Three organizations are moving something out of one set of hands and into another: a public television service a college dropped, a grocery building bought with federal money for a project that stalled, and 30 acres of a campus that once housed 450 children.
Much of what your organization holds, it holds because it always has. This week's stories ask whether it belongs in different hands. In two, a nonprofit is picking up what another institution set down. In the third, a nonprofit is letting go of land it no longer fills.
This week:
- A Pensacola nonprofit planning to put PBS back on the air with a leased signal.
- A West Virginia food bank taking over a closed grocery store and the obligations of the federal grant behind it.
- A 136-year-old Virginia foster care nonprofit selling 30 acres and 13 buildings of its campus.
- The 2027 Social Security wage base.
- Five states whose minimum wage rises January 1.
- A prompt that writes your exit terms before you sign with a chatbot vendor.
- A prompt for the roughly half of adults who never use one. A board exercise that sorts what you hold. And
- A column on the things you keep because you have them.
A College Ended Its PBS Affiliation. A New Nonprofit With One Employee Plans to Put PBS Back on the Air by Leasing Another Station's Signal.
On September 16, 2025, the trustees of Pensacola State College voted 3-1 to end the PBS affiliation of WSRE, the public television station licensed to the college's board, after June 30, 2026. By the college's account, the station had lost about $1.5 million in state and federal support in that budget year. PBS programming on WSRE ended July 1.
What interests me is what happened next, and how little of it had to be bought.
Jill Hubbs, WSRE's former general manager, and a board chaired by a retired circuit judge formed a new nonprofit, the Emerald Coast Educational Public Media Foundation, which operates as Emerald Coast PBS. Current reports, citing state records, that its state registration was filed in March of this year and approved June 26. On July 1, the day PBS left WSRE, the new organization began streaming PBS and PBS Kids online. On November 1 it plans to begin broadcasting over the air.
Here is the part worth copying. Emerald Coast PBS does not own a station. It is leasing the signal of WPAN, a commercial station in Fort Walton Beach owned by B&C Communications, and will appear on channels 53.1 and 53.2, Current and WEAR report. Its office and studio space are donated by Levin Papantonio, a Pensacola law firm. Its master control, the technical operation that assembles a broadcast day, runs in the cloud through CentralCast Alliance, a service shared by public stations. PBS has discounted its dues during the startup period. Hubbs is the only employee.
The money comes from two places. The Public Media Bridge Fund, a philanthropic fund set up to help public stations after federal funding ended, provided $300,000 through its emergency restructuring program. Half of that, $150,000, is to be repaid once the organization reaches milestones set in the grant agreement; Current reports there is no deadline for repayment. Separately, the organization has set out to raise $1 million, and its first campaign asks 500 people, families and businesses to commit $1,000 or more.
"It's been a big void," Hubbs told Current.
Why does the design matter?
A television station is usually a building, a tower, a transmitter and a staff. Emerald Coast PBS has leased, borrowed or outsourced each of those except the staff, which is one person. What it holds is the affiliation, the relationship with PBS, and the relationships with viewers, which Hubbs said drew roughly 90,000 to 100,000 people a week to WSRE over the air, citing Nielsen. The college set down a service. The new organization picked up the part that mattered and rented the rest.
Here is what makes this replicable. You are probably not restoring a television signal. But some institution near you, a hospital, a college, a county, a larger nonprofit, is setting down a service it no longer wants to carry. Before you assume the service dies with it, ask three questions. What is the smallest asset that has to move for the service to continue, and can it be leased rather than bought? Who would donate space or a back office for a year? Is there a fund in your field that exists for exactly this moment? The Bridge Fund grant does not count toward the $1 million, Current reports; what it bought was time.
One honest limit on the evidence. The broadcast has not started, and the grant figures come from Hubbs through Current, the only outlet that reported them; the $1 million goal and the 500-donor campaign are on the organization's own site. The lease terms are not published, so I do not know what Emerald Coast PBS pays B&C Communications or for how long. Its tax-exempt status is applied for, not granted, according to its own website. How much of the $1 million has come in is not disclosed. And the WSRE Foundation, the station's former fundraising arm, is suing the college in federal court over control of donor funds, which Current reported as at least $5 million; the foundation's leaders have said they would direct those assets to Emerald Coast PBS if they win. Hubbs told Current she is not counting on it.
