Your organization's work and the thing that holds it are two different assets. The lease, the charter, the job title, the grant process: each is a decision somebody made once, and each can be remade.
Three organizations remade one in the past few months: a lease became a deed, a grant process moved to a community foundation, and a school moved out of a failing company and into a nonprofit.
This week:
- An ambulance corps that spent thirty-seven years on leased land and four years getting a deed.
- An arts commission, under a state audit, that handed its grant process to a community foundation.
- A school that outlived its owner by moving into a nonprofit.
- The two dates a year-end appeal has to carry.
- A texting rule the FCC is rewriting this week.
- Two AI prompts: what you hold at someone else's pleasure, and the function somebody else already runs.
- A board exercise on notice periods. And
- A note on the trailer.
A Brooklyn Ambulance Corps Worked From a Trailer on a Month-to-Month Lease. After Thirty-Seven Years on City Land, It Holds the Deed.
The Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps was founded in 1988 by two New York City EMS veterans, James "Rocky" Robinson and Joe Perez, who started, the city says, with a personal car and an abandoned lot in central Brooklyn. It is a 501(c)(3). Its Form 990 for 2025 shows $493,214 in revenue, $373,273 in expenses and $213,901 in net assets.
With that, it trains neighbors in CPR and first aid and responds to more than 2,000 emergency calls a year, by its own count, which the city repeats.
Here is the part that should sound familiar. The corps never owned the ground under it. The city did; the corps has leased the site since 1989, and until last month it held it month to month. For roughly the last fifteen years it worked out of a double-wide trailer. "During the winter months, when the snow is on the roof, we have to get up there and shovel that off because the weight of the snow creates leaks," its chief of operations, James Pointer, told News 12.
A month-to-month lease is not a home. It is permission, renewable at the other party's convenience, and the other party was a city whose charter generally requires it to sell property for the highest price, at auction or by sealed bid.
On August 26, 2026, the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services announced it had conveyed three adjacent lots near 727 Greene Avenue to the corps outright. "We now have the deed to the land," BSVAC's president, Antoine Robinson, told News 12 last week.
How a nonprofit with $213,901 in net assets got a deed from New York City is the story, and it did not happen with one ask.
The city could not simply give the land away; it needed a state law. That came from a special state bill, S7223, sponsored by State Senator Roxanne Persaud with Assemblymember Stefani Zinerman carrying the Assembly version. The legislative record shows it introduced April 4, 2025, passed the Senate 59 to 0 on June 13, passed the Assembly 136 to 9 three days later, and signed December 5, 2025, as Chapter 608. Its one-sentence purpose: authorize the city to transfer the land "at no cost." It was the second try. The same two legislators had introduced the transfer in 2023, and it died in committee.
The bill, as posted, does not hand the corps a blank check. The land is to be used primarily for operating a volunteer ambulance service, and if it is not, it goes back to the city.
There is also state money to replace the trailer: $6 million, which the 2024–25 state budget included for "a new multi-service health and wellness center" that, in Zinerman's May 2024 announcement, the corps would share with a violence-interruption group and a birthing center. News 12 describes the building as a three-story ambulance and training center due in December 2028; the city's release names a state CREST grant and gives no figure.
The effort began in 2022, the city says. Four years, two legislators, two tries, one deed.
Here is what makes this replicable, and it is not the legislation.
Your organization is standing on something. Maybe a month-to-month lease from a city, a county or a church. Maybe a memorandum of understanding that renews by silence. Maybe a program that exists because one agency has renewed a contract every June for twelve years. You have probably stopped seeing it, the way the corps stopped seeing the trailer.
Write it down. Name each arrangement your work depends on and who can end it, on how much notice. Then pick the one that would hurt most and find out what permanence would take. For public land, it often takes a law or an ordinance, because public owners generally cannot give property away on their own say-so. That means a legislator, and legislators like ribbon-cuttings.
One honest limit on the evidence. The land transfer, the bill and the 2024 budget announcement are public record; the trailer, the December 2028 date and the building's description rest on one newsroom, News 12; the call volume is the corps' own figure; and the corps has posted no statement of its own.
