HONESDALE, WAYNE COUNTY — Pro Bono Partnerships Inc. has received at least $109,841 in state grant money over seven years. The organization has never publicly disclosed a dollar of it.
- Part I: Wayne County Bar Association Lost Its Tax Exempt Status — Apparently for the Second Time
- Part II: Wayne County’s Pro Bono Nonprofit Discloses Nothing
- Part III: Pro Bono Partnerships: One Filing, Five Names, No Daylight
PBP’s own federal filings — 990-N e-postcards, each a single screen certifying gross receipts under $50,000 — reveal no revenue, no expenses, no grant recipients, no officer compensation. They are the simplest return the IRS allows, available only to organizations small enough to have nothing to report. PBP has filed one every year since 2018.
But the Pennsylvania IOLTA Board, the state agency that writes PBP’s checks, files detailed 990 returns of its own. Those returns include Schedule I — a complete list of every organization that received grant money, with dollar amounts, addresses, and EINs. Pocono Review examined the IOLTA Board’s Schedule I across eight consecutive fiscal years, from FY2017 through FY2024. PBP appears on seven of them.
Three Years to a House in Gouldsboro
The first IOLTA grant to PBP landed in FY2018 — the fiscal year running July 2018 through June 2019 — one cycle after PBP received its 501(c)(3) determination in December 2017. The amount: $20,000. The address on the IOLTA Board’s Schedule I: 1 Watawga Way West, Gouldsboro, PA 18424.
That is the residential address of Carl (Tobey) Oxholm III — who appears on PBP’s state corporate filing as President, Secretary, and Governor, and who chairs the WCBA Pro Bono Committee. It is also PBP’s registered office with the Pennsylvania Department of State. It is not in Honesdale.
The next year, FY2019: $20,000 to the same Gouldsboro address. FY2020: $20,000, same address. Three consecutive years of state legal aid grants mailed to a private residence outside the county seat the program was created to serve.
Oxholm runs a private mediation and arbitration practice, Just Resolutions, advertised on the WCBA website. His phone number on PBP’s filings carries a 215 area code — Philadelphia. He holds a law degree from Harvard, served as president of Arcadia University, and currently directs the statewide Pardon Project for Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity. He certifies PBP’s 990-N e-postcards every year as principal officer — seven filings in a row, each one confirming gross receipts under $50,000.
The Address Shifts. The Questions Don’t.
Between FY2020 and FY2021, the address on the IOLTA Board’s Schedule I changed. Grants stopped going to Gouldsboro. Starting in FY2021, checks went to 922 Church Street, Honesdale.
PBP has never registered 922 Church Street with the Commonwealth. Its state corporate filing still lists the Gouldsboro residence. But 922 Church Street is the address on every PBP 990-N e-postcard filed since 2018. It is the mailing address of the WCBA. It is on the same block as Rechner Law Office at 924 Church Street. And it is the office address of Oressa Campbell, a PBP board member, and Lindsey Collins, who joined Campbell Law Offices in 2013 and received one of PBP’s first two contracts in 2018.
The grant amounts also changed. After three years at $20,000, the FY2021 grant dropped to $8,041. FY2022: $8,000. Then the numbers climbed again — $18,050 in FY2023, $15,750 in FY2024. No public explanation accounts for either the collapse or the recovery.
The verified record:
| IOLTA FY | Grant | Address on IOLTA Filing |
|---|---|---|
| FY2017 | No grant | — |
| FY2018 | $20,000 | 1 Watawga Way West, Gouldsboro |
| FY2019 | $20,000 | 1 Watawga Way West, Gouldsboro |
| FY2020 | $20,000 | 1 Watawga Way West, Gouldsboro |
| FY2021 | $8,041 | 922 Church Street, Honesdale |
| FY2022 | $8,000 | 922 Church Street, Honesdale |
| FY2023 | $18,050 | 922 Church Street, Honesdale |
| FY2024 | $15,750 | 922 Church Street, Honesdale |
| Total | $109,841 |
Seven years of grants. Not a single year of public financial disclosure from the recipient.
The E-Postcard Problem
Each of PBP’s 990-N filings certifies that the organization’s annual gross receipts did not exceed $50,000 — the threshold below which the IRS requires no financial detail at all.
But the WCBA’s own planning document — the Equal Access Project report adopted in November 2017 — describes a funding model that projects revenue well past that threshold. The WCBA committed to contributing $20,000 per year. PBP was designed to seek matching IOLTA grants. WCBA members who opted out of their pro bono hours could pay $500 directly to PBP. The document also lists “court-appointed/payment-per case” as a potential funding source.
If even two of those revenue streams are flowing — say, the WCBA’s $20,000 contribution and an IOLTA grant in the range PBP has been receiving — combined gross receipts would exceed $50,000 in most years. At that point, the 990-N is no longer available. The organization would be required to file a 990-EZ, disclosing actual revenue, actual expenses, officer names, and a description of program activities.
