The Bronx Community Foundation, Established to ‘Eradicate Inequity,’ Faces Turmoil

Concerns over finances, transparency and accountability at the organization have recently prompted high-level firings and resignations, partnership dissolutions, a rescinded state grant, and worries from major donors, according to interviews and documents obtained by New York Focus.

“Members of the Board and the staff asked again and again to expedite the distribution of grants but were rebuffed by the founders and remaining board,” wrote a trio of former board members in their October resignation letter, which aired numerous grievances with the Lewis brothers’ management of the foundation. “The opportunity to make meaningful, impactful change for The Bronx is slipping away.”

This summer, the board of directors fired the foundation’s first president and CEO, former New York City Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter. Its former chief fundraiser also left, according to her LinkedIn, as well as two additional board members.

None agreed to interviews with New York Focus.

Three foundation representatives did agree to an interview: Derrick Lewis; public relations consultant Henry Robins, of the firm BerlinRosen; and June Jimenez, the foundation’s interim CEO and a resident of the Washington D.C. area, addressed some of the criticisms aimed at the foundation but declined to respond to many of New York Focus’s questions.

“We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole and relitigate the past, nor respond to lies,” Lewis said. “Our goal is to really focus on continuing to serve our community.”

A Cascade of Critics

There’s no doubt that the Bronx could use a foundation like the one set up by the Lewis brothers. More than a quarter of its population lives below the poverty line, and the borough was hit especially hard by Covid, with death rates significantly higher than the rest of the city.

Earlier this year, Desmon Lewis said that the foundation’s goal is to “solve for each and every systemic challenge that the Bronx faces.”

“From digital equity to environmental issues, health issues — this is a multi-decade plan,” he said.

Derrick chairs the board. Desmon is a board member and the organization’s treasurer. The twin brothers have been described as “visionaries” for their charitable work. Both draw no salary from the foundation.

By any measure, the pair has been successful at fundraising: Donors include philanthropic powerhouses such as the Goldman Sachs Foundation and the personal foundation of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and his wife, Judith Kent. They’ve been awarded or pledged millions of dollars in grants from the US Congress, the New York state legislature, and the New York City Council.

Yet the Lewis brothers’ tight grip over the nonprofit and their alleged reluctance to spend its funds has prompted a cascade of criticism behind closed doors.

“Time and again, it was asked by members of the board and staff for one of the brothers to step down from their position or to share a single vote,” the three former board members wrote in their resignation letter. “It is essential to remember that this is not a family Foundation; rather this is The Bronx Community Foundation.”

The former board members have strong ties to the foundation: Michael Blake is a former New York assemblymember who has worked with the foundation for several years; Carlos Moreno was an original board member; and Jason Duchin is the co-executive director of DreamYard, a Bronx nonprofit that has donated almost $800,000 to the Lewis brothers’ charity.

‘Concern of Financial Mismanagement’

A highly publicized Covid relief effort in 2020 catapulted the foundation from obscurity to prominence, helping it generate more than $4.6 million in donations and grants that year after raising just $3,500 the year before.

But in a foreshadowing of things to come, most of those funds didn’t get out the door. The foundation gave out $916,000 in grants that year and ended 2020 with over $3.6 million in net assets. Those assets ballooned to $5.9 million by the end of 2023.

Alexandra Graddy-Reed, a professor at the University of Southern California who studies nonprofit finances, said that the foundation’s high overhead spending suggests “concern of financial mismanagement,” noting high spending on temp employees and Porter’s $300,000 salary as particularly questionable.

A review of the foundation’s reports found it spent $3.8 million on overhead expenses, including salaries and fundraising fees, from 2019–2023 — including over $668,000 on consultants. That’s significantly higher than the total amount that it gave out in grants.

Graddy-Reed said the amount of grants awarded by the foundation “does feel on the low end given the large amount they received early on.”

This is a big deal in the nonprofit world because independent evaluators can lower a charity’s rating when they see it spending too much on overhead and not enough toward its mission — which they see as evidence that a charity is not working efficiently.

Greg Witkowski, a senior lecturer at Columbia University who researches nonprofits, praised the foundation’s 2023 launch of a “participatory” grant program, a model that incorporates feedback from the targets of philanthropy, but said “it is disappointing that these nonprofits only received $25,000 apiece when so much money went to consulting.”