Sources: Julian Wyllie, "Emerald Coast PBS to launch broadcast service for Florida Panhandle," Current, October 9, 2026; WEAR-TV, "PBS returns to Northwest Florida: Emerald Coast PBS to launch Nov. 1," October 2, 2026; Current, "Licensee of WSRE ends PBS affiliation," September 25, 2025; T.S. Strickland, WUWF, September 17, 2025; WEAR-TV, "Pensacola State College ends WSRE's PBS affiliation effective July 1," June 30, 2026; Current, "WSRE Foundation files lawsuit against college licensee," December 12, 2025; Emerald Coast PBS
A Grocery Store Was Bought With a $440,000 Federal Grant for a Health Center That Was Never Built. The City Is Moving It, and the Grant's Obligations, to a Food Bank.
In 2022 the City of Charleston, West Virginia, awarded $440,000 of its federal pandemic-recovery money to the Partnership of African American Churches to buy a closed Save A Lot at 748 Virginia Street West and turn it into a community health center on the city's West Side. PAAC's application to the city, dated December 2021, put the build-out at about $3 million plus $1 million in equipment, beyond the purchase.
The building was bought. The health center was not built. In May 2023, Mountain State Spotlight reported that PAAC's leader was still short of the money to finish it.
On October 5, the city council approved what the city calls a novation agreement: the building and the obligations that come with the federal grant move to Mountaineer Food Bank, the Feeding America food bank that serves 48 of West Virginia's 55 counties from Gassaway. The property comes back to the city "as pass-through," City Manager Ben Mishoe told MetroNews, and the food bank "will take ownership of that building." The city's release says the organization originally selected "was no longer positioned to complete it within federal requirements and timelines, according to the City's outside ARPA consultant." The same consultant's guidance sets the next deadline: the project "must demonstrate progress towards rehabilitation of the property by the end of 2026."
What will the food bank do with it? First, a volunteer center, where volunteers prepare and pack food for the 35 to 40 partner agencies the food bank supplies in Kanawha County. That operation moves to Charleston from its current location in Poca, West Virginia Watch reported. The statewide distribution operation stays in Gassaway, which is why the city calls the Charleston site an expansion rather than a relocation.
Beyond that, the food bank says it does not know yet. "The other half of it is really yet to be determined," chief executive Chad Morrison told MetroNews. "We don't want to come in and say we have the solution, because we don't." A spokeswoman, Caitlyn Johnson, told West Virginia Watch: "The goal is not to replace or duplicate services already being provided by food pantries or other community organizations, but to identify gaps and look for ways to complement and strengthen the work already happening in the neighborhood."
Here is what makes this replicable. Somewhere in your county there is a publicly funded project that stalled: a building bought with pandemic money, a grant whose project was never finished, a service a partner could not carry. Public grants come with conditions and dates attached; here, the city's consultant required progress on the building by the end of 2026. A deadline is the lever. A stalled project with a deadline is one a city has a reason to move, and the instrument Charleston used, a novation, which means substituting one party for another in an existing agreement, is one a city's attorney already knows. No new grant was written. The old one changed hands, building and obligations together.
One honest limit on the evidence. No source reports a price, so I cannot tell you whether the food bank paid anything for the building. No news report I read gives the vote count. PAAC has not commented in any report I read, and the West Side was promised a health center that this building has not delivered. Mountaineer Food Bank reported $45 million in revenue in 2024, which makes it a far larger organization than the typical reader's.
Sources: Lori Kersey, "Food bank to open volunteer center in former Charleston grocery store," West Virginia Watch, October 6, 2026; City of Charleston, "Charleston City Council Approves Transition of Former Save A Lot Property to Mountaineer Food Bank," October 5, 2026; Daniel Woods, WV MetroNews, October 6, 2026; Chris Lawrence, WV MetroNews, October 11, 2026; Partnership of African American Churches, application to the City of Charleston, December 14, 2021; Mountain State Spotlight, May 15, 2023; ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Mountaineer Food Bank
A 136-Year-Old Foster Care Nonprofit Once Housed 450 Children. It Can Now Hold 40. It Is Selling 30 Acres and 13 Buildings.
HopeTree Family Services in Salem, Virginia, was founded in 1890 as the Baptist Orphanage of Virginia. At its peak, its president, Jon Morris, told WSLS in 2024, about 450 children lived on the campus. Today the campus can hold up to 24 adults with disabilities and 16 children at a time, Morris told Cardinal News this month. The organization itself is not small: about 250 employees across Virginia in foster care, 17 group homes and a school, according to Richmond BizSense.
