San Francisco socialite Joy Venturini Bianchi has long been a striking presence among the city’s elite, soliciting donations and earning accolades from fashion icons, philanthropists and politicians for the cause she says propels her: helping people with developmental disabilities.

At a recent VIP fundraiser at Ghirardelli Square, Bianchi, 78, beamed in a silver-sequined dress and her signature oversized eyeglasses as she received a state Senate resolution honoring her “outstanding community service” and “high business ethics.”

Yet some donors to Bianchi’s 60-year-old charity have struggled with concerns that their donations were misused, raising doubts they said were never resolved.

A Chronicle examination of the public financial records of Helpers Community Inc. — known until 2015 as Helpers of the Mentally Retarded — shows the $6 million charity indeed appears to have strayed from its cause, pursuing questionable practices with scant oversight from a small board that includes its director, Bianchi, and her longtime friend.

Over the last decade, filings to the Internal Revenue Service reveal the nonprofit has done little charitable work while amassing millions of dollars in assets and donations and generously compensating Bianchi, as she travels to red-carpet galas from Beverly Hills to Manhattan, appearing alongside celebrities such as Demi Moore, Gwyneth Paltrow and Katy Perry.

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Helpers’ mission statement defines its “most pressing and important goal” as supporting quality residential care for the developmentally disabled. But in the past 13 years, the charity has given nothing to residential programs. And for a six-year period from 2003 to 2008, Helpers gave nothing at all to any charitable cause, according to financial records.

Bianchi, meanwhile, has been paid far above the norm for directors of charities. With base compensation of $193,828 in 2015, Bianchi earned roughly $100,000 more than the CEOs of about two dozen similar San Francisco nonprofits, according to a leading charity watchdog group.

Five accounting experts and a former bookkeeper for Helpers, who reviewed 18 years of the charity’s financial disclosures to the IRS at The Chronicle’s request, questioned Helpers’ legitimacy as a nonprofit and cautioned future donors about contributing.

“It’s absolutely appalling; it turns my stomach, actually,” said La Salle University Professor Laura Otten, who has advised the nonprofit industry for 30 years. “In the nonprofit sector, we take money from people with a promise. The farther we go away from the mission, the more eyebrows we are going to raise.”

Based on The Chronicle’s findings, the San Francisco assessor’s office is reviewing the property tax exemptions Helpers receives as a charity.

Bianchi and her board members defend their organization, and dispute any notion they are mismanaging the charity. They consider it “misleading” to characterize Helpers as primarily a grant-making organization, saying their mission also includes consultation and education. Bianchi’s compensation is commensurate with her duties, they said, and they believe it would take three people to replace her. Bianchi works as many as 80 hours a week, according to the board.

“We’re very happy with what we’re doing,” Bianchi said in an October interview, adding that in years when Helpers’ donations to other nonprofits were minimal, “we were fiscally responsible for our donors’ money, and they trusted our judgment to find where those dollars — according to our standards — would make a difference in the lives of those who are developmentally disabled.”

Helpers board President Peggy Bachecki, however, said that the organization “is arriving at a crossroads” and must re-examine its resources — including its investments and real estate — and how it is benefiting the developmentally disabled. The board pledged to do more with its “targeted grant-making” and hire outside advisers to help with accounting, finances, strategic planning and legal matters.

From 1963 to 2002, Helpers housed people living with developmental disabilities in a collection of stately homes near Golden Gate Park. Since then, it has relied on Bianchi’s personality and persuasiveness to become a fundraising and advocacy organization, raising money and selling donated designer apparel at its resale shops to support other nonprofits.

But Helpers granted nothing to any charitable organization until 2009, the group’s records show. Since then it has given about $405,000 — primarily to purchase wheelchairs for people with developmental disabilities and to fund Medical Missions for Children, a Massachusetts nonprofit that finances surgeries to repair congenital facial defects in countries such as Tanzania and Cambodia. Other funds have gone to a gardening program for the developmentally disabled and a music program for rural children in Washington state.

