It’s been nearly four years since the San Diego LGBT Community Center received a windfall donation and it’s still facing criticism for how the money is being spent — or not.
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The $19 million gift from the estate of Maurice Thimot and M. Rust Rawnsley, a Fallbrook couple who had wanted their money to help other gay seniors, was paid in three installments: $10 million in 2022, and $8.9 million in two distributions in the fall of 2024.
Since then, the donation has accrued nearly $1 million in interest for a total of $19.8 million. It’s the largest donation the Center has ever received; the first installment alone was more than the center’s annual budget.
To date, the center has spent more than $1.2 million of the donation and its accrued interest on senior housing and related services.
The center, which provides year-round support services, health care and community programming for thousands of San Diegans, said it has moved cautiously to understand the intentions of the donors and set up a process for fulfilling them. But a group of community members still say they want more transparency from the center over how the money is being used.
“If nothing is going on, then show us,” said Elaine Lewis, a former member of the Center’s senior advisory committee.
In a statement released this month, the center said that it completed “multiple legal reviews” of the trust and the donors’ intent over the last four years and confirmed that the donation can be used for “LGBTQ+ senior housing and related services, including the necessary whole-person services to help people find housing and remain housed.”
The center added that it is exploring several options for the funding — including rental assistance, case management services and increasing housing opportunities — to help serve its growing senior community.
The center declined to tell the San Diego Union-Tribune exactly what the $1.2 million has been spent on.
“Because seniors at the center access a range of services both within and beyond our Senior Services program, expenditures are integrated both within the Senior Services program and into our broader operations, and given the rapid growth in utilization, we are reporting them in aggregate at this stage,” said the center’s spokesperson Gus Hernandez.
Community members who have been raising alarms for months about the donation and the center’s communication around it say the recent update doesn’t provide much clarity.
“Did they take that money and put it in behavioral health? Did they put it in adult housing? I don’t know,” said Charles Kaminski, a longtime donor and client. “Why don’t they just share that information?”
Kaminski and other community members first publicly decried the center’s handling of the donation last July, after the nonprofit filed a notice warning of potential mass layoffs — a preemptive move, it said, in case it lost federal funding.
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The center ultimately did not lay anyone off, Hernandez told the Union-Tribune in February.
In sent to the board in late February and signed by more than 50 people — and later updated to be signed by more than 100 — the group expressed frustration over how the center has handled the donation and demanded clarity on the donors’ original intent and transparency over how the money is being spent thus far, including its accrued interest.
In its recent update, Dr. Shaun Randall Travers, who chairs the center’s board of directors, acknowledged that frustration and the center’s own “initial misunderstanding of the parameters around the allowable spending of the interest income generated by the fund.”
The center says it followed the guidance of legal, estate and tax experts, including retained general counsel and the firm’s estate attorneys, to understand how the donation and its accrued interest can be spent, and consulted the state Attorney General’s office to ensure its understanding was aligned with the donors’ intent.
“While we sought clarity on this point, we did not misspend any of those funds —nothing was outside of what our legal review and the Attorney General’s office have determined to be allowable expenditures,” Travers said in the statement.
The center says some of the delay in deploying the funds has to do with the nature of the gift. Thimot and Rawnsley did not share their plans with center personnel ahead of making the donation. The estate included the sale of more than 20 properties in the U.S. and Canada, which took place over more than two years.
Carol Sonnenberg, a nonprofit accountant, says it’s not unusual for nonprofits to consult the state’s Attorney General for large gifts. She said it’s possible that the Center wanted to seek greater guidance on the donation.
“It tells me something was unclear,” she said.
Taking time with a donation of this size is wise, she added, but she acknowledged that the public likely would have wanted to be updated earlier.
Sonnenberg also says that most nonprofit boards create an investment policy for large gifts. That becomes a roadmap for a nonprofit’s investments, including who is authorized to manage the investment. Creating these plans can take additional time, since they include building an investment committee, policies and selecting a manager.
The center does not have an investment policy for the donation. Hernandez said the center has had conversations with asset management firms and, once a firm is hired, will have further discussions about an investment committee and policy.
The center said it will provide additional updates on the donation, including how it’s being spent, through quarterly updates in its newsletter and through Senior Services Listening Sessions. The next listening session is planned for late summer, and the next quarterly newsletter update will be in September.
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