There’s a Word for PRSA Falsifying its APR+M Pentagon MOU: Fraud
The re-published blog found further below this introduction originally appeared on my LinkedIn page, on April 7, 2021.
The blog documented my concerns about PRSA’s long-falsified memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the United States Department of Defense, tied to the PRSA-commandeered Universal Accreditation Board (UAB) “Accredited in Public Relations” Military certification (APR+M).
Within hours of my posting this original blog via my LinkedIn profile on April 7, 2021, I began receiving comments and other reactions to the truthful report I had posted… mostly shock and disappointment from colleagues, aimed at PRSA.
But then, quite suddenly, LinkedIn alerted me that the post had been taken down from public view, due to some kind of allegation — without specificity of any infraction on my part, nor any disclosure of a source of complaint — that the blog somehow was not in keeping with LinkedIn’s “Community Standards.”
Because no reason was given by LinkedIn for its deleting access to the blog, the only rationale I could surmise was that one or more of PRSA’s implicated individuals — whom I tagged by name in my original posting on April 7, 2021 specific to facts documented in the blog post — registered a complaint with LinkedIn, due to their fears of PRSA’s unethical and potentially illegal misconduct being exposed.
Bottom line: I was being censored by PRSA for reporting truthful information about PRSA misconduct… yet again. Such behavior by PRSA violates PRSA’s Code of Ethics’ “Free Flow of Information” provision.
About a year after my blog post, in March 2022, the Florida Public Relations Association — which is represented on the UAB Board — registered its own public protest against PRSA… with clear evidence that, for years, PRSA essentially has bullied other organizational members of the UAB:
FPRA leadership wrote to its members of PRSA’s various power-grabs:
“In recent years, we have watched PRSA tighten its control over the program, overlook the need for equitable marketing tools for all POs, deny representatives from other POs the ability to chair the UAB, and now move its partners to an advisory council status – not providing equitable governance of a credentialing program that benefits our profession overall.”
More than two years later, in November 2023, I uncovered from U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documentation posted online in the public domain that one of the individuals serving on the UAB during the timeline of the falsified PRSA / Pentagon MOU was listed by the IRS as having received PRSA, Inc.’s corporate tax documents tied to PRSA, Inc.’s unique Employer Identification Number (EIN) — 13-1582190 — in 2017.
The IRS apparently sent PRSA’s Form 990-N e-Postcard to what appears to be this individual’s personal work address in Mississippi, for reasons that remain undisclosed:
As referenced above, this individual is also noted on the UAB website:
It is unclear why the IRS would have been directed by PRSA to mail corporate PRSA, Inc., tax documentation to anyone except authorized staff at PRSA’s headquarters in New York.
I posted a public-facing query to PRSA CEO Linda Thomas Brooks on December 3, 2023, but she has ignored it.
PRSA, Inc. CFO Philip Bonaventura and PRSA’s very long-time auditors of PKF O’Connor Davies are responsible for ensuring that the IRS has PRSA’s proper mailing address for tax correspondence.
This egregious misdirection of PRSA Inc. tax documentation follows suit with the IRS also having sent this same documentation (a 990-N e-Postcard) to Joseph Abreu’s residential home mailing address back in 2007, while Abreu was only a chapter-level PRSA officer in Florida.
In January 2024 — 17 years later — Abreu curiously ascended to the PRSA National Chairmanship, within weeks of PRSA posting $5.4 million in math errors to its balance sheet.
Because this prior matter of the PRSA / Pentagon MOU remains wholly unaddressed by PRSA or the UAB and is therefore unresolved, I’m now opting to re-post my original LinkedIn blog post from 2021 below, to my new website, where PRSA is no longer able to meddle by having it improperly and unethically censored.
As always, if there is anything here that is reported without additional necessary context, or if PRSA or the UAB wish to explain themselves for fraudulently claiming for well-more than a decade that a PRSA/UAB MOU actually existed in writing with the U.S. Department of Defense — when clearly it did not — then PRSA officials are welcome to send to me their content, which I will gladly include.
BELOW IS AN EXCERPT OF THE ORIGINAL LINKEDIN BLOG POST OF APRIL 7, 2021, EXPOSING PRSA’s FALSE M.O.U.:
Did the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) falsify for some 12 years a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United States Department of Defense (DoD) in order to sell a PR accreditation to government public affairs workers – invoiced through government channels and paid for with taxpayer dollars to PRSA coffers?
As a preview:
For prior background, PRSA is currently touting April 2021 as “APR Month.”
The Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) designation – which PRSA is curiously now retooling as an acronym in its social media promotional graphics as “Accomplished / Passionate / Remarkable” – is also offered as a hybrid version… the APR+M, or “Accreditation in Public Relations + Military Communication.”
PRSA has claimed since 2009 that the APR+M version of the APR is “a joint effort among the Universal Accreditation Board (UAB), Department of Defense (DOD) and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA),” even publishing prominent reference in the APR+M Study Guide with the following claim about a formal “Memorandum of Understanding,” or MOU, allegedly in existence since 2009 between PRSA and the DoD, which “governed creation” of the APR+M “under terms of the memo.”
In a 2019 mid-year PRSA committee report to the PRSA National Board, PRSA Universal Accreditation Board volunteers even made reference to “writing test items” for APR+M and other efforts “to update the 2009 Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Defense.”
The committee report also referenced a special “accelerated pilot process for senior officers to earn APR+M.”
Unlike other PRSA members, military personnel are not required to join PRSA in order to obtain and maintain their special APR.
By using the term “update” persistently in referencing a need for a new MOU, it was clearly implied that a pre-existing, active version of an MOU had been and was currently in existence.
This information — we now know — was false.
To be clear, the APR+M credential (like the regular APR credential) is supposedly managed and overseen by a separate “Universal Accreditation Board,” composed not only of PRSA but other PR associations as well.
However, it’s clear that PRSA commandeers the whole set-up, from its HQ in New York.
PRSA established the UAB itself in its own bylaws, and ALL APR APPLICATION FEES are made payable only to PRSA, as documented on the APR+M application form:
In mid-January 2021 – just several months ago – I participated (as a PRSA member in good standing and as an APR credential-holder and member of PRSA’s College of Fellows) in a PRSA Board of Ethics & Professional Standards conference call.
Since I’ve reported many documented concerns for some years now about PRSA national leadership’s non-compliance with key tenets of the PRSA Code of Ethics, I generally tried to participate in such conference calls, to learn what’s new or changed in PRSA that would give rise to ongoing violations and their acceptability by PRSA leadership.