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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — By 2022, Life360 Community Services had grown massive.

Using two federal child nutrition programs, the nonprofit arm of Springfield-based Life360 Church had partnered with over 100 schools to distribute hundreds of thousands of meals to kids each month.

During the pandemic, officials granted waivers so organizations could hand out several days’ worth of meals at a time in drive-thru-style events. Life360 used its roughly 20 churches across southern Missouri, touching some of the poorest areas of the state, as its distribution network.

“We had cars down a quarter of a mile-plus to our sites here,� the Rev. Ted Cederblom, president of Life360 Community Services and pastor of Life360 Church, told the Post-Dispatch in December. “We did it well and served millions of meals.�

And like other organizations that dove headlong into two U.S. Department of Agriculture programs meant to ensure children had food in an uncertain time, Life360 Community Services claimed millions of dollars in federal reimbursement for its efforts.

But the huge sums paid to Life360 and other nonprofits and churches through the program prompted Missouri officials, who cited concerns with “program integrity,� to crack down last year and yank waivers allowing grab-and-go meals.

At least six organizations were barred from the program for questionable claims and documentation. Post-Dispatch reports last year on two of the largest program participants found one nonprofit used the money to buy its founder a $975,000 house and another, Influence Church, may have used the money for church expenses.

Federal prosecutors subpoenaed documents related to the entities shortly after the newspaper published its stories.

But the biggest program participant was Life360 Community Services, affiliated with the influential Springfield-based Assemblies of God church. And it appears to have dodged strong enforcement actions or clawbacks of federal money. Yet Missouri regulators spent over a year raising dozens of concerns about Life360 Community Services and looped in officials at the USDA, according to documents and emails provided under an open records request.

Among the issues found by state regulators and the newspaper:

• Cederblom and two of his brothers were paid six-figure salaries through the program, all while still holding top positions at Life360 Church. His wife, who handled records, and son, who was in charge of logistics, were also on the food program payroll, but with salaries below six figures. In 2023, Cederblom’s two sisters-in-law were added to the program budget as well, though with salaries in the $30,000s.

• The organization collected plenty of money beyond its costs for running the food program. For example, Life360 Community Services spent $758,000 on the summer food program in June 2020, but it took in $1.9 million in federal reimbursements.

• An audit of 2020 finances found the nonprofit had paid $1.4 million into the affiliated Life360 Church for rent and “management and payroll reimbursement fees.�

• State officials found “irregularities� with 2022 paperwork documenting the number of children taking meals at schools, including daily counts that “appeared to have been altered.�

Cederblom, in a phone interview Thursday, denied that the food program was used to underwrite his church and stood by his organization’s operations, pointing to the changes it made in response to every issue the state flagged.

“I think it’s the best run of any organization, and the state’s helped us do that,� Cederblom said. “I’ve given my life toward this.�

‘Look at this stuff!’

At the end of 2020, Life360 Community Services had become the largest provider of meals under the USDA programs in Missouri.

The USDA pays organizations based on the number of meals they tell the state they serve. From 2020 through 2022, the nonprofit claimed almost $43.8 million in reimbursement through the Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program.

The margins for such volume were high. In June and July 2020, Life360 Community Services took in $2 million more than it spent on the summer food program, according to a report that year from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. The organization said it used the money to cover expenses for the Child and Adult Care Food Program, where reimbursements are often delayed by a couple months.

Even in late 2022, after Missouri opted out of waivers allowing to-go meals, Life360 still claimed around $1.5 million a month in federal reimbursement for hundreds of thousands of meals distributed at rural schools. Last year alone, it claimed nearly $13.7 million in Child and Adult Care Food Program reimbursement, over five times more than ºüÀêÊÓƵ-based United 4 Children, a nonprofit that, before the pandemic, had been the leading organization in the program.

Cederblom said Life360’s distribution through rural school districts in southern Missouri provided a “built-in� protection against abuse.

“Every meal we serve is approved and signed by the teacher in the classroom,� he said in December. “What I love about our system, the chance for fraud or something, it would be virtually impossible.�

But behind the scenes, DHSS officials overseeing the nutrition programs were growing suspicious.

While Life360 was never barred from the program, like some other organizations, state officials grew concerned when they discovered Life360 Community Services had boosted administrative salaries into the six figures.

“This provider is RIDICUOUS (sic) and I know they will not be able to maintain these levels when the waivers end so then what,� Sarah Walker, bureau chief of DHSS’s Community Food and Nutrition Assistance program wrote to a colleague in January 2022 after Life360 tried to justify its administrative salaries to her staff. “I mean seriously look at this stuff!�

Two of the top staff that the program began paying were Cederblom’s brothers Other family members were also paid through the program.

Life360 Community Services leaders agreed last year to lower the six-figure salaries and the proportion paid by the food programs. The state argued, and Cederblom acknowledged, the nonprofit performed other functions beyond the food program, including housing and preschool services.

