You can find a recap of The Endowment's meeting and more info here.
Ben Schachtman: Ok, Kelly, this week The Endowment held a public hearing, offering updates on recent grants and holding a Q&A session. This is, we’ll note, a legal requirement of The Endowment’s creation, designed to promote transparency.
Kelly Kenoyer: Right, since the Endowment meets in private, this is a chance for the public to hear from leadership and ask questions – but also to offer thanks.
BS: That’s right, we heard high praise from top public school officials and the head of the Chamber of Commerce. But the actual questions are often the highlight of the meeting — one of them, from city councilwoman JC Lyle, was actually about our reporting.
Related: Is The Endowment quietly turning down nonprofits if the city and county won't help fund grants?
KK: Listeners might remember we reported last month that we were hearing that, for some projects, the Endowment was saying it would only provide funding if the City of Wilmington and New Hanover County also came to the table. One example was the Living Hope Day Center — they heard that explicitly, and we mentioned hearing similar things from a number of other nonprofits. We also referenced the Greenville Loop park, where the city and county did collaborate and receive funding.
BS: So Lyle asked directly if this was a requirement — although she framed it as a general requirement.
KK: Right, and Endowment CEO Sophie Dagenais said repeatedly that was absolutely not true. They’re not requiring city and county cooperation as a prerequisite for their grants.
BS: So, it’s our turn to clarify, our reporting was that this had been the case, in behind-the-scenes negotiations, for some grants — certainly not all. I’ll also note that, in her response to Lyle, Degenais pointed to the Endowment’s complete transparency — but, at the same time, they declined an interview with us on this, among other stories, and said they wouldn’t answer questions about prospective grantees.
KK: Another question came from Cierra Washington, who has for years been leading the effort to bring a co-op grocery store to the Northside. She basically asked The Endowment to go on the record with the full reason the co-op grant was cancelled and hasn’t been revisited.
BS: Part of the answer, which we’d heard on background before but never directly from The Endowment, was that the IRS told them a grocery store could not be a charitable project for a foundation.
KK: And Washington pushed back on that a little, noting that there were other communities where foundations had found workarounds — like funding the building but not the operation, which is kind of what the Northside co-op wants. And Dagenais acknowledged that there actually is a way The Endowment could do that.
BS: That’s right — what she called a mission-related investment. Interestingly, the issue had come up independently earlier in the evening, and Dagenais explained that it’s basically an investment from the corpus or principal, not a grant funded by investment returns. So, basically, it could look like tapping $6 million from the nearly $1.8 billion fund that powers The Endowment.
KK: Dagenais said that The Endowment is only five years into its existence, but that, while she didn’t want to get ahead of her board, she hoped they would look at that kind of investment in the future — so that’s something we’ll have to keep an eye on.
BS: Ok, let’s touch on one more question — this one came from Suzanne Wertman, the director of the recently formed Coastal journalism Hub. She kind of came in hot, telling the Endowment they needed to quote “do better.”
KK: She offered some criticisms, saying The Endowment didn’t need consultants or landscape analyses and could instead rely on existing reporting and the expertise of community health workers, for example. She also criticized The Endowment’s lack of transparency with the media, describing a quote "firewall" between the foundation and the press – and alluding to the fact that The Endowment had decided not to do media interviews as part of the public meeting as they had in the past.
BS: Endowment board chair Shannon Winslow pushed back on that a little, saying that fiduciary responsibility requires them to be very methodical and data-driven. She also argued that The Endowment’s meetings were a core part of their transparency and that reporters are also citizens, who were invited.
KK: That’s true, and in fact our colleague at Port City Daily Brenna Flanagan did get to ask a follow-up question about the co-op. But, at the same time, getting the chance to ask a single question in a two-hour meeting isn’t exactly the same as a proper interview.
BS: Yeah, over the last year, we’ve gone from half-hour one-on-ones, to 15 minutes for all press, to declining our multiple interview requests in the past few months.
KK: But the media’s concerns aside, there was a lot of positive feedback this week, especially for the recently announced $116-million grant to help support school bond projects. There’s been questions about that, as well, but I think overall the reception has been positive.
BS: As usual with The Endowment, it’s a complicated story. But for now, Kelly, that’s for being here.
KK: Happy to do it.
