Emmett Carson, who in recent years raised billions of charitable dollars from some of the world’s most powerful technology entrepreneurs, has left his job as chief executive of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
In a contrite statement released midday Wednesday, the foundation’s board said that a recent investigation substantiated complaints by current and former employees about a toxic workplace culture.
“SVCF clearly failed to provide a safe and inclusive workplace environment for its employees,” the statement said. “The board recognizes that this failure happened under our watch, and that many current and former staff were deeply impacted.”
Without getting into specifics, the board said it is committed to “expeditiously undertaking” recommendations generated as part of the investigation, including changes to foundation policies and procedures, governance, committee structures, and reporting.
The investigation did not find any financial improprieties, the board said, noting that nobody had raised any concerns about the use of donated funds. A public report on the investigation findings was posted on the foundation’s website on Wednesday. Interim president and chief executive Greg Avis will continue to lead the foundation as it conducts a nationwide search for a new permanent chief.
The board statement did not provide the terms of Emmett Carson’s departure, saying only that it was “effective immediately” and will enable the foundation “to continue its workplace environment and execute its mission as effectively as possible.”
Regrets About Employee Responses
A written statement by Carson, provided to the Chronicle by a communications consulting firm, did not directly acknowledge specific complaints by numerous former and current employees that he had turned a blind eye to serious problems at the organization for years. He said that some staff members felt “they were not sufficiently heard” and others did not trust the “multiple systems in place, including an anonymous hotline, to report complaints or concerns and have them fully and fairly addressed.”
Carson said he regrets “any role that I may have played in contributing to those feelings.”
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation board placed Carson on paid leave in late April after former and current employees publicly criticized him for tolerating for years grossly unprofessional behavior by the foundation’s No. 2 executive, Mari Ellen Loijens. One day after the Chronicle first reported on employees’ complaints about Loijens, she resigned. Loijens has not commented on the allegations.
Carson’s departure marks an abrupt end to 11 years of leadership at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which he led from the outset of a controversial merger of two existing regional philanthropies. During his tenure, the organization grew into a $13.5 billion powerhouse whose top donor rolls read like the who’s who of the Silicon Valley and beyond.
The community foundation’s “black label” donors, as it refers to those who give tens of millions of dollars or more, have included Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan; Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna; WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum; GoPro founder Nick Woodman and his wife, Jill; and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin.
In addition to being one of the most visible and influential foundation leaders in the country, Carson was one of its highest paid, according to a Chronicle analysis. He earned total compensation of $949,179 in 2016, according the foundation’s tax filings.
Redefining Roles
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation has long been one of the most closely followed philanthropies, and Carson a dynamic CEO willing to push the traditional definition of a community foundation.
The organization’s meteoric growth reached a new milestone in February when its leaders said that assets had reached $13.5 billion, moving it ahead of the Ford Foundation to become the third-largest foundation, private or community, in the United States.
Donor-advised funds account for about 83 percent of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s $13.5 billion. It’s more than three times the money held by the next largest community foundation, the Tulsa Community Foundation, which has $4.2 billion in assets.
“We are a new animal,” Carson told the Chronicle earlier this year. “We are pioneering a model for community foundations for the 21st century.”
Over the years the foundation became adept at handling complex assets including real estate, pre-IPO stock, and other types of gifts that can include substantial tax advantages for donors.
While most community foundations focus on a specific geographic area, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation has built up its operations to attract and service donors from around the country and overseas.
In 2014, it unveiled a database that allowed individuals to make online donations to hundreds of international groups. It provides research on international groups and analysis on trends in specific countries of interest to donors, including India and China. Last year, the foundation made $1.3 billion in grants; $515 million went to California organizations and $105 million to nonprofits in 66 countries outside the United States.
In 2016, the foundation established an East Coast presence to raise money primarily in the New York area. By the end of 2017, the foundation’s assets that originated in the New York area had grown from $267 million to nearly $400 million.
In an op-ed published last year by the Chronicle, Carson noted that more than half of Silicon Valley residents were born outside the region and one-third were born outside the United States.
“Why is it surprising that their charitable giving would reflect this? Why shouldn’t a community foundation created to serve Silicon Valley residents recognize that most have connections to other communities? In a region known as the global epicenter for innovation and connectivity, should its community foundation be bound by a fixed geography?”
In his statement about his departure on Wednesday, Carson reiterated that vision in highlighting the growth and accomplishments of the foundation.
“SVCF charted an entirely new course recognizing that in an increasingly global society, individual and corporate donors have geographically diverse charitable interests and desire a single philanthropic institution through which to achieve their goals,” Carson said of his 11 years at the foundation. “That this approach remains controversial today — over a decade after SVCF’s founding — is testament to how visionary and disruptive this idea has been in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.”
