One Head Rolls, Another Teeters Over Botched Record Breaking Donation at FAMU
Well. Should I talk about this or not? I should because credibility is important. I told you last week about the mounting consternation over a much ballyhoo’d charitable contribution to my school. At the spring commencement ceremony, the President and his Vice President for Advancement, with the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees in blissful but unknowing attendance, suddenly announced the largest ever gift to an historically black college of university. The Chairperson was in attendance only because commencement is the biggest day of the year for students and parents. She knew nothing about the gift until tears welled up in her eyes as the President and donor announced the gift. Yesterday, at a special meeting of the Board of Trustees, she publicly and sternly rebuked the President’s for roping her into an unfortunate photo op.
Neither the Board of Trustees nor the University Foundation’s Board knew anything about the gift before its announcement right then and there. In front of a standing, cheering and weeping audience, they displayed a big check for $237,000,000. The President described the gift as “transformational,” and surely it would have been. For the university and for him personally, let’s just admit it. The gift was actually $300,000,000 according to the gift agreement. The Foundation is a signatory and the named donee, but the agreement became known to the Foundation Board — the donee signatory — only after a public records request. Not in Trustee or Foundation Board executive session.
Wow, who is the donor and where did he get all that money? Did they not know those are the first questions asked when a big gift is made whether by Melinda French Gates or anybody else. People want to know, inevitably. And donees ought to have the answers beforehand by a process called donor due diligence. Because even if its Melinda French Gates, charities gotta check it out lest they accept tainted dollars. That, apparently, was not done, though the President doubled down when people started asking questions and finding no answers. Somebody whispered the key phrase to him and at an emergency meeting of the Foundation Board, he asserted that “we’ve done our due diligence.” But he also added that “we have placed the gift on pause.” It was all over but the real crying by then.
At a special meeting of the Board Wednesday, the President offered his inevitable mea culpa. To his credit, or maybe not because he might shoulda seen through it all, he admitted to having been duped. He owned the fiasco, saying “I wanted this to be real and ignored the warning signs along the way.” Earlier that day, the VP for Advancement, Dr. Shawnta Friday-Stroud submitted, and the President accepted her resignation. And he said FAMU’s relationship with the donor has “ceased.” He probably doesn’t need to explain what that means exactly. The donor is nowhere to be found and his name has been “scrubbed” from the University’s social media. Friday-Stroud’s resignation includes her role as Executive Director of the Foundation, but she will retain her position as Dean of the School of Business and Industry (SBI). That school is one of FAMU’s most popular, along with its School of Pharmacy. My daughter graduated from SBI and now works for KPMG.
Credibility depends on a head or heads rolling, unfortunately. That’s just how it works. My own daughter’s credibility and mine as a faculty member depend on real consequences. Credibility is everything for nonprofits, don’t ya see. Several trustees complained – with sadness more than bitterness — that stakeholders and donors have reached out with incredulity. They are rightfully and with fiduciary solemnity demanding consequences and repercussions. There is, unfortunately, only one other head to lop off and we should expect that to happen before the summer is over. I might as well say what everybody is thinking. The President will likely “retire” if he has learned from this sad episode how better to read the writing on the wall.
This case will be studied in future nonprofit and tax exemption classes, I think.
darryll k. jones