Bianchi said Helpers has not given more to charities because she has struggled to find suitable recipients. At some residential centers for the developmentally disabled she has visited, she said, she saw scenes that disturbed her, including one resident spending all night sitting in a chair and others receiving too many psychotropic drugs.

“I went incognito for about four years traveling throughout the U.S. trying to find facilities we could help,” Bianchi said. “It was very difficult to give money away.”

Asked why Helpers did not give money to prominent residential programs for the developmentally disabled in the Bay Area, such as those operated by The Arc San Francisco, board members declined to comment.

Bianchi volunteered for Helpers as a teen in the 1950s, eventually joining the organization in the 1960s just as it opened its first residential care home. For roughly 40 years, money raised by the organization helped fund its group homes, which boasted lush drapery, crystal chandeliers and needlepoint-covered chairs. Helpers cared for a total of 33 residents, offering them craft-making workshops and lessons in etiquette and fine dining.

Bianchi steered the charity’s fundraising efforts toward her love of high fashion, opening a boutique called Helpers Bazaar in 1966 in donated space at Ghirardelli Square. The shop sold crafts made by Helpers’ residents, and designer apparel donated by clothier Wilkes Bashford and others.

After Helpers closed its homes, Bianchi began soliciting donations of high-end apparel from socialites and philanthropists for resale at private shopping parties. In 2008, she opened an appointment-only resale shop, Helpers House of Couture, in one of the former group homes on Fulton Street. Contributors of clothing have included philanthropists Ann Getty, wife of billionaire oil heir Gordon Getty, and British fashion designer Stella McCartney.

The boutique offers eight rooms full of designer-label apparel and accessories, including Chanel, Oscar de la Renta and Christian Dior. Stacks of handbags and shoes line shelves and floor space alongside glass displays showcasing hundreds of pieces of paste jewelry. Bianchi, an effervescent hostess, greets visitors to the boutique with tales of Helpers’ history and its vast collection of designer goods, with pieces selling for thousands of dollars.

A longtime San Francisco resident, Bianchi emerged as a fashion icon in the mid-2000s, her celebrity boosted by widely published photographs of her elegant presence at high-society events.

Bianchi already was known for another high-fashion fundraising effort, “Mouse Couture.” For that campaign, begun in 1995, Bianchi enlisted top designers to create outfits for toy mice that were sold in the bazaar.

Bianchi said the idea came to her when a mouse scampered across her path one day in Manhattan. In that moment, she said, she realized people fear the developmentally disabled like they fear mice, and she decided she could help combat that fear by dressing mouse-like dolls in formal wear.

“I was in front of a window at Bergdorf Goodman in New York and a voice came to me and said, ‘Dress the mouse, dress the handicapped, so people can find their souls,’” Bianchi recalled in a recent interview.

Such statements dismay some disability rights advocates, who questioned Bianchi’s approach to the vulnerable population her organization vows to serve.

“I see this not infrequently — sort of well-intentioned people who miss the mark,” said Katie Hornberger, a lawyer with Disability Rights California, a prominent legal advocacy group. “There are some outmoded ideas about people with disabilities.”

Hornberger also pointed to the organization’s longtime name: Helpers of the Mentally Retarded, which was changed to Helpers Community Inc. only last year. The term “retarded,” Hornberger noted, has been considered offensive for at least 15 years.

Bachecki said Helpers is unaware of such concerns.

About this investigation

Chronicle investigative reporters Karen de Sá and Cynthia Dizikes and Style reporter Carolyne Zinko reported this story on Helpers Community Inc. over several months. They examined 18 years of the charity’s Form 990s filed to the Internal Revenue Service, as well as court and property records and other documents related to the organization. Six experts in nonprofit operations were consulted throughout the reporting process, and dozens of interviews were conducted with disability rights advocates, politicians, fashion experts, philanthropists and Helpers officials.

All the while, Helpers has flourished, doubling its worth to more than $6 million over the past decade through donations and investments. That figure does not reflect the current market value of the four properties on Fulton Street, now estimated to be $8 million, according to real estate website Zillow.

