The usual deadline for these reports is 5.5 months after the end of the fiscal year, which for the Foundation would be Nov 15, 2019. But no, the Foundation has already made 2 requests for 3 month extensions, which would have made the report due today. And now they are…
Posts tagged as “UO Foundation”
From the UO Foundation’s IRS 990 form, here: Where does their pay come from? When you give to UO to support our students, the money goes through the Foundation. They take 5% off the top. Do they charge Phil Knight the same percentage for the ~$250M Hayward Field? For the…
General Washington famously refused to accept a salary from the Continental Congress for his service. It’s less well known that he meticulously submitted every conceivable expense for reimbursement. While his war-time records are public, the UO Foundation claims that theirs are subject to a higher degree of privilege:
Budget Crisis? Not at UO’s very charitable foundation: $453K Paul Weinhold $469K Jay Namyet Back in 2015 the UO Foundation was paying Foundation CEO Paul Weinhold $345K and CIO Jay Namyet $340K. Three years later Weinhold is making $453K, and Namyet $469K.\ By my math that’s a 35% increase, or…
Lananna, who’s on the UO payroll for several hundred large, asked the Governor for $40M in state subsidies. He’s now got $10M. If you think that’s the end of it you haven’t read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, or Ken Goe’s update in the Oregonian here.
The Oregon DOJ held up Tracktown’s $10M grant from Travel Oregon for a full year by requiring that they provide a budget and a disclaimer that there were no legal issues, despite the FBI investigation. UO and Tracktown told the press that the Feds hadn’t contacted them. Lananna didn’t tell GC Kevin Reed?
The budget and reporting requirements are now hilariously out of date, and Lananna and Reilly’s admission is scrawled out in pen:
What could go wrong? Rumor has it that UO has now appointed an administrator to deal with it all. I wonder who is paying their salary.
The full grant of $10M in state funds is here: https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/OR212018_FE.pdf.
10/8/2018 – Tracktown / Oregon21 replaces Vin Lananna with Niels De Vos as head of IAAF 2021 championship
Summer time, so here’s a rerun. FWIW the FBI is now on it: 12/13/2015 update: Jeff Manning’s new report in the Oregonian, here, lays out what is known so far, and quotes the French Ministry of Justice: “The object is to determine the conditions under which the hosting decision was taken,”…
Technically it was Lane County Circuit Judge Lauren Holland who did this, acting at Paul Weinhold’s request. And presumably Weinhold was acting on CoD Dean Christoph Lindner‘s request, and UO General Counsel Kevin Reed went along with the money-grab because he hadn’t done his homework. Here’s what I’ve been able to…
Update: Court rules university foundations subject to state public records law
That would be in Illinois. The Student Press Law Association has the news here. An increasing number of state AG’s, courts, and laws now require the same – but not Oregon.
5/16/2017: They are just now releasing data from the FY that ended June 30, 2016. Donations fell from $136M to $103M. CEO Paul Weinhold’s compensation increased from $417K to $444K, overall compensation for the top 5 “key employees” has increased by about 30%. (The individual pay reported in the full 990 below is for the calendar year 2014-15, while the overall number is for the 2015-16 FY – meaning that Weinhold’s pay is probably actually up 30% or so over last year. )
[table id=2 /]
They report spending only $10K on lobbying (presumably for the IAAF) and lump academic and non-academic (sports) expenditures together.
President Schill’s office is telling the Emerald they do not have records on expenditures of foundation funds by his office:
The full IRS 990 for 2015-16 is here: http://www.uofoundation.org/s/1540/images/editor_documents/form_990/university_of_oregon_foundation_2015_990_public_disclosure_copy_website.pdf
For comparison, the 2014-15 990 is here: https://uomatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/uof_2014_public_disclosure_copy_combined_website.pdf
More below the break:
Under CEO Paul Weinhold the Foundation has cut way back on the information it shares with the public. This IRS report for July 2015-June 2016 will be 10.5 months old when it is released, and will include only the basic legally required information about the Foundation’s dealings with Vin Lananna’s Tracktown…
Diane Dietz has the good news here: The University of Oregon Foundation proved itself among the best in the country for shepherding university endowment cash in 2016 — and far better than Harvard or Princeton. The overall UO endowment grew 5.5 percent last year compared with an average loss of…
Rumor down at the faculty club is that the “timeline updates” for this “renovation”, as Duck Advocate Tobin Klinger puts it, are needed because the Mariota Sports Performance Center has depleted the world’s supply of Duck crap and neon-yellow paint:
Bloomberg has the comparatively good news here.