HopeTree is keeping 30 acres of its campus. Another 30 acres, and 13 buildings on them, are being sold to Stateson Homes, a Blacksburg homebuilder, in sections over several years, Cardinal News reported October 13. Those named in the report are a youth group home, three staff buildings, six empty buildings and the former president's home. Stateson is seeking the city's approval for its first phase and expects to begin construction within about six months. Todd Robertson of Stateson declined to give Cardinal News the price.
Getting here took more than two years. Salem's city council first approved the rezoning in June 2024. Five neighbors sued, mostly over procedure. HopeTree resubmitted a similar application, and the council approved it in December 2024 by a 3-2 vote. A neighbor sued again in January 2025; the circuit court dismissed that suit in August 2025, and on August 18 of this year the Court of Appeals of Virginia affirmed the dismissal.
Why would a nonprofit let go of 30 acres of its campus? Morris gave Cardinal News two reasons, and neither, as he described it, was money. One was the buildings themselves: HopeTree partnered with Stateson "in hopes that it could salvage the 13 buildings," the paper reported, citing Morris. The other was who lives next to whom. "Every one of our group homes across Virginia is in a regular neighborhood. This is the only segregated one," Morris said. "We're really going from a segregated campus to an integrated community."
On the 30 acres it keeps, HopeTree hopes to start about $11 million in renovations "in the summer," Cardinal News reported, without naming the year: making buildings accessible, building small homes for adult residents, a new space for its school and one central space for human services staff now scattered across four buildings. Morris said capacity will not go down.
Here is what makes this replicable. Few readers hold 30 acres. You probably hold something sized for an organization that no longer exists: a building bought for a program that ended, a storage unit, a second office, a vehicle, a database built for a model of service you stopped using. The question HopeTree answered is the one I would borrow. Of what we hold, what is sized for who we were? Then ask two harder ones: who could use it, and what would it cost us, in time and in neighbors' goodwill, to hand it off? HopeTree's answer took more than two years, two lawsuits and an appeal, and the organization says it will stay on the 30 acres it keeps.
One honest limit on the evidence. Nothing I read says what the sale will bring in or whether it pays for the renovation; I cannot connect those two numbers, and HopeTree has not connected them in public. Cardinal News is the only newsroom that reported the October status. The acreage HopeTree plans to keep has been reported as 25 in early 2024 and 30 now, and no report states the campus's total size. HopeTree's most recent full-year tax filing, for the year ending September 2025, shows expenses about $5 million above revenue, which the organization has not addressed in any report I read. And the neighbors who sued have not changed their minds; the court decided only that the council was allowed to take up HopeTree's second application.
Sources: Samantha Verrelli, "HopeTree and Stateson Homes gearing up for start of largest Salem development of its kind," Cardinal News, October 13, 2026; Court of Appeals of Virginia, Hart v. City Council for the City of Salem, Record No. 1537-25-3, August 18, 2026; WSLS, "HopeTree campus in Salem potential site for major development project," January 20, 2024; Jackie DiBartolomeo, Richmond BizSense, September 16, 2026; HopeTree Family Services, history; ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Virginia Baptist Children's Home and Family Services
Send the 2027 Social Security Wage Base to Whoever Runs Payroll
On October 14 the Social Security Administration announced a 3.6 percent cost-of-living increase for 2027 and, with it, the number that matters to employers: the maximum earnings subject to Social Security tax rises to $192,300 from $184,500. The rate, 6.2 percent each for employer and employee, does not change. Only staff who earn more than $184,500 are affected. For a client who receives Social Security, the increase starts with the January 2027 payment; for Supplemental Security Income, with the payment of December 31, 2026.
Action: Three steps. First, send the new $192,300 cap to whoever runs your payroll and ask them to confirm it is in the system before the first January paycheck. Second, if anyone on staff earns more than $184,500, add 6.2 percent of the part of their salary between $184,500 and $192,300 to your 2027 budget as employer tax. Third, if you serve people on Social Security or SSI, update any client materials to say 3.6 percent, starting with the January 2027 Social Security payment and the December 31, 2026 SSI payment.
ROI: A payroll system that keeps the old cap under-withholds and produces a corrected W-2 later.
Time: About 15 minutes.