But by then, it didn’t matter, according to one person familiar with the organization’s finances who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Enough food program money had been redirected into Life360 Church to keep paying those salaries, the person said.

“It was definitely gray,� the person said about the financial and operational separation between the church, nonprofit and food program. “A lot of money was being shifted over.�

Indeed, state officials were raising questions about Life360 Community Service’s expenses as far back as December 2020. In one review in May 2021, DHSS nutrition program staff found that Life360’s documentation of its use of the food program money “had expenses that were difficult to reconcile.�

“Percentages related to utility and rent costs must be documented and an explanation of how (Life360) arrived at those numbers,� the state wrote. “There were costs labeled ‘Management Fees’ with no explanation.�

Audits of Life360 Community Services, required for organizations that take large sums of federal money, weren’t filed until DHSS pressed the nonprofit to do so.

And when its 2020 fiscal audit was finally filed in August 2022, it showed the nonprofit had paid the church nearly $700,000 in rent and $742,000 in “management and payroll reimbursement fees� that year. The sums paid to the church fell dramatically in 2021, when the nonprofit recorded $81,000 in rent to the church and $103,000 in management fees.

Cederblom said those expenses were all in budgets approved by the state.

“They wouldn’t accept a budget that wasn’t listing all that out,� he said Thursday. “They watch all of that. They carefully monitor that.�

A state review in 2020 found the nonprofit also paid bonuses to employees without authorization, though the amounts and recipients were unclear.

And as pressure mounted from regulators, Life360 was able to use food program money to pay for audits, lawyers and accountants. It budgeted $100,000 for accounting fees in both 2021 and 2022 and $200,000 for 2021 legal bills and another $100,000 the next year — flat rates that also raised the eyebrows of Missouri officials.

At the end of 2020, Life360 Community Services was sitting on $3.2 million in cash, according to its audit. The next year, it reported no cash on hand but listed $2.8 million in funds on the way from the state, which it received in January 2022.

In December, Cederblom said food costs had “skyrocketed� and some meals went unreimbursed when children were absent from school. Life360 actually has to raise some extra money through donations to cover its expenses, he said.

“People do the math and they get mad — ‘someone could get rich,’� Cederblom said in December. “No. 1, that’s not what we’re doing. No. 2, that’s not what we want to do. And No. 3, I don’t see how that can work.�

‘Seriously deficient’

But as recently as July 2022, Missouri regulators sent Life360 a scathing review of its Child and Adult Care Food Program operations, warning it was “seriously deficient� and threatening to refer Cederblom and two other Life360 staff members to a list of organizations and individuals barred from the programs.

Missouri regulators found paperwork that repeated the same number of children taking meals in classrooms day after day, with no variation from, for instance, student absences or refusals to take meals. Officials referred to the patterns as “claiming irregularities,� writing that “many of the daily meal counts appeared to have been altered,� according to the July 2022 review.

“In one case the meal count had ‘no takers’ written in pencil at the bottom (with a frowny face) that appeared to have been attempted to be erased,� the July 2022 report said. “Nineteen meals were marked in the meal count section in what appeared to be a sharpie pen. Nineteen meals were claimed.�

And Life360 staff that were supposed to be verifying meal counts in the classroom were not signing them at the time of meal counts. The organization was sending “pre-signed� forms, a DHSS spokeswoman said.

Cederblom said the findings show the state’s oversight works.

“When you’re talking about 25,000 students, hundreds of schools, that’s thousands of classrooms,� Cederblom said. “There will inevitably be a teacher who transposes a number.�

“There’s never something done, where, ‘hey, let’s write this in and let’s get some more meals out of this to make money,’� Cederblom added. “That’s never, ever been the case.�

When Life360 began to look for ways to expand into other states — including Arkansas, Michigan and New Mexico — Missouri officials warned Life360 that it could not use Missouri food reimbursement for its organization’s staff time administering the program and claiming reimbursement in other states.

“They are the type of sponsor that tries to learn the rules and then use that to see how close they can bend them to still meet regulations,� Tanya Harvey, a Missouri food program coordinator, wrote to a Michigan counterpart in February 2022 after the other state had inquired about Life360.

‘Very large salaries’

But it was high salaries paid almost entirely out of federal child nutrition money that Missouri regulators pushed back on.

Records from the state show Cederblom was to be paid $165,000 with some $30,000 in benefits in 2021 and 2022. Ted Cederblom’s wife, Robbin Cederblom, was initially listed with a $58,000 salary to oversee records in the 2022 budget. His son, Matthew Cederblom, worked as director of logistics and saw his salary bumped to $75,000 in an early version of the 2022 budget.

A brother, Tom Cederblom, chief financial officer of the church, had his salary raised to $140,000 in 2021, with $29,000 in benefits, for his work as chief financial officer of the nonprofit. Another brother, Tim Cederblom, was added to the food program payroll as an “executive coach� and had his salary raised to $130,000 in 2021. Their wives, Melanie and Debby Cederblom, were both added to the food program payroll as “records assistants� in 2023, drawing salaries in the low $30,000s.

