For six many years, the Higher Los Angeles Zoo Assn., often known as GLAZA, has been the nonprofit fundraising arm of the Los Angeles Zoo.
Now it desires to interrupt up with the zoo.
GLAZA, with its skilled administrative employees and greater than two dozen trustees drawn from enterprise, philanthropy, the humanities and different fields, has raised tens of tens of millions through the years for the zoo. It additionally does advertising and oversees the intensive volunteer program.
The zoo, a metropolis company, is headed by a chief executive and director — at present Denise Verret — who solutions to the mayor and the Metropolis Council.
There have been rifts earlier than. GLAZA has walked away from contracts talks with the zoo earlier than however ultimately labored issues out. GLAZA trustees typically have sturdy concepts about how all these funds they labored arduous to lift — and contributed themselves — needs to be used. And, in fact, the chief govt of the zoo has particular concepts about tips on how to run the zoo. At the moment Verret can be serving as chair of the board of the Assn. of Zoos and Aquariums, the accrediting company for zoos principally in North America. Nobody on this combine is shy about expressing opinions.
However then the zoo, prompted by a need for what it referred to as extra transparency and equity, put out a request for proposals for the job (or moderately, jobs, plural) that GLAZA had been doing. Basically the zoo put GLAZA’s varied roles out to bid — and inspired GLAZA to compete for them.
That didn’t go over effectively. GLAZA officers, already upset by restrictions in its present settlement with the town, balked. In October, the chair of the trustees wrote a letter to Mayor Karen Bass telling her that GLAZA wouldn’t vie for a place and when its present settlement was up on the finish of June 2025, so, too, would the partnership with the zoo finish.
“Sending this letter to you brings us no pleasure,” wrote the chair, Erika Aronson Stern. She mentioned the truth that the town determined to take all of GLAZA’s obligations for the final 60 years “and carve them into six, distinct separate classes is a really clear signal that the Metropolis has no real interest in persevering with our overarching partnership.”
Then GLAZA went rogue — or so the town principally contends in a breach-of-contract lawsuit it filed towards GLAZA late final month.
GLAZA amended its articles of incorporation to permit it to distribute funds to “organizations aside from the Zoo if GLAZA winds down or dissolves” though GLAZA was solely ever alleged to be elevating funds for the L.A. Zoo, the lawsuit contends.
GLAZA has additionally refused to show over donor data, the swimsuit says. Extra alarming, based on the swimsuit, is that GLAZA claimed in a letter to the zoo that it might management the endowment for which it raised funds even after it ended its settlement with the town subsequent summer time. The zoo estimates GLAZA has practically $49 million beneath its management. Amongst different issues, the town desires at the least that a lot in damages.
And on high of all that, GLAZA “unilaterally” canceled the zoo’s signature annual fundraising gala, the Beastly Ball, for June 2025. The zoo says it anticipated to reap $975,000 from the occasion this 12 months.
GLAZA says in response that there was little enthusiasm for it this 12 months and that it wouldn’t be price placing on the occasion.
A number of the considerations outlined within the metropolis’s lawsuit had been acknowledged in a Nov. 8 letter from the town lawyer’s workplace to the GLAZA chair. In a Dec. 6 letter, a lawyer for GLAZA responded that “it was with nice unhappiness and shock when GLAZA acquired the Metropolis’s November 8 letter accusing GLAZA of a number of acts of wrongdoing, together with breach of fiduciary responsibility and monetary misappropriation.”
Amongst different issues, the affiliation argues that it’s conserving management of the restricted funds — which might be donated for particular reveals or tasks — solely to ensure they get used for the donors’ meant functions. The lawyer additionally contends that GLAZA is an impartial group, “not a division of the Metropolis or beneath Metropolis administration or management,” and that neither the town nor the zoo has management over the Endowment Fund. “Given the duties GLAZA owes to its donors, GLAZA will proceed to handle the Endowment Fund,” the lawyer wrote.
OK, this can be a battle between good individuals who all care in regards to the zoo. That’s comprehensible — to a degree. However on the finish of the day, the L.A. Zoo wants to have the ability to run the zoo as its managers see match. It is a very difficult time for zoo managers usually and this one specifically. Components of the zoo are outdated and wish overhaul — which a brand new Vision Plan is designed to deal with. Moreover, the zoo is beneath assault by opponents of elephant-keeping. And the zoo might want to deal with that sooner or later. Perhaps it’s time to stop keeping elephants in enclosures, on condition that within the wild they stroll miles and miles every day.
The underside line is that the zoo wants a devoted and sturdy fundraising crew for its future tasks. And that crew must be on board with what the zoo chief govt decides. For so long as they’re in battle, the zoo and the general public aren’t being served.
