World Scholar's Cup (WSC) is not a non-profit

According to the FAQ page of the World Scholar's Cup website, WSC is a not-for-profit organization.

Also, according to an email I received from an agent of WSC while sorting the billing for an event, they claimed the organization to be a non-profit that is "registered in the United States".  The World Scholar's Cup contact page indicates that their headquarters are in California. 

The "World Scholar's Cup Foundation" is located in Los Angeles, California at 1002 Wall Street.  Great!  Let's check them out.

The State of California has a Registry of Charitable Trusts that you can search.  Here's the result for World Scholar's Cup Foundation.

Not currently registered.  No address.  No filings.  Looks like nothing since the original filing in 2011.

Well, certainly they must be registered with the IRS.  We can use the Tax Exempt Organization Search for that.

My search didn't find any results.  Well, maybe these files are not very accurate.  So I did a search for a non-profit I was on the board of in the early 2000s that went defunct about 10 years ago and found it in the IRS search.

So the World Scholar's Cup is, certainly, not a registered non-profit organization.  Not with the IRS, and not with the state of California.

So what is it? 

Let's start with WHERE it is.  1002 Wall Street, Los Angeles California.  Hello to Google maps!

Huh. Al Weiss Men's Clothing.  Let's go to the street view.

Yep.  A clothing store at 1002 Wall Street.  But this photo is from February of 2019.  Let's look at Google Street View's past.  Maybe this clothing store moved in and took over the headquarters of the World Scholar's Cup.  Here's the earliest Street View available -- from 2011.

So, the WSC Headquarters is based out of a men's clothing store.  I had as much confirmed via an email with one of the WSC staff members.  When confronted with my difficulty in understanding why a men's clothing store was the address for World Scholar's Cup he said...

The Los Angeles address is also the location of the family business of Daniel Berdichevsky, the founder of the World Scholar's Cup. However, since most of our events happen in Asia, Africa and Europe, our team is mostly in these regions.

So, if World Scholar's Cup Foundation is not a registered non-profit, maybe it is a registered business.  According to the Wikipedia page for WSC, it was founded by Daniel along with his Academic Decathlon study guide company DemiDec.  DemiDec lists the same address as Al Weiss Clothing.  It looks like DemiDec deserves a separate post! 

So turning to the California Business Search we finally have a hit! 

The entity name is an exact match, the agent is an exact match, but the status of (entity number C3355934) is "FTB Suspended" which, thanks to the FAQ means...

FTB Suspended or FTB Forfeited:
The business entity was suspended or forfeited by the Franchise Tax Board for failure to meet tax requirements (e.g., failure to file a return, pay taxes, penalties, interest).

(Emphasis added.)

So if we click through to the detail on the listing we get this screen.

This notes that WSC was registered as a business entity on January 31, 2011.  The last filing was in 2012, which would explain why their status is suspended. 

So, definitively, the World Scholar's Cup Foundation is NOT a non-profit entity.