City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez introduced a motion Friday seeking a new operator of Youth Source Centers in the northern San Fernando Valley, saying the nonprofit Youth Policy Institute has suspended its activities amid financial problems.
YPI, which provides job training, after-school programs and other services, spent $1.3 million more than it took in during the 2017-18 fiscal year, according to a 50-page accounting report submitted to City Hall last week and obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
Just two years ago, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti praised the YPI for securing $30 million for tutoring and other services, and last year the mayor announced the nonprofit’s involvement in a new city job training program, according to The Times.
Interim YPI Chief Executive Dan Grunfeld, hired last month as part of an effort to save the organization, said he and the board of directors had made an “incredibly difficult” decision to shutter the decades-old nonprofit at the end of the day Friday.
“We have explored every option, but in the end, we have realized that we cannot keep it going,” Grunfeld wrote in a letter to Youth Policy Institute’s employees, according to The Times. “I wish this were not so.”
Grunfeld told the paper the organization had reached agreements to transfer after-school programs on 80 campuses to another group, the Santa Ana-based nonprofit Think Together. The move should allow at least 400 of the group’s full- and part-time workers to remain employed, albeit with another organization, he said.
Earlier this month, the nonprofit laid off 26 full-time employees, bringing the total this year to 47. City agencies have withheld funding to the group because its financial reports are past due.
Rodriguez said the Youth Source Centers in the northern San Fernando Valley used YPI as their lead contracting agency and it operated the North Valley Work Source Center in Pacoima, the Family Source Center in Hollywood and two day labor centers in the Valley.
The councilwoman’s motion asks that the Economic and Workforce Development Department find a replacement contracting agency as soon as possible.
Garcetti spokesman Alex Comisar told The Times city officials are concerned with the audit’s findings and are working to make sure services will not be interrupted. Economic development officials went to the nonprofit’s offices last Thursday to review its finances, he said.
Dixon Slingerland, who ran the nonprofit before being fired last month, was named as a co-host of at least six Garcetti fundraisers during the 2013 mayoral campaign, according to city records.
In their report, auditors concluded that YPI made unauthorized payments to Slingerland, who ran the nonprofit for 23 years and had an annual salary of about $400,000. Slingerland’s credit card incurred numerous charges that “lacked a clear business purpose” and his expense reports lacked documentation, auditors wrote.
The group’s financial challenges, along with its failure to comply with state and federal funding rules, “create a substantial doubt about YPI’s ability to continue as a going concern,” the audit said, according to The Times.