Donors Demand Documents From Student Journalist Who Wrote About Gift Agreement Gone Bad

A wealthy family who pledged $100 million in 2015 to create a global conflict-resolution institute at the University of Chicago are going after a student journalist who wrote about a lawsuit the family filed against the university seeking the return of money the family had paid toward the pledge.

The student journalist, Euirim Choi, wrote on his Twitter account on Wednesday that he has been served with a subpoena in federal court. The donors, brothers Thomas and Timothy Pearson, and their family are demanding that Choi release documents and emails related to an article he wrote last year.

The investigative story delved into the lawsuit the Pearson Family Members Foundation filed against the university in early 2018 for $22.9 million, the amount the Pearsons had then paid toward the $100 million pledge. The brothers had a number of complaints about how plans for the gift were being carried out and were also unhappy with the hiring of leaders and faculty at the institute.

The university denied all of the Pearsons’ allegations and later countersued the family.

Choi’s story included a copy of the gift agreement between the university and the Pearsons, as well as a copy of the lawsuit. Now the Pearsons want Choi to turn over the documents and his emails so the family can learn how he obtained them and who provided them.

Clarity in Gift Agreements

This latest development in the Pearson-University of Chicago gift saga illustrates why it is so important that nonprofits make clear to donors the limits of their influence and exactly what to expect from their gifts and the institutions they have showered with their largess.

At a time when some rich donors are seeking to exert more control over how nonprofits carry out the efforts their big gifts support, the latest move by the Pearsons also raises the question of whether some gifts and the wealthy donors who give them are worth the trouble.

This isn’t Thomas Pearson’s first lawsuit against a nonprofit to which he has donated. In 2006, he pledged $1.2 million to Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary to establish a scholarship in memory of his parents. In 2011, Pearson sued Garrett-Evangelical claiming the seminary was not meeting the conditions of the gift.