For six many years, the Larger Los Angeles Zoo Assn., often called GLAZA, has been the nonprofit fundraising arm of the Los Angeles Zoo.
Now it needs to interrupt up with the zoo.
GLAZA, with its skilled administrative employees and greater than two dozen trustees drawn from enterprise, philanthropy, the humanities and different fields, has raised tens of thousands and thousands through the years for the zoo. It additionally does advertising and marketing and oversees the in depth volunteer program.
The zoo, a metropolis company, is headed by a chief executive and director — presently Denise Verret — who solutions to the mayor and the Metropolis Council.
There have been rifts earlier than. GLAZA has walked away from contracts talks with the zoo earlier than however finally labored issues out. GLAZA trustees usually have sturdy concepts about how all these funds they labored laborious to boost — and contributed themselves — needs to be used. And, after all, the chief government of the zoo has particular concepts about the best way to run the zoo. At present Verret can be serving as chair of the board of the Assn. of Zoos and Aquariums, the accrediting company for zoos largely in North America. Nobody on this combine is shy about expressing opinions.
However then the zoo, prompted by a want for what it known as extra transparency and equity, put out a request for proposals for the job (or relatively, jobs, plural) that GLAZA had been doing. Basically the zoo put GLAZA’s varied roles out to bid — and inspired GLAZA to compete for them.
That didn’t go over properly. GLAZA officers, already upset by restrictions in its present settlement with the town, balked. In October, the chair of the trustees wrote a letter to Mayor Karen Bass telling her that GLAZA wouldn’t vie for a place and when its present settlement was up on the finish of June 2025, so, too, would the partnership with the zoo finish.
“Sending this letter to you brings us no pleasure,” wrote the chair, Erika Aronson Stern. She stated the truth that the town determined to take all of GLAZA’s tasks for the final 60 years “and carve them into six, distinct separate classes is a really clear signal that the Metropolis has no real interest in persevering with our overarching partnership.”
Then GLAZA went rogue — or so the town principally contends in a breach-of-contract lawsuit it filed in opposition to GLAZA late final month.
GLAZA amended its articles of incorporation to permit it to distribute funds to “organizations apart from the Zoo if GLAZA winds down or dissolves” despite the fact that GLAZA was solely ever imagined to be elevating funds for the L.A. Zoo, the lawsuit contends.
GLAZA has additionally refused to show over donor data, the go well with says. Extra alarming, in keeping with the go well with, is that GLAZA claimed in a letter to the zoo that it will management the endowment for which it raised funds even after it ended its settlement with the town subsequent summer season. The zoo estimates GLAZA has almost $49 million below its management. Amongst different issues, the town needs at the least that a lot in damages.
And on prime of all that, GLAZA “unilaterally” canceled the zoo’s signature annual fundraising gala, the Beastly Ball, for June 2025. The zoo says it anticipated to reap $975,000 from the occasion this yr.
GLAZA says in response that there was little enthusiasm for it this yr and that it wouldn’t be value placing on the occasion.
A few of the considerations outlined within the metropolis’s lawsuit had been acknowledged in a Nov. 8 letter from the town lawyer’s workplace to the GLAZA chair. In a Dec. 6 letter, a lawyer for GLAZA responded that “it was with nice disappointment and shock when GLAZA obtained the Metropolis’s November 8 letter accusing GLAZA of a number of acts of wrongdoing, together with breach of fiduciary obligation and monetary misappropriation.”
Amongst different issues, the affiliation argues that it’s holding management of the restricted funds — which are donated for particular reveals or initiatives — solely to ensure they get used for the donors’ meant functions. The lawyer additionally contends that GLAZA is an unbiased group, “not a division of the Metropolis or below Metropolis administration or management,” and that neither the town nor the zoo has management over the Endowment Fund. “Given the duties GLAZA owes to its donors, GLAZA will proceed to handle the Endowment Fund,” the lawyer wrote.
OK, it is a combat between sensible individuals who all care concerning the zoo. That’s comprehensible — to a degree. However on the finish of the day, the L.A. Zoo wants to have the ability to run the zoo as its managers see match. It is a very difficult time for zoo managers typically and this one particularly. Elements of the zoo are outdated and want overhaul — which a brand new Vision Plan is designed to deal with. Moreover, the zoo is below assault by opponents of elephant-keeping. And the zoo might want to handle that in some unspecified time in the future. Perhaps it’s time to stop keeping elephants in enclosures, on condition that within the wild they stroll miles and miles every day.
The underside line is that the zoo wants a devoted and sturdy fundraising crew for its future initiatives. And that crew must be on board with what the zoo chief government decides. For so long as they’re in battle, the zoo and the general public should not being served.