Sources: NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services, "DCAS Completes Land Transfer to Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Securing Permanent Home for Community Emergency Services," August 26, 2026; Edric Robinson, "Bed-Stuy Volunteer Ambulance Corps plans to build 3-story facility," News 12 Brooklyn, September 24, 2026; New York State Senate, Bill S7223 (2025), Chapter 608; New York State Assembly, Bill A5615 (2025); New York State Senate, Bill S6792 (2023); New York State Assembly, Assemblymember Zinerman press release on the $6 million allocation, May 10, 2024; Bedford Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Form 990 filings, ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer
A St. Louis Arts Funder Under State Audit Is Eliminating Its Own CEO Job and Handing Grant Reviews to a Community Foundation
The Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis has funded artists and arts organizations since 1985 with a share of the region's hotel and motel tax. Fifteen commissioners, appointed by the Mayor and the County Executive, govern it. It files a Form 990 as a 501(c)(3); its 2024 budget was $13.4 million, according to St. Louis Public Radio.
In March 2026 the Missouri State Auditor, Scott Fitzpatrick, opened an audit after a whistleblower complaint. He named three concerns: administrative spending above the statutory limit, bonuses the state constitution may not allow, and large grants with no follow-up. Findings are expected late this year or early next. The commission said it was "confident the findings from the state will mirror the success we have come to expect at the local level," where it is audited annually. By then it had already stopped taking new grant applications for 2026, citing "continuing financial volatility."
That is the pressure. Here is the decision.
On September 25 the commission announced a set of changes it said were meant "to reduce expenses and direct even more funding" to grantees. It has contracted with the St. Louis Community Foundation to administer its annual grantmaking. The foundation's staff will evaluate and score applications; the commissioners keep the funding decisions. The commission will sunset or outsource the programs it ran directly. Its headcount is down more than 40 percent since 2024, and the president and CEO position ends when Vanessa Cooksey, who has held it since 2020, leaves at year-end.
The board chair, Tino Ochoa, put the reasoning in one sentence: "The world RAC was built for in 1985 is not the world we work in today, and an institution that exists to promote, foster, and encourage the arts has to be willing to change in order to protect them."
The commission's release gives grants to arts organizations of $1.6 million in 2023 and $3.2 million in 2025, and projects $5.3 million across all categories in 2026. The year it skips matters: in 2024, across all categories and with federal pandemic relief money, it awarded more than $9.6 million. Treat the trend as the commission's framing and the 2026 figure as a plan.
Here is why the community foundation is the interesting move, and not the layoffs.
A grant process is a process. Kelvin Adams, who runs the St. Louis Community Foundation, and whose foundation is now the commission's paid contractor, said so plainly: "We do this for all kinds of grants, and we don't have 'experts' in all of those spaces. What we have is expertise in the process of reviewing and scoring and doing the reference checks and all those kinds of things." The foundation dates to 1915.
The commission kept the part that is its own, which is deciding, and gave away the part that is generic, which is processing.
Here is what makes this replicable. You are not a public funder, but you run functions the same way: a payroll you process yourself, a grants calendar one person tracks, a volunteer background-check workflow, a donor database only the development director understands. Some of that is your mission. Much of it is a process that a community foundation, a state association, a fiscal sponsor or a shared-services group may already run for a fee. Price it against the staff hours.
Ask one question of each function this fall: is this ours because it has to be, or because it always was? The commission's answer came under a state audit and, in its own words, "increased public scrutiny." Yours can come from a board meeting.
One honest limit on the evidence. The audit is open and its findings are not public; St. Louis Public Radio is the one newsroom that has reported the September changes independently; the headcount and grant figures are the commission's own, and the 2026 figure is a projection.
Sources: Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, "RAC Announces Comprehensive Changes to Protect Public Funding for the Arts," September 25, 2026; Jeremy D. Goodwin, "The Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis to scale back — but grants will continue," St. Louis Public Radio, September 25, 2026; Jeremy D. Goodwin, "Missouri auditor to probe St. Louis arts funder after whistleblower complaint," St. Louis Public Radio, March 3, 2026; Regional Arts Commission, "2025 Grants for Organizations"; Jeremy D. Goodwin, St. Louis Public Radio, March 19, 2026; Missouri State Auditor, audit announcement, March 3, 2026; Regional Arts Commission, 2024 grants release; St. Louis American, "RAC restructures operations to increase arts funding across St. Louis region, eliminates CEO role," September 25, 2026
A Boston School Collapsed Around Its Owner. The Parents Did Not Save the Company. They Built a Nonprofit to Reopen the School.
The Croft School was a private school in Boston's South End, with campuses in Jamaica Plain and Providence, operated by a for-profit company, Oxford Street Education LLC. Tuition was about $34,000 a year, GBH reports.
In March 2026 its board suspended the founder, Scott Given, after he indicated he had kept two sets of books, the board said, and had taken on debt, which the board put at about $13 million, far beyond what he had disclosed to it. On June 30 the Massachusetts Securities Division charged him with fraud in a civil administrative complaint; federal prosecutors, the SEC and Boston police are also investigating, and no criminal charges have been reported. The company was insolvent; three prospective buyers withdrew; on June 5 it filed for Chapter 7 liquidation, listing $12.2 million in debt, the Globe reported.