9/12/2016: The Emerald has the story here, and it’s on the UO Divest facebook page here. Back in April, Foundation CFO Jay Namyet was writing nastygrams like this to our students about their efforts to get the secretive UO Foundation to join the CO2 divestment movement:
Subject: RE: follow up meeting
Date: 2016/03/30 14:14
From: Jay Namyet <[email protected]>
To: [UO Divest undergraduate student]
[UO Divest undergraduate student],
No, indeed we did not. As I told you, based on your conduct, our dialogue was over. I hope in years to come you will appreciate a life’s lesson in this affair. That is what a university experience is all about.
Regards,
Jay
From: [UO Divest undergraduate student]
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2016 2:11 PM
To: Jay Namyet <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: follow up meeting
Hi Jay,
I know we didn’t end our last meeting on the best note, but we’d be happy to try and get a fresh start and meet again to discuss divestment sometime this term if you’re willing. Let me know.
Sincerely,
[UO Divest undergraduate student]
On 2015/04/09 18:30, Jay Namyet wrote:
Great, we are in agreement then, no more dialogue.
Sent from Outlook [1]
And
On 2015/04/09 10:05, Jay Namyet wrote:
[UO Divest undergraduate student],
When I asked you all why you were meeting with the president, the response I got was to learn his personal thoughts about this issue.
Turns out, not really.
As is indicated by [UO Divest undergraduate student] below in [pronoun redacted] email to the president’s office, and just as you three did with me this morning, this is about pressing your argument for divestment even though you have already received responses from all parties involved.
I offered an olive branch to you all last meeting and was the basis for today’s meeting. You all chose to ignore that and continue to beat the same drum of divestment.
I don’t appreciate being lied to about your intent of meeting with the president and I don’t appreciate your not honoring the reason for meeting today with me.
As a result, you have now lost the opportunity for further dialogue with me.
Jay
I’m mystified as to why Namyet didn’t want the students to talk to the President of their university, but whatever.
After a Johnson Hall sit-in, a free-speech controversy that sucked in FIRE, and some outraged letters from UO donors he and Weinhold came back to the table, and are now true believers:
Investment Management Statement
The University of Oregon Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization that exists for the sole purpose of supporting the academic mission of the university. We carry out our mission through prudent investment management, maximizing the value of private gifts for the benefit of the university and honoring donor intent.
Our strategy is to invest in a diverse set of smart, longer-term investments. This approach has created a well-diversified, progressive portfolio whose performance ranks in the top 10 percent nationally of all university endowments. Our philosophy and approach are guided by making prudent, socially and environmentally responsible investments that advance the financial objectives needed to support the university’s academic mission.
We are proud to lead the Pac-12 in adopting the first ever environmental, social and governance considerations to help inform our investment decisions. We believe that green energy initiatives, such as solar and wind power, sustainable forestry, and organic farming will steadily replace investments in carbon-based fuel sources, and we do not have any investments in coal. We intend to let those carbon-based investments –which were initiated many years ago– expire without renewal, ending our investment in carbon-based fuel sources.
Our responsibility is to balance financial support for today’s students, faculty and staff, with those of future generations at the university. We are currently providing more than $45 million each year in direct student, academic and operational funding to support the academic growth of our university and students. We are pleased that with our approach, we continue to successfully deliver on that mission.
Jay Namyet
Chief Investment Officer
4/22/2016: Students arrange marriage of Duck & CO2, mock secretive UO Foundation
Their final deadline is May 15th. The IRS 990 form is one of the few sources of information the secretive foundation will now reveal, other than a bare-bones state required independent audit. The Foundation used to also publish an annual report with data on how much money went to athletics, etc.…
The New York Times has the wonderful news here. Sorry, the sad truth is that Namyet and Weinhold are still fighting our students’ calls for divestment. So Wall Street is doing it for them. JH banner or no JH banner. Or, as the libertarians would say, Free Minds and Free Markets. Too bad the Foundation didn’t listen to…