Jack Calhoun, a former global president of Banana Republic who sits on prominent San Francisco fine arts boards, said he was impressed by Bianchi’s commitment after he attended Helpers’ 2013 black-tie gala at the Fairmont Hotel.

“Seeing Joy — my God, the woman pours her heart and soul into it. She’ll hit you up wherever you’re standing,” he said. “She has so much energy and is so passionate about this and anybody who has developmental issues. And it’s not fake.”

Calhoun dismissed concerns about Helpers’ operations. “It sounds like a very small charity that may not have enough of its money going into programming,” he said. “I feel like you could challenge a lot of nonprofits on that.”

Nonprofits such as Helpers can receive federal, state and local tax breaks as organizations benefiting the public. As such, they are expected to reserve the bulk of their spending for their mission — ideally at least 65 percent, according to best practices identified by charity evaluators and watchdog groups.

Since Helpers ended its residential programs in 2002, financial filings show an average of 23 percent of its annual spending has gone to its own “outreach, advocacy and education” programs that the group describes as central to its work.

But Bianchi and three board members could provide no specifics about the more than $100,000 a year the organization reports spending on those efforts, beyond Bianchi’s informal conversations with shoppers at Helpers stores and her occasional talks to retail employees and fashion students. They described outreach efforts as also including Bianchi’s “mentoring” of a girl from New Zealand and two girls she invited to play violin at fundraising events.

When pressed, the board said it “does not have sufficient resources” to detail those activities, and “does not maintain contemporaneous records of this type.”

On average, just 5 percent of Helpers’ annual spending from 2003 to 2015 has gone to grants benefitting charitable organizations, although recent annual donations have grown — from $75,533 in 2013 to $160,250 in 2015, records show.

Much of the increase has gone to Medical Missions for Children, the charity that repairs facial defects in children, some with additional disabilities. This year, Helpers has pledged to give more than $300,000, including about $200,000 to Medical Missions, a sum it raised through designer apparel sales in a pop-up shop in Bloomingdale’s department store in San Francisco over the summer.

Their recent spending uptick, however, still falls short of the norms in the nonprofit world, experts said. And in each year since 2003, Bianchi’s annual compensation has been larger than Helpers’ total charitable giving, according to the group’s federal filings.

In 2015, Bianchi’s compensation far exceeded the pay of CEOs at 22 similarly sized San Francisco human services nonprofits tracked by Charity Navigator. Bianchi also earned $29,074 in retirement and other deferred compensation, raisng her total that year to $222,902.

Brian Mittendorf, an accounting professor at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University who specializes in nonprofits, said the outsize spending on Bianchi’s salary raises questions about whether donor funds are being used to enrich a single person at the expense of the mission.

“In general, it is difficult to explain why one person would be the recipient of so much of the organization’s spending,” he said.

Mark Bettini, an accounting and business instructor at UC Berkeley Extension who kept the books for Helpers in the late 1990s, agreed. “There seems to be no separation between Joy as the CEO and the charity itself.”

Nonprofit boards are tasked with providing independent oversight. Experts said larger boards allow for more perspective, with turnover ensuring greater objectivity. A typical board has at least 12 members, according to a recent survey by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

This year, Helpers’ board added a fifth member, Cati Gallardo, a former public relations manager at Bloomingdale’s department store who met Bianchi on the social circuit. Between 2010 and 2015, Helpers’ board had four members, including Bianchi and her longtime friend Bachecki, who has been on the board for 21 years. Bianchi, Helpers’ paid director, has served on the board since 2002.

“It’s a huge, huge conflict of interest,” said Otten of Philadelphia’s Nonprofit Center at La Salle University. “The board is safeguarding the money, and when there is a person on the board who is getting paid, it looks suspicious.”

Bachecki, the board president, said Helpers hopes to expand its board but believes members’ long tenures provide the organization with a needed historical perspective. She noted that Bianchi does not vote on her own compensation.

