Following the recent outcry over apparent fraud at daycares in the Somali community of Minnesota, Vice President J.D. Vance announced that the Department of Justice would be creating an assistant attorney general position specifically for investigating fraud in Minnesota, Ohio, and California. It might benefit this investigator to know about a nonprofit led by a prominent member of Columbus Ohio’s Somali community that has received over $1 million in federal, state, and local tax dollars while demonstrating some unorthodox bookkeeping.
The group is a private foundation with just one board member who pays himself more than $100,000 per year. There are no records of the group ever undergoing an audit nor using independent accountants, and its tax forms are full of vague “other expenses” with no named vendors or independent contractors.
The group’s ostensible purpose is to help immigrant convicts avoid going to jail again through job placement and housing assistance. The group’s founder just happens to own for-profit companies that provide second-chance employment and housing. To top it off, the group and its related for-profits are based out of an office that houses an entire network of immigration NGO’s that have received a combined $11 million in tax dollars.
To be clear, this article provides no concrete proof of and makes no allegations about any illegality. But at best the structure and bookkeeping of the group (or lack thereof) should flag the interest of the relevant investigators.
The UNIK Foundation
In September 2023, the UNIK Foundation, first formed in 2019, received a $1.2 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services for the “New American Anti-Recidivism Program,” specifically meant to help “immigrants, refugees, new Americans, and BIPOC individuals” in various prisons in the Columbus area. So far, $800,000 of the grant has been “outlayed,” or paid, for providing inmates and the recently released with “comprehensive case management, substance use and cognitive behavioral interventions, vocational training, mental health services, housing assistance, and access to community resources.”
The UNIK Foundation’s mission is not unusual for a non-government organization, or NGOs, as they are often labeled. The government, particularly under the Biden administration, has given billions to nonprofits claiming to be able to somehow reduce crime, addiction, and homelessness among immigrant communities.
What makes the UNIK Foundation unusual is its structure.
Financial peculiarities
Unlike almost every other NGO, the UNIK Foundation is organized as a private foundation, a type of charitable structure reserved for organizations whose funding comes from only one donor. Most government funded nonprofits are organized as ordinary 501(c)(3) public charities because tax dollars, while technically coming from one source, are usually considered public support. In addition to receiving federal grants, the UNIK Foundation has also received $294,942 in subsidies from the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health, $150,000 from the City of Columbus, and $50,000 from the Columbus City Council.
Being a private foundation is already unusual for an NGO. But even more unusual, the UNIK Foundation doesn’t actually disclose all of its donors to the public, as private foundations are required to do. Federal records clearly show the UNIK Foundation was sent at least $800,000 from 2023 to 2024, and the organization’s 2024 Form 990-PF shows that the group received more than $750,000 that year. But the form’s schedule B, the section where private foundations are required to disclose all donors, only shows a $50,000 contribution from the City of Columbus.
Failure to disclose donors is not the only irregularity.
While most private foundations are led by a board of several people for the sake of transparency, the UNIK Foundation has only one board member: Dr. Hanad Duale, a scientist, professor, and entrepreneur who has come to be highly regarded in the growing Somali immigrant community of Columbus.
The UNIK Foundation’s tax forms show that books are in the sole care of Dr. Duale at what appears to be a home address, and the foundation has never reported using any outside accountants or paid tax preparers.
The section where a tax preparer or internal bookkeeper would normally sign the 990-PF has been left blank every year. This is highly unusual. In addition to being a one-man board of directors and accounting department, Dr. Duale is also the UNIK Foundation’s only named employee with a comfortable salary of $139,000 plus benefits, which he claims to be earning by working eighty hours per week.
There is also no record of the UNIK Foundation ever undergoing an audit, even though audits are extremely common for organizations receiving funding from any government entity, much less three. For federal grantees, an audit is required for any group spending more than $750,000 of federal funds in a year. Recall that the UNIK Foundation inexplicably failed to disclose federal funding entirely on its 2024 forms, and the total undisclosed revenue was $731,880—just under $750,000—even though federal records seem to indicate it should have been $800,000.
In 2024, the UNIK Foundation reported spending a total of $358,102, a whopping 48 percent of the organization’s expenses, on the compensation of officers, employee salaries and wages, and employee benefits. No funds were distributed to other charitable organizations. Another $346,529 went towards “Other Expenses,” but the section of the Form 990-PF that is supposed to offer an explanation of these expenses says only “Facility Operation – $36,069 … Operation Cost – $191,097 … Other Expenses – $118,000 … Automobile expenses – $1,205.” No vendors or contractors are named, no additional information is given, and nearly a third of these “other expenses” are just described as “other expenses” a second time.