That is the ordinary ending. The Jamaica Plain and Providence campuses found no buyer.
The South End parents did something else. In the spring they formed a nonprofit, South End Village Academy Incorporated, which describes itself as a registered 501(c)(3). They raised more than $1.2 million, lent more than $500,000 of it to the company to keep the school open through June 12, and took, in return, a contractual option to buy the South End school's assets. When the closure was announced in May, they exercised it.
The school was set to reopen on September 8 at the same address, 1525 Washington Street, under the new name, GBH reported the week before: 85 students enrolled, down from 120; a $3 million operating budget; a $1 million founding pledge; a stated goal of financial aid for 40 percent of students. The head of school is Cristina Lopez, who ran Croft's South End campus; the incoming board chair is Ming Min Hui, who is stepping down this fall as executive director of Boston Ballet.
"No single person can be credited with the entire story," Hui told GBH.
Now, the objection you are already forming. A $34,000-a-year private school is not the world many readers work in, and it is not mine. The mechanism is.
Think about what the parents did and did not do. They did lend the founder's company money, but only in exchange for a written option on the school's assets. They did not buy the company and its liabilities. They created a new legal person, with a board answerable to them, and moved the work into it: the head of the South End campus, the address, most of the students. Money lent to the old container, the founder's company, kept the doors open through June 12 and, as far as the record shows, nothing after that. Money given to the new one, the nonprofit, built the school that was set to open in September.
The difference between the two is the legal form. A for-profit company held the school, and one man kept its books. A nonprofit holds it for a board that cannot own it.
Here is what makes this replicable. Somewhere near you, a program you care about is held by the wrong container: a fiscal sponsor that has lost interest, a founder's LLC, a church committee, a government office that funds it year to year and could not be less interested in its survival. The reflex is to prop up the container. The better question is whether the work should move.
Moving it takes what the parents had: a new entity, a board willing to sign, a written option on the assets, and enough money to keep the lights on during the handoff. None of that is exotic. The parents did it in one spring.
One honest limit on the evidence. GBH is the one newsroom that reported the reopening in detail, and it did so six days before the first day of school; no report since has confirmed the opening. The budget, pledge and enrollment figures are the school's own. Whether the spring loans to the old company were ever repaid is not public.
Sources: Marilyn Schairer, "A new beginning for the former Croft School in Boston's South End," GBH, September 2, 2026; Diane Adame, "Parents keep fighting to keep Croft School open even after board announces closure," GBH, May 11, 2026; Boston Globe, "Croft Schools in Jamaica Plain, Providence fail to attract buyers, board says," June 2, 2026; Boston Globe, "Croft School founder issues an apology, as bankruptcy filing reveals $12.2 million in debt," June 5, 2026; Steph Solis, "What we know about The Croft School's financial troubles," Axios Boston, March 18, 2026; Massachusetts Securities Division, Docket No. E-2026-0666, administrative complaint, June 30, 2026; South End Village Academy
Put Two Dates in Your Year-End Appeal: December 1 for Donor-Advised Funds, December 31 for IRA Gifts
Two kinds of year-end gifts arrive late because nobody told the donor the date.
Donor-advised funds first. The money legally belongs to the sponsor (Schwab, Fidelity, a community foundation); the donor recommends the grants. Schwab's DAFgiving360 asks donors to "submit grant recommendations by December 1, 2026" so the money reaches charities before year-end; Vanguard Charitable asks for December 7; Fidelity Charitable publishes no grant date. A recommendation made December 20 may reach you in January.
Then IRA gifts. A donor aged 70½ or older can send money straight from an IRA to you and keep it out of taxable income, up to $111,000 for 2026, if the money moves by December 31.
Action: Three steps. First, add one paragraph to the November appeal naming December 1 for donor-advised fund grants and December 31, up to $111,000, for IRA gifts. Second, tell your finance person to log each check from an IRA custodian (the bank or brokerage holding the account) under the donor's name and send a receipt stating the amount and that the donor received nothing in return. Third, put your legal name and EIN (federal tax ID) on the donate page; a donor-advised fund pays only a charity it can identify.
ROI: A gift that lands in January is next year's revenue and this year's missed goal.
Time: 1 hour.
