A youth soccer club in New Jersey and a Nordic ski association in Alaska say they're each missing more than $100,000 in registration fees due to lack of payment by Count Me In, a Bellevue company that provides online registration tools to thousands of non-profits and youth athletic programs across the country.

"It just makes me ill," said Diane Moxness, executive director of the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage. Moxness said in a phone interview that the 5,000-member ski group has not been paid since October and is owed $150,000 for online registrations tied to a junior ski program.

Meanwhile, an email obtained by TechFlash indicates that Count Me In laid off a significant portion of staff, including its president, in mid-October in an effort to cut the company's cash burn rate to make it more attractive to investors. The email from Terry Drayton, the former HomeGrocer.com Chief Executive who founded Count Me In seven years ago, details some of the cost-cutting measures instituted to save the company $60,000 to $65,000 per month.

The ski organization is contemplating legal action, a step that the Montclair United Soccer Club of New Jersey has already taken. Their suit, filed Nov. 10 in U.S. District Court in Seattle, alleges that the boys and girls soccer club is owed $142,000 for past donations and registration fees handled by Count Me In.

"What is surprising and so hard about this case is that the people using this service are youth groups, research consortiums -- people who are not big enough to host it on their own," said Marina Len, the attorney representing the 1,600-member Montclair soccer club. "We are talking small non-profit organizations -- pretty vulnerable groups."

Via text message, Count Me In's Drayton said he had no comment on the company's "problems." One of the Seattle area's best-known entrepreneurs, Drayton also runs the Bellevue technology consulting firm Ramp Group. (Correction: Drayton stepped down as a managing partner of the Ramp Group in May. He remains a minority shareholder in the firm.)

The Montclair soccer club and the Anchorage ski organization are now facing problems of their own. Moxness said they will continue to pay ski instructors this winter and groom 150 kilometers of trails, but they have been forced to dip into cash reserves to do so. The missing funds account for 16 percent of the organization's budget. In order to keep the junior ski program going, staffers have switched to the manual processing of registration forms for the more than 600 kids who participate each year.

"We are doing it the old-fashioned way," said Moxness, who pulled the plug on Count Me In last month after the funds weren't paid. They had used the Count Me In registration and credit card processing system for the past four years without incident, she said.

Over the past couple months since the problems came to light, Moxness said they have received just one email from Count Me In. The email indicated that the money would be on its way in a week. But that week passed and the cash never arrived, she said.

Len, the attorney representing the soccer club, also said it has been difficult to get responses from Count Me In. "They are not returning phone calls, not returning emails," she said.

In a note on the soccer club's Web site, board members said that the non-profit soccer club may have to cut expenses next year.

"In the short-term, the club will continue to operate without interruption, but 2009 will bring the potential need for cost-cutting measures, aggressive fundraising and other methods to ensure the Club’s financial stability," they write. "In the event that no further funds are recovered, we are studying all aspects of our program and budgets to ensure that we continue to provide service to the 1,600 children that take part in our Fall, Winter and Spring programs."

The ski group received some help from a bankruptcy attorney in Seattle who located the soccer club's Nov. 10 legal case. "That's when we knew it, we've got a big problem," Moxness said.

The Montclair soccer club's suit, which names Drayton, Count Me In and an affiliated company by the name of Arena Group, alleges that the soccer club's registration fees were co-mingled with other funds in order to pay for software and hardware at Count Me In as well as to pay off debts at the company.

The suit [PDF, 11 pages] references an Oct. 9 email from Drayton indicating that club donations and fees were commingled with other funds with the money used to pay debts to third parties. That same day, Count Me In paid the soccer club $67,326, leaving an outstanding balance of $142,000.

Among other things, the soccer club is suing for breach of contract; breach of good faith and fair dealing; and unfair and deceptive trade practices.

"There is a big question of where did this money go? Where did it go?" Len said. "It is terrible. These are kids soccer clubs."

Meanwhile, Moxness worries that other non-profit organizations may not be as lucky as her ski assocation, which had cash reserves in place. She wonders how many little leagues or other sports groups are still relying on Count Me In for their online registration system, one of the reasons she said it was important to discuss the issue in the press.

UPDATE: KIRO 7 in Seattle is now reporting that Eastlake Little League is missing $70,000 with president Todd Pladson frustrated that the baseball league signed up with Count Me In around the same time that the New Jersey soccer club was facing problems.