Silicon Valley Community Fund Severance and Legal Costs Exceed $1.4 Million, Tax Forms Show

Tax documents released by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation reveal the financial costs of a toxic-workplace scandal that forced the departures of its chief executive, Emmett Carson, and top fundraiser, Mari Ellen Loijens.

The foundation, which is America’s largest community foundation, made a severance payment of $307,692 to Carson. Loijens received $77,875 in severance, the foundation disclosed on its tax return for 2018.

Both departed under pressure. Loijens resigned in April, the day after a scathing report in the Chronicle of Philanthropy accusing her of bullying her staff and making crude and offensive remarks at work.

Carson was placed on paid leave and resigned two months later after an outside law firm completed an investigation that substantiated complaints of bullying, harassment, and inappropriate sexual and racial comments by senior leaders.

“SVCF clearly failed to provide a safe and inclusive workplace environment for its employees,” the board said in the statement announcing Carson’s departure. “The board recognizes that this failure happened under our watch and that many current and former staff were deeply impacted.”

“The unacceptable workplace behavior that took place at SVCF as outlined in the investigative report should never have happened and there is no excuse for it,” the board said.

Greg Avis, a former board chair of the foundation who took over as interim CEO, said this week that it took months to heal the workplace. “The staff was wounded, and people were at odds with one another. Morale was really bad. There was high turnover” besides the problems caused by Carson and Loijens, said Avis.

Dan’l Lewin, the current chair of the board, declined to explain why the board agreed to pay severance to Carson and Loijens. “I have to let the 990 speak for itself,” Lewin said. “It is what it is.”

The foundation hired Nicole Taylor, an experienced nonprofit executive, as its new chief executive in December 2018. She was given a $550,000 incentive bonus to cover the costs of relocating from her home in Arizona to Silicon Valley.

In a little more than a year on the job, Taylor has brought in a new leadership team, hiring seven senior executives, and built productive relationships with Silicon Valley donors and nonprofits. “I think we are on a terrific path right now,” Lewin says.

Scandal Costs

Carson has gone to a job as chief operating officer of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Altogether, he received $752,444 in compensation from the foundation for less than four months of work in 2018. Loijens’s total compensation was $242,000, also for less than four months on the job.

The costs of the scandal to the foundation went beyond severance to include fees paid to law firms Thompson Hine and Boies Schiller Flexner, which were hired to investigate the allegations against Loijens and Carson. Boies Schiller Flexner was paid $1,068,839 for its work. Fees to Thomson Hine and Lee Caraher, a prominent consultant who was hired to help improve the foundation’s workplace culture, were not disclosed.

Had the workplace problems never occurred, the foundation could have used all of that money to help solve problems in Silicon Valley. While the community foundation has more than $7 billion in assets, most of those are held in donor-advised funds. It made $14.8 million in grants out of its own funds in 2018.