Sources: Social Security Administration, cost-of-living adjustment information for 2027; Social Security Administration blog, "Social Security Announces 3.6 Percent Benefit Increase for 2027," October 14, 2026; Social Security Administration, 2027 COLA fact sheet
Check Whether Your State's Minimum Wage Rises January 1
Five states I checked have published their January 1, 2027 minimum wages: California, $17.40 (from $16.90); Washington, $17.73 (from $17.13); New Jersey, $16.48 for most employers (from $15.92); Colorado, $15.71 (from $15.16); and Michigan, $15.00 (from $13.73). More states adjust on January 1 by formula and announce in late summer or fall. The California Department of Industrial Relations' release also sets the minimum salary for an employee classified as exempt from overtime at $72,384 a year, twice the minimum wage for a 40-hour week.
Action: Three steps. First, look up the 2027 rate on your state labor department's website; the federal table linked below shows current rates and which states adjust yearly. Second, list every employee paid within a dollar of the new rate and set the new rate in payroll to take effect January 1. Third, if you are in California, compare the salary of each employee you pay a flat salary with no overtime (the law calls them exempt) to $72,384; anyone below it no longer meets the state's salary test for exemption and, unless another exemption applies, is owed overtime for overtime hours worked from January 1.
ROI: Back wages plus penalties for every hour paid under the new rate.
Time: About 30 minutes.
Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, state minimum wage laws (updated July 1, 2026); California Department of Industrial Relations, release 2026-66, August 13, 2026; Washington Department of Labor & Industries, 2027 minimum wage announcement; New Jersey Department of Labor, September 29, 2026; Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, August 13, 2026; Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, minimum wage
Two prompts this week. The first writes the terms you should have before you hand a vendor your clients' conversations. The second plans for the people who do not use a chatbot at all. Paste each into the AI assistant you use and edit the output hard; it is a first draft.
Write the Exit Terms Before You Sign With a Chatbot Vendor
You are a nonprofit technology and privacy adviser. My organization uses, or is considering, an AI chatbot or assistant from an outside vendor that will see information from the people we serve or from our donors. I will paste the vendor's terms of service and privacy policy below. Give me three things. First, a plain-language summary of what happens to our data if the vendor is sold, merges, files for bankruptcy or shuts down, quoting the clause that says so, or stating that no clause does. Second, eight questions to put to the vendor in writing before we sign or renew, across these areas: whether we can export and delete all of our data on request, and how fast; whether our users' conversations train the vendor's models, and how to opt out; how the tool handles a user who appears to be in crisis, and a user under 18; whether the bot could ever present itself as a licensed professional; and what notice we get before a sale or shutdown. Third, plain-English contract language requiring data return and deletion within 30 days of termination or any change of ownership, written so a small organization's attorney can tighten it. Mark every point where you are inferring rather than quoting.
What makes it worth trying: On October 14, the New York Attorney General and 39 other state attorneys general asked a bankruptcy court to require protections for users of Character.AI, a chatbot company that, in the coalition's words, "abruptly filed for bankruptcy before any agreement was reached" on the states' safety concerns. Among the protections they want: "an opportunity for consumers to access and delete their information before any sale" and "removal of chatbots falsely claiming to be licensed professionals." This prompt raises those questions while you still have a vendor to ask. Handing a vendor your clients' conversations is a handoff too.
Sources: New York Attorney General, "Attorney General James Urges Court to Protect Children and Consumers in Character.AI Bankruptcy," October 14, 2026
Build the Path for People Who Do Not Use a Chatbot
You are a service designer for a small nonprofit. We are adding AI tools to how we work: a chatbot on our website, an assistant that drafts replies, an automated intake form, or a phone system that answers questions. I will describe each tool and the people it is meant to serve. Assume that about half of the adults we serve do not use a chatbot and that three in four people 65 and older do not. Give me three things. First, for each tool, the path for a person who will not or cannot use it: a phone number that reaches a person, a paper form, a walk-in hour, a printed letter, or a staff member's name, with a rough estimate of the staff time each path costs per week. Second, the two sentences at the top of every tool that tell people the other path exists, written at a sixth-grade reading level. Third, a one-page checklist a staff member uses each quarter to confirm every non-chatbot path still works, including calling our own phone number. Do not tell me to persuade people to use the tool. Design for the people who have already decided not to.
What makes it worth trying: Pew Research Center reported on October 9 that about half of U.S. adults say they never use an AI chatbot, and roughly three-quarters of adults 65 and older say so. Among people who do not use one, the most common major reason is not distrust: 60 percent say they are not interested. Concern about how their personal information will be used (54 percent) and distrust of the answers (45 percent) come next. Many of your clients and donors are among them. This prompt makes you draw the door for them before you install the tool.