Tom and Tim Cederblom are not reported among the five highest compensated employees in Life360 Community Services’ federal tax filing for 2021.

Jeremy Hahn, who was executive vice president of the organization and on Life360’s activities, was the only employee other than Ted Cederblom listed in the nonprofit’s federal tax filing for 2021. In 2019, his compensation was just under $36,000, according to Life360 Community Services’ tax filing. By 2021, he was paid $144,000.

Hahn left the organization and started his own business at the beginning of 2023, . He declined to comment.

The nonprofit said Friday the 2021 filing “will be amended to correct the oversight made by the accounting firm, which the organization relied on to prepare IRS Form 990 and all subsequent schedules.� Neither Tim nor Tom Cederblom was paid in excess of $100,000 from the nonprofit in prior or subsequent years, the organization said.

Ted Cederblom defended the salaries.

“I think those were appropriate for the amount of work, giving our lives to this,� he said Thursday.

, so its finances are unclear.

“All executive leadership were devoting 40+ hours per week to the CACFP and SFSP programs during the COVID crisis,� the organization said in a Friday email. “As most pastors in America do, they are also bi-vocational and received stipends from Life360 Church for their separate weekend pastoral duties.�

Life360 eventually reduced the salaries in their 2022 and 2023 budgets after the state pushed back. But by the time they did, the 2022 fiscal year was half over.

“They didn’t request or demand that money be returned,� Cederblom said.

DHSS spokeswoman Lisa Cox said the budgets are only predictors of spending, and sponsors are “not paid based on the budget.�

“Federal regulation does not require state agencies to verify whether sponsoring organizations pay their staff,� Cox wrote in an email. “During program monitoring, CFNA reviews the sponsoring organization according to federal regulation and does not conduct a full financial audit. CFNA typically looks at one claim month and whether or not the expenses are allowed by program regulation.�

The federally required audits Life360 filed do not break down individual salaries.

Missouri officials first grew concerned about salaries when they did their review of Life360’s summer food program for 2021 and found far higher pay rates than the ones they had approved.

While their 2021 budget indicated Ted Cederblom would be paid $43 an hour, DHSS officials who looked into the organization found he was actually being paid $85 an hour.

In November 2021, state officials in a report noted that the high-paid executives were all listed as working five days a week and eight hours per day on the Missouri summer food program, even while they ran the church and sought to expand into other states.

“Time spent working on (Summer Food Service Program) for other states such as Arkansas and Michigan, for the (Child and Adult Care Food Program), or other church duties cannot be charged to the Missouri SFSP,� DHSS officials wrote to Life360.

The organization sent reams of salary data and work calendars to justify their pay rates. Missouri officials looped in the USDA.

“This sponsor is paying several of their executive staff very large salaries,� Harvey, the DHSS official, wrote to a USDA regulator. “We would like your opinion on if the corrective action/justification that they submitted for this finding is sufficient. We feel as though this salary is unreasonable, but based on their justification we are unsure we can say anything further.�

Cederblom said the program was not used to underwrite church functions and that he is actually rather removed from the day-to-day operations of Life360 Church.

“I have a preaching team that does most of the preaching and does most of the work, and I am the pastor, but they do almost all the work at the church,� he said.

In a response to the state, the nonprofit said the discrepancy in pay rates was because it hadn’t informed its compliance officer, so the budgets weren’t amended. It said it would make sure future pay rate amendments were reported. And Ted Cederblom emphasized he wasn’t getting wealthy from the program.

“We’ve not built any buildings, we have no mansions,� Cederblom said in December. “The program is carefully designed and it’s not meant to allow people to gain value from it. It’s meant to feed the kids.�

Ultimately, DHSS officials deferred taking any action against Life360 after the organization promised to make changes.

The state never clawed back any of the funds paid to Life360. Cox, the spokeswoman, said federal rules only allow state agencies “to recoup money from claims in certain circumstances.� Life360 is in “good standing� now, she said.

‘A good relationship’

However, late last year, the state did crack down on when meals could be served in schools. The slight change — restricting meal distribution to after the school bell rings — has led to “almost all� of Life360’s participating schools to drop out due to bus schedules and other logistical problems, Cederblom said.

Life360 has let go “hundreds� of its workers, Cederblom said, and is far smaller these days. Cox said it is averaging a little over $50,000 a month in claims now.

But the organization is having “conversations� with “stakeholders� about “commonsense� changes to the rule, said Miles Ross, a former campaign staffer for former U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt who has also lobbied in Jefferson City and whose Veritas Public Relations does some work for Life360.

Cederblom said he believed the change was just the state’s attempt to better target meal delivery rather than allowing every student, regardless of need, to get a meal and trigger reimbursement for Life360.

“We have a good relationship with them,� Cederblom said of state regulators. “In fact we have a better relationship now than ever before.