From the bookkeeping it looks like a financial black hole with just one man in charge.
Dr. Duale’s entrepreneurial spirit
Dr. Hanad Duale originally obtained a PhD in the United Kingdom and moved to Kentucky in the mid-2000s. He worked as a university research scientist until he moved to the Ohio State University Medical Center and eventually Columbus State Community College, where he apparently still teaches classes. Outside of his work in research and teaching, Dr. Duale is also a member of the Somali-American Chamber of Commerce and has founded a number of businesses over the years, including an import-export consulting business, a medical records software company, a job training software company, and a healthcare management company.
In 2022 Dr. Duale filed paperwork with the state of Ohio to incorporate two new companies: UNIK Logistiks and UNIK Housing.
From 2023-24, UNIK Logistiks was awarded three loans by the Small Business Administration with a combined total of $810,000. The UNIK Logistiks website describes the company as “a dedicated second chance employer” working “in partnership with community-based reentry service providers” and “over 7000 CDL certified, experienced drivers.” Department of Transportation records, on the other hand, show the company reports just four drivers and four trucks authorized for local intra-state deliveries of basic cargo only.
With $810,000 and several years under its belt, one might assume the company would be fully functional by now, but that would be mistaken. All the website’s delivery booking feature are inoperable and every page is chock-full of internet stock photos of trucks. Even the company phone number goes directly to voice mail.
UNIK Housing, meanwhile, has received no federal funding, but its public profile is equally barren. UNIK Housing’s website, despite being published in 2024, is still little more than a template with a blurb about being the “first choice in recovery housing” for addicts, and a gallery of luxurious living room stock photos ripped from the internet.
So, to recap … The UNIK Foundation’s main purpose is to provide halfway housing and job placement to immigrant ex-convicts, the UNIK Foundation’s sole board member and bookkeeper operates for-profit companies providing both services, one of the businesses pocketed an SBA loan, the public-facing websites of the companies don’t look genuine, and the nonprofit recordkeeping is flimsy.
There may be “nothing to see here,” but those making such claims often have something that needs to be seen.
And there’s more…
1925 E. Dublin-Granville Road
The UNIK Foundation itself has a website that at least clarifies that someone other than Dr. Duale is involved. The website says that Dr. Duale works with Makeda Naeem, LSW-CDC-A, a social worker and activist in the Colombus area, and Rahman Shahid, an Imam and Islamic Services Provider for prisons in Franklin County. Neither is actually named as a board member or officer on the most recent Form 990-PF, but on the website, Shahid is named as a “board director/advisor” and Naeem is described as the director of operations, making it likely that she is the other unnamed employee receiving a salary and benefits on the Foundation’s 2024 Form 990-PF.
The website also features the same address used by UNIK Logistiks and Housing, 1925 East Dublin-Granville Road, a medium-sized office building situated in a typical Midwestern commercial district. It doesn’t look like much, certainly not a clearing house for millions of federal grant dollars, but looks can be deceiving. The UNIK Foundation is just one of several immigration NGOs housed in the building that have received generous government funding over the years.
1925 E. Dublin-Granville Road is listed as one of several addresses used on federal grant paperwork for Community Refugee and Immigration Services (CRIS), which has received more than $2 million in federal grant obligations and $6.3 million in subsidies from the state of Ohio for programs such as citizenship education classes, mental health services, and domestic violence prevention.
The address is also used by Bhutanese Community of Central Ohio, an NGO doing similar work among immigrants from Bhutan that has received $1.2 million in federal grant obligations.
And finally, the address is also home to a pair of nonprofits called HAVOYOCO and AfriNetwork. Both are dedicated to fighting poverty in Africa and in immigrant communities, even though neither has received any meaningful funding, federal or otherwise. Dr. Duale, also reports working as HAVOYOCO’s director of urban economic development since 2019.
Between the UNIK network and the other nonprofits, the office on E. Dublin-Granville road is home to at least 7 nonprofits or affiliated groups that have been awarded at least $11.6 million in local, state, and federal grants, subsidies, loans, and obligations over the years. It’s quite impressive for just one building.
Again, nothing mentioned above regarding the UNIK Foundation is proof that anything illegal is happening. But it’s enough to raise eyebrows. It might even be prudent for authorities to explore the UNIK Foundation and its neighbors further, if only to ensure that everything is above-board and advise the UNIK Foundation on best practices for future transparency.
