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- Impact Sac received 783 suite tickets valued at more than $83,000 since 2019.
- Impact Sac received nearly 300 more suite tickets than the next nonprofit listed.
- City emails show multiple ticket offers were addressed only to Impact Sac’s director.
Reality Check is a Bee series holding officials and organizations accountable and shining a light on their decisions. Have a tip? Email [email protected].
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As part of the $225 million in public financing Sacramento provided to build Golden 1 Center, the city received a luxury suite that looks across the court to the Kings bench. The suite, No. 32, has 20 plush seats and dedicated concierge service. It also comes with VIP parking.
According to the Golden 1 Center, no detail in the suites is “overlooked, no indulgence spared, no chance anyone leaves unimpressed. The Suites at Golden 1 Center are designed to let you enjoy every event exactly as you want to.”
The city’s tickets for it, under city policy, rotate among nonprofits that apply for the occasional opportunity to bring volunteers and the people they serve to Kings games, concerts and monster truck extravaganzas.
According to data from the city’s open data portal, records of tickets for the box from 2018 to the present, Impact Sac — a nonprofit that received more than $1.2 million in contracts from the Sacramento Police Department over the last five years — collected 783 tickets valued at more than $83,000 since 2019, nearly 300 more tickets than any other organization among all 383 non-profits that have received tickets.
Among those who benefitted from Impact Sac’s luxury suite tickets was Nicole Clavo, the city official who approved and oversaw their contracts.
Impact Sac signed its first contract with the city July 1, 2021. Clavo, the director of the Office of Violence Prevention, a division of the police department, was listed as project manager. Clavo did not respond to requests to comment.
Six hundred pages of emails between the city clerk and Paris Dye, Impact Sac’s executive director, show that Dye frequently solicited tickets and received ticket offers extended only to Impact Sac — rather than the city clerk’s standard practice of emailing multiple organizations and awarding the box first come, first served.
Many of those tickets provided to Impact Sac were for events that fit the program’s mission of serving youth. “Disney on Ice” in October 2021 drew dozens of minors across two consecutive nights.
But others did not.
Ethics experts said that they were troubled by the non-profit’s use of luxury box Dye provided dozens of tickets to the city official and her family who approved Impact Sac’s contracts and expense reports, which lacked receipts and other documentation.
“When a gift goes to a nonprofit and then comes back to the police official overseeing millions of dollars — especially repeatedly — it looks like there was some sort of agreement,” said Joan Harrington, a nonprofit law professor at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.
The other non-profits on the list are long-established. Sacramento Children’s Home has served vulnerable youth since 1867. Big Brothers Big Sisters has operated in Sacramento for decades. WEAVE is the region’s primary domestic violence agency. Boys & Girls Clubs serves thousands of children a year.
Alchemist Community Development, which operates six certified farmers markets in Sacramento County and runs a CalFresh incentive program connecting low-income residents to healthy food, has received 194 tickets, 17th among community groups which have received tickets. .
Executive Director Sam Greenlee said he has never sat in the box because he wants to reward “our dedicated volunteers and employees.”
“It’s been a wonderful program for us,” he said.
Wendy Klock-Johnson, the city’s assistant city clerk who oversees the ticket program, defended Impact Sac’s participation. She noted that many of the events they attended — “Disney on Ice,” “Monster Jam” and the Professional Bull Riders — are among the hardest to fill and naturally suited to the youth population the organization claimed to serve.
City records also show Impact Sac also received tickets to comedians Kevin Hart, Jo Koy and Gabriel Iglesias; performers Post Malone and Chris Brown; and six regular-season Kings games.
Records show Impact Sac received some first-come-first-served blast offers sent to up to 17 organizations. But in multiple cases, it also received offers addressed to Paris Dye alone. City staff emailed Dye in Dec. 2022 offering Kevin Hart tickets — 20 suite seats valued at $4,000 — without opportunities for other organizations.
Despite receiving lucrative contracts, Impact Sac failed to register with the California Attorney General until July 2024 — three years after it began receiving city money, and four years after it began receiving tickets. The AG’s rules are: an organization that fails to register is not in good standing and “is prohibited from engaging in conduct for which registration is required including, but not limited to solicitation for charitable purposes.”
