The Celebration of Sharing to award money from the tournament to local charities was supposed to take place November 19, but the event was canceled due to what the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame Executive Director Byron Shive called in a statement "an unfortunate combination of rising expenses, inflationary pressures, and an unforeseen staff absence." The MSHOF hosts the tournament each year.
As KSMU has been reporting, the Price Cutter Charity Championship Tournament is facing financial troubles. A memo obtained by the KSMU news team sheds light on what those troubles are.
In that October 9 memo from Shive to Hall of Fame board members, Shive said, "overall revenue for the 2024 PC CC was down almost unanimously across the board, and the result is that the tournament is facing a significant shortfall with regard to its accounts payable and not enough revenue coming in to cover the costs."
The memo lists total revenue and assets at $589,000 and liabilities totaling $1,853,000. The shortfall totals over $1,264,000.
Among the 48 local charities in line to receive PCCC funds is the Children's Smile Center, based in Ozark. Its executive director is Jackie Barger.
"Our mission is to improve the health of area children by providing access to quality dental care services in our clinics," Barger said. "Our clients are children ages one to 19 who are covered by Missouri Medicaid, and our clinics are important because there is a shortage of providers who accept the Medicaid reimbursement. So that's the reason for the existence of our nonprofit dental clinics."
One aspect of the Price Cutter Charity Championship, a fact not known by many, is that a great number of the PCCC charities are required to buy in to the tournament to become a sponsor of sorts, to benefit from the charitable activities and money making events within the tournament itself, like raffles, auctions, sweepstakes and the like. During the annual celebration of sharing, each charity would get that buy in money back, plus the overall charitable return and the monies from those activities. The Children's Smile Center seed money, if you will, was $33,000. And November 19, the organization was set to receive $77,000 from the PCCC tournament. Jackie Barger said he remains hopeful he'll see that money soon.
"We have received communication from Price Cutter Charity Championship staff that they've had some difficulties related to their accounting staff, and they're working to rectify that," he said. "I trust that they're going to work to get that figured out and provide the support that the charities are expecting. I guess our position as one of the charities is we're taking at face value what they're saying in terms of dealing with some issues and trust that this is all going to get figured out with — I'm assuming there's going to be very reasonable explanations — and that I would expect a total accounting that would be transparent for all."
KSMU reached out to Shive for comment again on Tuesday but had not heard back at the time this story was published. Shive issued a statement to KSMU on Monday.
