf fundraiser, ordering new players’ rink jackets, teamwide warmup apparel, pucks, laces, stick tape, and towels and shampoo for the locker room. Now, the booster club does all of that, including organizing team meals and supplying meal money and snacks for road trips.

“They wanted to take all of that off the coaches’ plate and that’s how the Blue Line Club got started,” Kuhlman said.

Rauner talked about game pucks supplied by the club.

“We provide those at $3 apiece,” she said. “I’ll run around and pick them up, because I know how much we pay. We’ll go through five every game. It’s all those incidentals.”

The club also lines up community service for the team to perform throughout the year as a way to “partake in the community,” Rauner said.

“From a parent liaison perspective, I saw having those team meals and team-building events helps build the team,” she said. “You can see it in how they interact and how they get along and how they relate to one another. It does show up on the ice and in the locker room. It builds that positive part.”

Another parent-led booster club supports the girls hockey program, the sources said. On average, Stork said parents contribute about 50 percent of annual funding, while the rest comes from donations, fundraising, sponsorships and business support.

“Once the team is established, there is a suggested contribution from parents to the Blue Line Club for a suggested amount, depending on expenses versus fundraising and sponsorships,” Storck said.

Most of the board members are parents, and the current board said it’s in the process of establishing a system that will create better continuity between eras.

“It doesn’t apply to just this stuff; we have a website and social media and so forth that we manage, and we don’t want to lose that from one season to another,” Rauner said.

For Dushkin, who has had two sons move through the program, contributions to the Blue Line Club come as welcome relief compared to costs associated with youth hockey.

“After all those years of youth hockey and what you spend in youth hockey, it alleviates for parents to some degree once their player gets to high school,” Dushkin said.

Among the biggest expenses the Blue Line Club has been responsible for were a pair of $5,000 hotel nights during tournament play.

The team isn’t playing in any overnight tournaments this year, so those costs won’t apply unless the team, playing its first season at the Class A level, makes it to the state tournament.

“Hopefully, we make a state tournament here in the near future and we can help,” Kuhlman said.