Two San Diego teens investigated their high school foundation’s finances. Then one got called in to the principal.

Kevin Wang, a 17-year-old senior at Canyon Crest Academy, was bored over the summer and needed something to do.

Then he remembered something that had bothered him back when he was a business officer for one of the school’s robotics teams: The school’s nonprofit foundation and main fundraising arm, the Canyon Crest Academy Foundation, was taking a bunch of money from his team.

The foundation kept 25 percent of every donation it collected on behalf of the robotics team. It did that for other student clubs, too, and it controlled the accounts of school-sponsored clubs, such as the robotics team, Kevin said.

Then, at the end of every fiscal year, it would take somewhere between 28 and 34 percent of the team’s revenue, Kevin said — the percentage varied year to year and wasn’t fully explained.

“I thought they were just super expensive — a rip-off,” Kevin said of the fees in an interview. “I just thought it was really wrong.”

Over the summer, he realized he still had access to the robotics team’s financial spreadsheets. So he began digging to find out where this fee money was going.

“What I found was, like, really shocking, and it just kept building up,” Kevin said...

Two San Diego teens investigated their high school foundation’s finances. Then one got called in to the principal. (msn.com)