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Sunstone Way, the nonprofit shelter provider sued by a whistleblower alleging profligate spending, is under review by Multnomah County’s Fiscal Compliance Unit.
The review was scheduled before Feb. 12, when former Sunstone Way finance executive Kate Fulton filed a complaint in Multnomah County Circuit Court, alleging she was fired after speaking up about bloated expenses for office space, staff retreats, and bar tabs.
The county performs fiscal compliance reviews every three years on contractors that get federal funding, county spokesman Denis Theriault says. Sunstone Way was last reviewed during the 2023 fiscal year and was due for a new one. The nonprofit runs six shelters in the Portland area.
The timing is “fortunate,” Theriault said in an email, because the county didn’t have to schedule an additional review of Sunstone Way after Fulton’s lawsuit and WW’s coverage of it. “We were able to keep the review already in progress,” Theriault says.
County finance staff visited Sunstone Way this week, Theriault said. In a fiscal review, auditors assess internal controls, check the validity of expenses, validate the allocation of funds, and compare budgeted expenses to actual expenditures.
In an email, Sunstone Way spokeswoman Devon Hoyt said the review had “been completed on our end.”
The county says the review is still underway.
Fulton joined Sunstone Way as finance manager on Oct. 2, 2023. She was promoted to director of finance in early 2024. While there, chief executive Andy Goebel moved Sunstone Way’s offices from the repurposed Washington High School to more expensive space on Southwest Naito Parkway “despite the lease not having expired on the previous offices,” Fulton’s suit says.
Among the largest accounting errors Fulton found, according to the complaint, was $210,000 in overbilling by Our Streets PDX, a nonprofit that supplies food to shelters. Fulton flagged the overpayment to Goebel and alleges he told her not to alert the Joint Office of Homeless Services because he had “made a deal” with Our Streets PDX. Goebel and Our Streets’ leaders are personal friends, her complaint says.
Sunstone Way has a history of accounting issues. In 2022, its leaders overbilled Multnomah County by $525,000, according to a report by County Auditor Jennifer McGuirk. Some $330,000 of that amount came from duplicated payroll expenses submitted for the same pay period in separate invoices, the auditor said.
Sunstone Way was called All Good Northwest until 2024. It was founded in 2021 as a spinoff of Do Good Multnomah, another shelter provider. Sunstone, a copper-bearing variety of labradorite feldspar, is Oregon’s state gem. It’s found primarily in the Rabbit Basin of Southeastern Oregon.
Sunstone Way hasn’t answered Fulton’s complaint yet, court records show.
