Surprise Shake up at the NCAA
New College Foundation Board Member Resigns, Cites Financial Concerns and Deteriorating Alum Relationship
Ben Brown (New College class of 2005), board member of the New College Foundation and the Chair of the New College Alumni Association, unexpectedly resigned from the Foundation Board on Tuesday, March 25.
It is remarkable that New College under the leadership of Richard Corcoran has seen such a dramatic decline in the relationship with its alum community since January 2023, including an estimated $29 million in cancelled donations.
In his resignation letter, Brown cited concerns with Foundation uses of donor-restricted monies, erosion of good governance, and a breakdown of relationships between New College and its alumni:
Governance:
“Without meaningful, independent participation in the governance of the Foundation, the Alumni Association is reduced to mere window-dressing— essentially a Potemkin village.”
“Because the President of the College can now remove any member of the Foundation’s Board at any time for any reason, the whole Foundation Board has something of this character.”
Financial concerns:
“More problematically, the Foundation never furnished the degree of information about its financial controls needed to assure the alumni donor community that the terms of past and future gifts would be honored.”
“The Foundation’s financial reporting is so opaque as to seem intentionally evasive, and repeated efforts to understand how the Foundation assumes and meets its obligations have been rebuffed.”
“Quite simply, the Foundation Board does not know how the Foundation spends its money, whether it is solvent (in the sense of having sufficient free and unrestricted funds to meet expenses), or whether it is fulfilling the wishes of donors. These issues culminate in a risk of liability – ethical and legal – for those on the Board and others who are aware of them”
Relationship with alum:
“The trust, optimism, and goodwill with which alumni approach the official Alumni Association today are at their lowest levels in the Association’s forty-five year existence.”
“Those who are not alienated by the policy agenda implied by the January, 2023 changes to the College’s Board of Trustees, nor by changes in the fundamental design of the academic program, are alienated by what they perceive as fiscal and operational mismanagement of the College.”
I have no solution to the (possibly completely unnecessary) fiscal and operational crisis of the College, nor to the practical problem of catastrophically low alumni support for the organization I am supposed to be managing.”
The board of the NCA would like to give Brown our sincere gratitude for his unwavering service to the New College community. He served on the Board during a tumultuous era with grace and diplomacy, and his hard work is appreciated.
The Novo Collegian Alliance invites New College alum who are interested in cultivating the New College alum community and preserving the values and history that have defined New College for decades, to join the NCA. We would love passionate alum members to help organize more alum networking events, building on the Alt Grad tradition and the 2024 Reunion - as well as the upcoming 2025 Reunion (more details forthcoming).