Sources: DAFgiving360, "Year-end giving deadlines"; Vanguard Charitable, "Year-end giving"; IRS, "Donor-advised funds"; Fidelity Charitable, "Charitable year-end tax deadlines"; IRS Notice 2025-67, "2026 Amounts Relating to Retirement Plans and IRAs"
Make Sure One "STOP" Reaches Every System That Texts Your Supporters
If your organization sends automated texts or prerecorded calls on a supporter's consent, a federal rule already in force says a reply of "stop," "quit," "cancel" or similar words is a valid opt-out, and you have ten business days to honor it. It does not cover every text; whether your platform counts is a question for your vendor.
What is moving: a rule that would make one STOP end every kind of message, due January 31, 2027. The FCC is scheduled to vote on September 30, the day this issue arrives, on a draft that would drop it for informational messages and let senders name the opt-out methods they accept.
The statute sets damages at $500 per message or actual loss, whichever is greater, and a court may triple them if the violation was willful.
Action: Three steps. First, list every platform that texts or auto-calls for you (donor database, texting tool, event app, payment processor). Second, get each vendor to confirm in writing that a STOP received by one system blocks that number in all of them within ten business days. Third, hold any rewrite of your opt-out reply until the FCC publishes its final rule.
ROI: One supporter with a lawyer is $500 a message.
Time: 2 hours.
Sources: FCC, Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, Order DA 26-12, January 6, 2026; Covington & Burling, "FCC Releases Draft Rules and Proposals on TCPA Consent Revocation," Inside Global Tech, September 11, 2026; Greenberg Traurig, "FCC Moves to Rewrite TCPA Consent and Opt-Out Framework," September 2026; FCC, Report and Order FCC 24-24, 89 Fed. Reg. 15756 (March 5, 2024); 47 CFR § 64.1200(a)(10)–(12); 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(3)
List Everything You Hold at Someone Else's Pleasure
You are a real-estate and contracts attorney advising a small nonprofit, and you are going to help me inventory every arrangement my organization depends on that another party can end. Ask me, one at a time, and wait for each answer: where we operate and under what document (lease, license, verbal permission, month-to-month, a letter); who owns each vehicle, piece of equipment or database we use and on what terms; every government or foundation contract that renews annually and what the renewal depends on; every partnership or referral relationship that exists without a signed agreement; every fiscal-sponsorship, shared-staff or shared-space arrangement; and any program that exists because one person at another organization wants it to. Then build a table with one row per arrangement and five columns: what it is, who can end it, how much notice we would get, what we would do on day one if it ended, and what a permanent version would look like (a multi-year lease, a deed, a signed MOU, a multi-year contract). Rank the rows by how badly the ending would hurt. For the top three, draft the first email I would send to the other party asking to make it permanent, and tell me who else (a legislator, a funder, a landlord's board) might have to say yes. Mark anything you had to guess.
What makes it worth trying: the Brooklyn ambulance corps in the first story spent thirty-seven years on land it leased from the city, lately month to month, and it took two tries and four years to change that. The prompt produces the list few organizations have written and the first email asking to make one arrangement permanent.
Find the Function Somebody Else Already Runs
You are an operations consultant who has spent twenty years helping small nonprofits decide what to run themselves and what to hand to a partner. I am going to list every administrative function my organization performs, with roughly how many staff hours a month each takes and who does it: payroll and benefits, bookkeeping and audit preparation, grant application review if we make grants, grant reporting if we receive them, volunteer screening and background checks, donor database maintenance, IT and password management, insurance renewals, state charitable registrations, and anything else I add. For each one, tell me three things: whether it is part of our mission or a process any competent organization could run; which kind of partner in a typical mid-sized American city already runs it at scale (a community foundation, a state nonprofit association, a fiscal sponsor, a shared-services cooperative, a payroll firm, a managed IT provider) and roughly what they charge; and what we would keep for ourselves if we handed off the processing but not the decisions. End with a table ranked by hours saved per dollar, and one paragraph on the function you would hand off first and why.
What makes it worth trying: the St. Louis arts commission in the second story kept the decisions and handed the scoring, intake and reference checks to a foundation that does that work across many kinds of grants. The prompt turns "we have always done it ourselves" into a list of what to keep doing yourself and what to hand off, with prices next to each.
The Notice-Period Table — A 30-Minute Board Exercise
What it is for. The ambulance corps in the first story leased its site for thirty-seven years, lately on a month's notice, and nobody fixed that until somebody decided the leaking trailer it worked from was a problem. This exercise finds the arrangements your organization holds at another party's pleasure and picks one to make permanent. (Issue #34's Asset Dependency Map scored assets on impact and control. This asks what that map did not: on how many days' notice, and what you would do on day one.)
