Nonprofits Get a Cut of Petco Park Food Proceeds, But One of the Biggest Nonprofits at the Stadium Doesn’t Exist

Many Padres fans don’t even realize when they buy a $10 hot dog or a $20 tall boy: Roughly 10 percent of the take at many stands is supposed to be donated to charity.

Charities staff those concession stands at Petco Park and, in return, they get to keep anywhere from nine to 12 percent of the proceeds for their charity.

A group called Chula Vista Fast Pitch operates more stands than any other charity in the park – netting it potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, according to documents obtained by Voice of San Diego. The only problem is Chula Vista Fast Pitch does not exist.

Chula Vista Fast Pitch doesn’t have a website and it has no permits to use fields in Chula Vista. Official tax and business filings, as well as internet archives, show that such a charity did exist at one time. But it shut down in 2014. (The charity was called “Chula Vista Fastpitch.” Fastpitch, a version of softball, is one word, but the group at Petco spells it out in two words.)

Searches for many different permutations of Chula Vista Fast Pitch online, in business directories and in tax filings returned no current nonprofit organizations.

People familiar with the softball world, including the former founders of Chula Vista Fastpitch, say no one is using that name currently for softball purposes.

And yet, Chula Vista Fast Pitch has been operating in Petco Park for the last nine years. Multiple people familiar with the operation said it was an open secret that the charity doesn’t really exist.