Jamie Levine Daniel, a professor at New York University who studies nonprofit management, said that the foundation’s financial status is “not necessarily a red flag in itself,” but that “it does sound like the stakeholders have reason to raise questions.”

Several dozen nonprofit leaders and Bronxites accused the foundation in a November 4 open letter of cannibalizing funding sources that other Bronx groups rely on.

“The Bronx Community Foundation has taken major philanthropic and public funds out of the hands of local grassroots organizations,” wrote the authors, including Sandra Lobo, the executive director of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, and Kavita Pawria-Sanchez, the CEO and executive director of CannaBronx.

The open letter called for the resignation and replacement of the entire board of directors, including the Lewis brothers, in the face of “silence or evasion regarding the management, allocation, and deployment of these funds.”

Additionally, the letter stated that the foundation canceled two separate rounds of grants this year, despite a June gala that raised $836,000, according to records shared with New York Focus.

Lewis declined to comment on this allegation and said that the board “really didn’t have any involvement or engagement in the decision of expenses,” and that the spending “was a decision by prior leadership,” meaning Porter.

The charity spent nearly $140,000 since 2022 to retain Bronx-based lobbying firm London House, which has close ties to Bronx Democratic Party chair and state Senator Jamaal Bailey. More than $10,000 of those funds went toward hotels and other expenses associated with the firm’s trips to an annual New York politics convention in Puerto Rico.

When asked why the foundation sponsored that activity, Lewis said, “That was a decision made by prior leadership.”

Not everyone within the foundation’s orbit is critical. A representative of YUCA Arts, which provides programming for teenagers, spoke positively about receiving a $25,000 grant from the foundation in 2021.

“The grant was a real boon for keeping our classes going and keeping teaching artists in the program,” said executive director William Acevedo. “The resources helped us get through that very tenuous time coming off of Covid.”

Lingering Questions

The firing of Porter, the former CEO, along with the resignations of multiple board members have shaken donor confidence in the foundation.

A philanthropist told New York Focus that they began supporting the foundation when it hired Porter, a longtime Bronxite and career educator, because it signaled that the organization was transitioning from a personal project of the Lewis brothers to a Bronx institution.

But they stopped donating when they found out that Porter had been fired, they said. New York Focus granted the philanthropist anonymity due to their policy of never commenting to the press about their activities.

Then there’s the government money.

An employee of Empire State Development, the state’s principal economic development agency, wrote Derrick Lewis a letter on November 19. It said the agency would not be moving forward with a planned $45,000 grant, citing concerns over “turnover in the organization’s leadership” and “complaints about the organization’s financial and conflict-of-interest protocols.”

Elected officials have been a major source of foundation funding, too: In 2022, US House Representative Adriano Espaillat secured a $650,000 federal grant for the foundation’s Digital Equity Coalition initiative, which Espaillat’s office called “a community-led and owned model to build broadband infrastructure.” Another $235,000 in private donations went toward the digital coalition, as well.

It’s not clear what the coalition actually does.

Its page on the foundation’s website contains no information about current projects. In 2022, Desmon said the initiative had distributed 3,000 personal computers and portable hotspots to help Bronxites access the internet. The foundation’s public tax documents show that it has spent almost $50,000 through 2023 to donate laptops and iPads and given out $160,000 in grants for “digital literacy” and “digital equity” programming.

New York Focus emailed several dozen individuals who were recently invited to a virtual meeting of the Digital Equity Coalition and asked them about their work with the initiative. Eleven individuals responded, and all but one said they or their organizations were not engaged in any projects with the coalition, or in some cases never were.

Lewis declined to provide any details about the digital coalition’s current work or the status of the Espaillat grant. “As a part of the transition, we’re still discovering the work of the Digital Equity Coalition,” he said.

This isn’t the only murky foundation initiative to have received a major federal grant. Earlier this year, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer announced $1.5 million in funding for the foundation’s “Community Workforce Innovation & Development Center,” which is not mentioned anywhere on the Bronx Community Foundation website.

A spokesperson for Gillibrand referred questions about the grant to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is administering the money. The department referred New York Focus back to the Bronx foundation, and Lewis declined to comment on the status of this grant or provide any details about the workforce development center.

The foundation was also awarded $320,000 in grants from New York City Council members and $100,000 from the state Assembly.

It’s unclear what that money went toward.