If you want to understand why this site exists, the 2024 MYPros Community Crowdfund is a good place to start.
Allied Group Fitness, located at 420 Waldo Avenue in Midland, was selected as the 2024 MYPros Community Crowdfund recipient. The business is owned by Ali Huntoon.
Ali Huntoon runs two businesses: Allied Group Fitness and Allied HR Solutions. She is a confirmed MYPros member, listed in the public MBA member directory under Allied HR Solutions.
At the time of the 2024 crowdfund selection, she held the following positions simultaneously:
She disclosed these roles herself in a community profile published on Max Loves Midland in September 2024: "I'm on the Board of Trustees for the Midland Area Community Foundation, an Ambassador and Board Member for the Midland Business Alliance."
A board member of a charitable foundation receiving financial benefit from that foundation's distributed funds — even indirectly through a program it administers — is the textbook definition of the arrangement that conflict of interest policies exist to prevent. It doesn't require bad intent. It doesn't require a conspiracy. It just requires that the policies governing the organization weren't adequate to catch it — or weren't enforced.
The IRS has specific rules about self-dealing in private foundations. MACF is a public charity, not a private foundation, which means different legal thresholds apply. But the principle — that foundation insiders should not benefit from foundation distributions — is standard nonprofit governance regardless of the legal category.
Here is what makes the 2024 selection particularly notable: it generated almost no press coverage.
Every other MYPros crowdfund recipient has received substantial media attention. Pizza Baker (2019), Aviator Cookie Company (2021), Grove Tea Lounge (2022), Nor'East Outdoors and Aster (2023), Downtownsend/Crepes Et Amis (2025), and Live Oak (2026) all received feature stories, check presentation photos, and campaign recaps in Catalyst Midland, Max Loves Midland, the Midland Daily News, or Second Wave Media.
The 2024 Allied Group Fitness selection appears in a single line on the MBA's own program history page. No check presentation photo. No feature story. No campaign recap. For a program that normally celebrates its recipients loudly and publicly, the silence around 2024 is remarkable.
We don't know why coverage was sparse. We're noting that it was.
At a minimum, a well-governed program would have: identified Ali Huntoon's MACF board membership during the application screening process; required her recusal from any MACF discussions related to the crowdfund matching commitment; and disclosed the relationship publicly as part of the selection announcement.
Whether any of those steps were taken has not been publicly disclosed by the MBA or MACF.