What you need. A one-page list, prepared in advance by the executive director, of every arrangement the organization depends on that someone else can end: leases and licenses, government and foundation contracts, unsigned partnerships, shared staff or space, fiscal sponsorships, and the one program that exists because a particular person somewhere else wants it to. Fifteen minutes to prepare.
How to run it (30 minutes).
- Read the list aloud (5 minutes). For each arrangement: what it is, who can end it, and the notice period. Where the answer is "we don't know," write that down; it is the entry to underline.
- Score the damage (7 minutes). For each row, ask one question and record the answer: if this ended on the shortest notice the other party is allowed, what would we be unable to do the following Monday? Rank the rows.
- Name the permanent version (8 minutes). For the top three, say out loud what permanence would look like: a five-year lease, a deed, a signed agreement, a multi-year contract, or a program moved into a new nonprofit, as the Boston parents did in the third story. Then say who would have to agree, and whether that person knows you exist.
- Ask the uncomfortable question (7 minutes). For the top row: why have we never asked? The honest answers are often "we did not want to rock the boat" or "we assumed the answer was no." Record who said what.
- Assign one conversion (3 minutes). One arrangement, one board member paired with the executive director, one first meeting on a date, in the minutes.
In-person: Print the list and hand it out face down. Virtual: Share it on screen and ask a board member, not the executive director, to read each row.
Watch out for: The board that decides the landlord, the county or the fiscal sponsor is too important to bother. That is the assumption that keeps an organization on leased land for three decades. The other party may say no, and a no in writing is worth having, because it changes what the board plans for.
You'll know it worked when: a board member volunteers to make the first call, and the executive director is relieved rather than nervous.
The Trailer
The detail I cannot get past in the first story is the snow. A volunteer ambulance corps that reports 2,000 calls a year sends somebody onto the roof of a trailer in winter to shovel, because the weight of the snow makes the roof leak.
If you work in this sector, you have a trailer. Maybe not a literal one. A program run out of a church basement on a handshake. A van that belongs to a board member. A contract renewed every June by an official who could retire. A lease that says thirty days.
And here is the thing I want to say plainly, because I think the sector gets it backward: we are proud of the trailer.
We tell the story of making do as a story of virtue, and in one sense it is. The corps did not stop answering calls because its roof leaked. That is admirable. But the sentence "we make it work" is also the sentence that keeps an organization on someone else's land for thirty-seven years, because it converts a structural problem into a character trait, and character traits do not go on a board agenda.
The ambulance corps' fix was not heroic. It was administrative. Somebody decided in 2022 that the trailer was a problem worth four years, went to the city and to the local assemblymember, and got a bill written that let the city give away land it could not otherwise give away. The first bills, in 2023, died in committee. The second try passed the Senate 59 to 0 and the Assembly 136 to 9. The idea was not controversial. It needed somebody to keep asking.
That is the lesson, and the other two stories show it from the other side. The arts commission handed its grant process to a foundation while under a state audit and, in its own words, "increased public scrutiny." The Boston parents formed a nonprofit after the company that held their children's school was already insolvent. In both, the decision came under pressure; judgment could have supplied it earlier. The corps is the one to copy. No crisis forced its hand; a leaking roof and somebody's persistence were enough.
So here is the assignment, and it is for boards, not staff. Staff are the ones on the roof. Once a year, ask what the organization holds at someone else's pleasure, and convert one thing. One lease to a term. One handshake to a signature. One annual contract to a multi-year one, or at least to a written answer about why not.
You will not get a deed from a city in a year. You may get a no. A no in writing is better than a trailer, because a no tells you what to plan for, and a trailer only tells you where the snow is.
Forward this issue to one person — your board chair, or the board member who has been saying "we should really get that in writing" for longer than anyone remembers. Then hit reply and tell me the one arrangement your organization holds month-to-month. I read every reply myself, and I keep a list.
If someone forwarded this to you: sign up here. It is free, it arrives Wednesdays, and that is the whole arrangement.
Three organizations, one move: they changed what holds the work. A deed instead of a lease. A foundation's process instead of an in-house one. A nonprofit instead of a company.
This week, write the list of what you hold at someone else's pleasure. Pick one. Ask.
See you next week.
— Ted
P.S. Please help this newsletter grow in influence by forwarding it to at least one peer. I'm trying to give as much free advice to as many people as possible. That works only if you help me get the word out.
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Founder and CEO
Risk Alternatives, LLC
202.758.7572 (cell)
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Author of Managing Your Nonprofit for Resilience
I help nonprofits thrive by providing practical tools and support to address uncertainty and improve resilience.
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