The Helpers board argues that much of its charitable work does not show up in its financial filings, such as more than 4,000 hours of volunteer time spent “spreading its mission” at the group’s administrative offices and retail shops. It also says that its spending on programs includes the cost of operating its resale shops and maintaining the four homes it owns on Fulton Street.

From 2003 to 2015, Helpers reported spending more than $850,000 maintaining the four properties. Those homes, however, have long been listed in federal filings as “temporarily closed homes for developmentally disabled adults,” despite Helpers’ acknowledgment that it has no plans to reopen them for residential care services. They are now used for storage, office space and the resale boutique.

Helpers has never been publicly sanctioned by any agency charged with oversight of its operations. If a nonprofit is found to have engaged in improper activities, the IRS and state regulators can take a variety of actions, including conducting an audit, imposing financial penalties, bringing legal action or revoking its charitable status.

The IRS and the California attorney general’s office declined to comment on Helpers’ practices.

San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu, however, said she has launched a review. From 2003 to 2016, Chu’s office granted Helpers about $100,000 in property tax exemptions at its Fulton Street homes. The assessor’s office ended another long-held Helpers tax exemption for its Ghirardelli Square shop in 2013, after it discovered the organization was not using it for rehabilitation programs, such as employing people with developmental disabilities.

“We rely on these organizations to truthfully declare any changes and to reaffirm their eligibility for exemption under penalty of perjury,” Chu said. “Our office will review the information gathered in this case and work to ensure we pursue payment if property taxes are found to be due.”

After years of concerns about Helpers, some donors welcomed the new scrutiny.

Six former donors told The Chronicle they abruptly halted their giving to Helpers because they believed Bianchi misled them and could not adequately document the charity’s spending. Some found it odd that, to date, Helpers does not have a website describing its operations, though it does have an Instagram account and conducts sales of donated apparel online at 1stdibs.com, a fashion and furniture website.

Elisabeth Thieriot, a philanthropist and founder of a skin care line, said she has donated at least $150,000 worth of furniture, designer suits, cocktail dresses and gowns to Helpers. But roughly 10 years ago, she inadvertently donated some custom-made clothing of her late mother’s and said she was rebuffed after repeatedly asking Bianchi for its return. Thieriot later found her mother’s Scaasi gown on Helpers’ racks during a private shopping party in Pacific Heights.

Tatiana Sorokko, a former runway model and vintage couture collector, said that roughly a dozen years ago she saw Bianchi at a party wearing the unique, cap-sleeved Claude Montana jacket she had given for resale to benefit the disabled. After that incident, “I was on alert,” Sorokko said. “I felt the charity was not legitimate.”

Helpers board President Bachecki said Bianchi has worn donated clothing in public only once — an evening gown in 2009, as “a fitting tribute” to a deceased donor’s legacy. Bianchi recalls receiving the donations from Thieriot and Sorokko but says she is unaware of any unresolved concerns.

Marin County resident Patti Hester, an e-commerce and shipping consultant, became concerned about Helpers more recently, after meeting Bianchi at the Helpers pop-up shop in Bloomingdale’s in June.

She said she had been looking for a charitable effort to support, particularly since marrying a man with a 12-year-old son with a developmental disability. Hester purchased clothing, made a donation, and considered helping Bianchi organize a fundraiser. But she later withdrew her support after reviewing the group’s financial disclosures online and noting the meager spending.

“We very much wanted to believe in Joy and her charity, but the more we looked into it, fewer things were making sense,” Hester said. “It felt like she misrepresented the charity and preyed on my desire to help the developmentally disabled.”

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco — who bestowed Bianchi with the state resolution in October — called the in-home care that Helpers once provided for developmentally disabled adults on Fulton Street a “revolutionary concept.”

“Prior to Joy,” Leno proclaimed, “they were locked up in dark, dank institutions.”

But after learning of the newspaper’s findings, he encouraged caution: “It would appear that the board is in need of a serious governance makeover.”

Carolyne Zinko, Karen de Sá and Cynthia Dizikes are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: czinko@sfchronicle.com, kdesa@sfchronicle.com, cdizikes@sfchronicle.com Twitter @CarolyneZinko, @cdizikes