City College foundation to control accounts
By Don Clyde
The Guardsman
As City College is transferring foundation assets, records and accounts to The Foundation of City College, administrators are demanding a return of millions of faculty and department donated funds and are seeking a shift in the foundation’s priorities toward preventing class cuts and supporting student services.
City College is seeking the return of approximately $2.6 million donated to the foundation from faculty fundraising efforts and various City College departments, according to City College trustee Chris Jackson.
“The faculty does a lot of fundraising itself, sending the funds that they raise to the foundation. If the foundation is going to go private then it needs to send those funds back to the faculty and those departments,” John Rizzo, vice president of the City College board of trustees, said.
Madeline Mueller, chair of the music department and faculty foundation representative, sent an e-mail to faculty and department heads to identify those scholarships, department funds, programs and grants in foundation accounts, and direct them into City College trust funds.
The foundation raises money from private donors to support City College and offers scholarships as grants and awards, builds endowments and provides program support, according to the foundation Web site.
City College passed a Master Agreement in April 2009 which would have made the foundation — a private, nonprofit corporation — an auxiliary to the college, according to Rizzo. He said the foundation did not agree to the terms of the agreement and the foundation was seeking to remove oversight from the district side. The previous Master Agreement expired in June 2009.
“Since the agreement expired, we’ve been trying to untangle the management relationship and to basically just have the district give the foundation back its own records and its own accounts and assets, and we’re in the process of doing that now,” Peter Bagatelos, outside legal counsel for the foundation, said.
The foundation, under its own management, will be able to raise much larger donations, according to Bagatelos.
He said negative publicity surrounding charges against three former City College administrators regarding the alleged misuse of public funds, some through the foundation, frightened many donors and pushed the foundation’s decision to remove management from the college.
“Nobody should read into this that the foundation is somehow distancing itself, or changing its commitment or is less supportive of the college.” Bagatelos said. “The commitment is as strong as ever and the foundation really does care about the college, its students and its success, and it really does want to raise money to help.”
Jackson said the board of trustees wanted to see a structural shift in foundation fundraising toward program support and student services, rather than a focus on offering scholarships. He said the board of trustees and Chancellor Don Q. Griffin had been pressing for the change over the past two years.
“Our line of thinking is, what good is a scholarship if you don’t have a class to go to or if you can’t afford your books? We’re asking them to shift the entire mentality of how they fundraise, and it needs to be toward programmatic support, not towards scholarships,” Jackson said.
Bagatelos said the foundation has been open to program funding that would save classes.
“The chancellor and trustees have clearly said recently that they need funding for programs and classes. It’s crystal clear that there is nobody on the foundation board that resists that, or is saying we’re not going to do that, or we’re only raising money for scholarships. Nobody is saying that,” Bagatelos said.
Jackson also said the college was seeking a one-time donation of $3 million to $5 million lump sum from the foundation for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, as well as annual contributions of $3 million or a certain percentage of the foundations fundraising totals.
“The foundation is there for a rainy day, and right now it’s a rainy day, and right now we need the foundation,” Jackson said. “I don’t ever want to go through another budget where we have to cut summer school.”
There is also concern among faculty and trustees about the lack of transparency at the foundation without oversight from City College members.
“I don’t think we should pass a Master Agreement that doesn’t include some sort of ability to look at their books,” Rizzo said.
Bagatelos said a new Master Agreement would include periodic reports to the boards of trustees. The foundation must also undergo regular audits.
Public discussion about progress toward a new Master Agreement is expected at the next board of trustees meeting on Feb. 25 at 33 Gough St. in San Francisco.