Either the funding model the WCBA designed never materialized the way it was planned — meaning the pro bono program isn’t functioning as described in its own founding document — or PBP’s annual certifications that its gross receipts fall under $50,000 are wrong. One answer means the program is failing. The other means its federal filings are false.
The Grants Manager Who Helped Design the Program
The Equal Access Project document names the people whose guidance shaped the pro bono program. Among them: Jim Swoyer, Grants Manager for the Pennsylvania IOLTA Board. The document thanks him for “the experience, wisdom, and guidance” he provided during “the investigation, envisioning, and creation of this report.”
That report is the blueprint for PBP. It designed PBP’s funding model around IOLTA matching grants. It described the WCBA’s $20,000 annual contribution as a base that IOLTA money would double. It laid out the governance structure — WCBA officers serving as PBP officers, all financial services performed by the bar association, no separate staff. Swoyer helped build the machine that generates PBP’s grant applications, and then he managed the grant program that funded them. He has done so for every year PBP has received money.
Swoyer has managed IOLTA grants since September 2013. He currently sits on the board of the National Association of IOLTA Programs, the industry’s national body. His total compensation on the IOLTA Board’s FY2024 filing: $104,738 in base pay plus $34,978 in other compensation.
The Equal Access Project document — the one Swoyer helped shape — credits “Tobey Oxholm, Pro Bono Committee Chair” as its author. The 990-N e-postcards Swoyer’s office reviews each year list “Carl Oxholm” as PBP’s principal officer. The IOLTA Board’s own Schedule I sent checks to “Carl Oxholm’s” Gouldsboro address for three consecutive years. Carl and Tobey are the same person. Whether Swoyer or anyone at the IOLTA Board has ever noticed that the program architect and the principal officer filing PBP’s annual certifications are one individual — listed under two names across state and federal filings — is not clear from any public record.
What IOLTA Says It Does. What PBP Makes Possible.
The IOLTA Board tells the IRS, on identical Schedule I language across all eight years of examined filings, that it monitors its grantees. The process described: site visits, quarterly or semi-annual narrative and financial reports from every recipient, review by the grants manager and executive director, and independent monitoring by PLAN, Inc. In 2018, the IOLTA Board adopted SmartSimple Cloud, a grant management platform. Swoyer described the system in a case study for the software company: grantees log into a portal, submit compliance reports, and staff reviews expenditures and service delivery before releasing the next quarterly payment. The IOLTA Board received and reviewed 281 grantee performance reports in a single fiscal year.
Apply that process to PBP. The organization has no employees. It has no office — its registered address is a residence in Gouldsboro; its mailing address is 922 Church Street. It has no website. It has never filed a tax return showing a single dollar of revenue or a single dollar of spending. Its sole public filing describes itself as a subsidiary of the WCBA, with all administrative and financial services performed by the bar association.
Where would IOLTA conduct a site visit? Who logs into SmartSimple to file PBP’s quarterly narrative report? What does that report say about service delivery for an organization whose scope description changes depending on the audience — “exclusively custody and domestic violence” when applying for IOLTA money, “court proceedings” on the public-facing website, “court-appointed/payment-per case” in the internal planning document, and “waiver of criminal court debt” on a since-deleted page?
What Remains Unknown
The 2025-2026 IOLTA grant cycle — the current year — lists PBP as a recipient. The dollar amount for that cycle has not been independently confirmed from source documents. If PBP’s grant has continued at recent levels, total IOLTA funding since 2018 may now exceed $125,000. Wayne County’s conflict counsel fee schedule remains unpublished. Whether criminal defense costs have been routed through the WCBA or PBP — and whether IOLTA-restricted civil legal aid funds have been commingled with criminal case payments — cannot be determined from available records.
PBP’s actual revenue from WCBA contributions, member buyout payments, and any court-appointed fees remains invisible. The only record of money flowing into the organization comes from the funder’s side of the ledger, one Schedule I line at a time.
Pocono Review examined IRS 990 filings for the Pennsylvania IOLTA Board (EIN 25-1802119) covering fiscal years 2017 through 2024, with Schedule I grant recipient data extracted from each filing. PBP’s 990-N e-postcard filings for tax years 2018 through 2024 were obtained through the IRS Exempt Organizations Search tool. IOLTA Board staff information was obtained from paiolta.org. The WCBA’s Equal Access Project document, adopted November 22, 2017, provided the program design, funding model, and acknowledgments cited in this article. IOLTA Board grant management practices were described in a published case study by SmartSimple Software. This article is part of an ongoing series. Prior installments examined the WCBA’s tax-exempt status lapse and judicial pipeline (Part I), PBP’s governance structure and financial opacity (Part II), and the relationship web connecting WCBA officers, PBP board members, and judicial appointments (Part III).
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