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The city kept giving contracts, and tickets.
Who attended
The official who controlled their contracts showed up in the suite along with officials from a Sacramento County church, Liberty Towers, closely associated with Impact Sac.
On Feb. 3, 2022, the Sacramento Kings hosted the Brooklyn Nets. The presence of Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving made the game a big draw. Tickets were valued at $300 each — $6,000 for the full suite.
On Jan. 26, Senior Deputy City Clerk Carol Jaimes emailed Dye to ask if Impact Sac might be interested in tickets to the Kings-Nets game. Dye responded immediately: “Oooohhhh!!!!! Thank you!!!!!”
When she submitted the guest list for the suite, 19 of the 20 guests were adults, nearly all connected to Impact Sac’s financial network. One minor appeared on the list with no name recorded.
The guest list included:
- Nicole Clavo.
- Clavo’s daughter Japhera, whose catering business — Mixed By Clavo — was being paid directly from Impact Sac’s city grant.
- Courtney Martin, the CFO of both Impact Sac and Liberty Towers Church, and the daughter of Terry Schneider, who served simultaneously as Liberty Towers’ minister and Impact Sac’s CEO
- Her husband Jeff Martin.
- Dye, Impact Sac’s executive director, who listed herself as “Liberty Towers Community Life Lead” in her email signature.
A Post Malone evening
In September 2019 — nearly two years before Impact Sac received its first city contract — Clavo and her daughter Japhera were in the Golden 1 Center suite with Dye and Ross Schneider for a Post Malone concert. The city provided 20 tickets valued at $3,150. Post Malone’s album “Hollywood’s Bleeding” had debuted at No. 1 that same month, making the concert a huge draw.
Also in the suite that night was Monica Lindholm, the city clerk staffer listed as the on-call coordinator when community groups use the box.
In May 2022, Dye emailed Lindholm directly to ask a favor: “Hello there, I’m wondering if you happen to have tix available to Pearl Jam? I’m sorry to request so last minute but still keepin hope alive! I hope all is well.”
Lindhom responded, cc’ing Carol Jaimes, a senior deputy city clerk who ran the Golden 1 Center community ticket program: “Hi there! I don’t think we have anything, but looping Carol in just in case. Monica”
In text responses to questions about the suite use, Dye did not address inviting the city official who supervises her contracts to multiple events. She texted: “I have no clue about tickets to ratio of others. I just accepted and still will accept any offer.”
Dye added: “We have never met the person who was in charge of tickets. They liked that we could fill a suite sometimes within hours before an event.”
Under state law and city ethics rules, tickets provided by a contractor to the official overseeing that contractor’s contracts are considered gifts from a restricted source — and must be disclosed on the official’s annual Form 700 conflict-of-interest filing. Clavo’s Form 700s show “None” checked across six consecutive years.
Contracts and tickets
The suite became a recurring gathering place for people in the Impact Sac’s financial network. Clavo attended four Impact Sac events. Her daughter Japhera attended six: Post Malone in September 2019, Jo Koy in October 2021, the V101 Holiday Jam in December 2021, the Nets game in February 2022, Kevin Hart in December 2022 and the V101 Holiday Jam again in December 2023.
Schneider attended at least two high-value Kings games. His wife Diane, son Ross, daughter Courtney Martin and her husband Jeff appeared on guest lists for a Trail Blazers game, a Clippers game, Kevin Hart, Monster Jam, Disney on Ice and a Cody Johnson concert in July 2025.
Courtney Martin attended at least seven events. Schneider and Courtney Martin did not respond to requests to comment.
“When money moves into a church that isn’t required to file public returns, you lose the ability to see how it was spent,” Harrington said.
The 10 organizations with the most tickets
According to city records, these organizations have acquired the most tickets to the Golden 1 luxury box from 2018 to the present:
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Impact Sac: 783 tickets
Bridge Network: 486
Sacramento Children’s Home: 398
Big Brothers Big Sisters: 350
Mexican Cultural Center of Northern California: 337
Improve Your Tomorrow: 313
American River College Veterans Resource Center: 260
Single Mom Strong: 243
WEAVE: 231
Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Sacramento: 223