Sources: Michelle Faverio, "Why Don't Some People Use Chatbots?" Pew Research Center, October 9, 2026
The Handoff List — A 30-Minute Board Exercise
What it is for. A board reviews budgets and programs. It rarely reviews the inventory of what the organization holds: property, leases, licenses, contracts, programs, data, a name. This exercise builds that list in one sitting and sorts it four ways: keep, hand off, wind down, or pick up.
What you need. A flip chart or a shared document with four columns headed Keep, Hand Off, Wind Down and Pick Up. From the executive director, sent before the meeting, a one-page list of what the organization holds that would cost something to keep for another year: every building, lease, vehicle, storage unit, software contract, program, affiliation and dataset, with last year's cost next to each.
How to run it (30 minutes).
- Add what is missing (6 minutes). Each board member reads the list and names one thing the organization holds that is not on it. Add them without discussion.
- Mark what is sized for who you were (8 minutes). Go down the list. For each item, the executive director answers one question: was this acquired for a program, a staff size or a model of service that no longer exists? Mark those items.
- Sort the marked items (8 minutes). For each marked item, the board chooses one of three: keep, because it still serves the mission; hand off, because another organization could use it better; or wind down. For each "hand off," write the name of one organization that might take it.
- Name what is being set down near you (5 minutes). Each member names one service, building or program that another institution in your community has announced it will stop carrying. Write them in the Pick Up column. Choose one worth a phone call.
- Assign two calls (3 minutes). One board member calls the likeliest taker for one "hand off" item. One calls the institution setting down the "pick up" item. Both report back at the next meeting. Record both names in the minutes.
In-person: Four flip-chart sheets, one per column; members move sticky notes between them.
Virtual: A shared document with the executive director's list pasted in and the four columns beside it.
Watch out for: Treating "hand off" as failure. The nonprofit in Salem has spent more than two years handing off 30 acres of its campus. Treat it as a decision with a cost, and price the cost of keeping the item too.
You'll know it worked when: one item comes off the list of things you pay to keep, or one service your community was about to lose has someone new answering the phone for it.
The Things You Keep Because You Have Them
One number in this week's Salem story stays with me. At its peak, about 450 children lived on that campus. Today it can hold 40 people. The campus stayed while the organization on it changed shape completely.
I don't think that is unusual. I think it is the normal condition of an organization that has lasted. Things accumulate. A building is donated. A program is started for a grant that ends. A lease is signed because the space was available. Each decision was right when it was made, and each one is still with you, because undoing a decision is work and nobody is assigned to it.
So there is discomfort. What you hold costs you something each year whether you use it or not, and the cost is easy to miss because it never appears as a single line. It shows up as insurance, as maintenance, as the hour a staff member spends on a system nobody has logged into since 2023, as the meeting about the second office.
Two of this week's stories ran the other direction, and I find them more hopeful. In Pensacola, a college decided it could no longer carry a public television service, and the station's former general manager and a new board are building a new container for it out of a leased signal, donated offices and master control in the cloud. In Charleston, a church partnership bought a grocery store with federal money for a health center it could not finish, and the city is moving the building and the grant's obligations to a food bank that has to show progress on it this year. In both cases the thing that moved was not really the building or the signal. It was the obligation to carry the service, and someone else agreed to carry it.
There is a fair objection, and I want to state it. A handoff is not always good news for the people on the other end. The West Side of Charleston was promised a health center and is getting a volunteer center, with the rest of the building's use undecided. By November 1, Pensacola will have gone four months without the PBS service WSRE carried over the air, and the lawsuit over the old station's donor funds is still open. The lesson is not that institutions should drop things. It is that when something is going to be dropped, the handoff should be deliberate, and someone nearby should be looking for it.
So here is the assignment. Make the list. Everything your organization holds that costs money to keep. Mark what was acquired for an organization that no longer exists. Then look outward once: what has a hospital, a county, a college or a larger nonprofit in your area announced it will stop carrying? One of those two lists has your next decision on it.
Forward this issue to one person — the board member who still asks why you keep the second office. Then hit reply and tell me the thing your organization holds because it always has. I read every reply myself.
If someone forwarded this to you: sign up here. It is free, it arrives Wednesdays, and that is the whole arrangement.
Three stories, one move: something is leaving the hands that held it for hands that can use it. A PBS service, by way of a leased signal. A grocery building and its grant obligations, by way of a city. Thirty acres, by way of two rezoning votes, two lawsuits and an appeal.
This week, write down one thing your organization holds because it always has, and put last year's cost of keeping it beside it.
See you next week.
— Ted
P.S. One forward. One reply naming the thing you keep because you have it. I keep a list.
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