UH Foundation needs sunshine

Every season, the private, nonprofit University of Hawaii Foundation ramps up to solicit millions of dollars to benefit the 10-campus public UH system. The fundraising is a powerful effort to supplemental coffers for many of the university’s good works, but troublesome gaps in fiscal accountability could end up hurting the mission. That needs to be remedied.

Coming to light last week was the contentious situation at the UH’s College of Engineering, where faculty say they have been "stonewalled" for at least half a year on details of how the college spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual private donations. Indeed, the lack of transparency and lackadaisical attitude toward questionable accountability beg a review of the current operating procedure. Improved, detailed disclosure of how money is spent is needed.

Especially in these tight fiscal times, the UH system relies on the UH Foundation and thousands of donors for tens of millions of dollars annually. Since 2006 an average of nearly 30,000 donors yearly have given some $50 million to the 10 campuses. In fiscal 2010, about $1 million went to the College of Engineering.

Engineering dean Peter Crouch has raised the ire and eyebrows of his own faculty for a travel policy that seems to favor himself but few others. He spent $42,000 of the college’s foundation-funded travel budget to take 27 work-related trips over a two-year span, reported the Star-Advertiser’s Rob Perez. Meanwhile, he eliminated a long-standing policy allowing professors to take an annual academic trip using foundation funds.

Magdy Iskander, director of the college’s Hawaii Center for Advanced by Communications, didn’t help the debate by expressing disappointment that faculty members are pursuing foundation information instead of more research funding. "They just want their free trips," Iskander said.

So, evidently, does dean Crouch.

But the questions should not be confined to the engineering college and the travel expenditures of its dean. That situation begs the bigger question of how other millions of foundation dollars are directed, and for what public purpose. The university has myriad programs and projects under its auspices; isn’t it reasonable for donors to better know how their money is spent beyond the current broad categories of special programs, research, student aid and faculty support?

Granted, since the UH Foundation is a private, nonprofit trust, it might be justified in concern for its donors’ privacy. But the direction and actual usage of those funds go toward a state institution and a public purpose. Even if "who contributed how much" can be shielded, detailed disclosures of where and how the money is funneled is wholly valid, even necessary.

At the University of Washington, "it’s all transparent here," said spokesman Norm Arkans about fundraising information. "We like it that way. Being transparent provides insulation against allegations that such-and-such a person might be able to buy his nephew’s way into the university."

UH Foundation donors should start asking where their money is going. The UH needs to scrutinize if the private funds raised are indeed being used wisely. Otherwise, resisting improved transparency may hit directly where it hurts — in the wallet.

Donors to good causes like the UH Foundation donate because they believe their generosity is going, well, to a good cause. It’s hard-earned money that they’re willing to part with because they believe in the mission and that their contribution will make a difference. But knowing that it might be squandered, or that it is bankrolling the lifestyle of some high-flying administrator, is serious cause for concern. And that might start drying up the generosity well.