June 10, 2004 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The University of Georgia, in Athens, plans to establish a new fund-raising organization after taking the unusual step of terminating its decades-old relationship with the University of Georgia Foundation.
The primary point of dispute between the university and its fund-raising arm, which holds $400-million in assets, involved the university’s president, Michael F. Adams. Members of the University of Georgia Foundation’s board, angered by Mr. Adams’s decision to fire a popular athletic director last year, were trying, among other things, to suspend the fund’s contribution to his compensation package. The foundation covers more than half of Mr. Adams’s annual compensation of $559,468.
The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, which controls the state’s public colleges, voted unanimously last month to have the University of Georgia split from the University of Georgia Foundation, saying a year’s worth of negotiations with the foundation’s Board of Trustees had failed to produce results.
“The board felt we had reached a stalemate on a litany of issues,” according to Arlethia Perry-Johnson, spokeswoman for the Board of Regents. She said the separation will become final in August, according to the terms of a 1996 agreement between the two institutions.
Lynda Courts, chairwoman of the fund’s Board of Trustees, and Allan Barber, interim executive director of the fund, did not return phone calls before The Chronicle’s deadline.
In a letter posted on the university’s Web site, Mr. Adams said he expected the fund-raising group to continue to finance university programs and scholarships. “I believe the foundation will treat these funds with appropriate fiduciary care so that they will continue to flow to the specific purposes for which they were designated,” he said.
Despite this expectation, the Board of Regents directed Mr. Adams to establish a new entity to raise money for the university.
“The creation of a successor entity to the UGA Foundation is a complex undertaking, but we expect it will be functioning within a matter of weeks,” Mr. Adams said.
