Regents, foundations seek balance of power

Friday, June 22, 2007 | 9:07 a.m.

RENO - If university system regents really want to help private foundations better serve their campuses, they need to back off a little in their meddling and oversight.

That was the message from UNLV and UNR foundation trustees to regents Wednesday night at a workshop to better define how they should deal with one another.

At issue is how cooperative the two sides can be without regents finding themselves liable for foundation activities.

UNLV and UNR foundations exist, in part, to enter into business and economic development agreements that will benefit the universities and their communities - and protect the university from liability if a venture fails, foundation trustees said.

Although regents may want to provide oversight of that mission, the more involved they are, the more liable they become for the foundation's actions, said Paul Bible, a Reno attorney and chairman of the UNR Foundation.

"The moral of the story is, if you want to avoid liability, hands off," Bible told regents during the three-hour workshop.

Noticeably missing from the discussion was any rehashing of the incidents that led regents to meddle in the first place.

During the past year, regents repeatedly have questioned the actions of foundations at UNLV, demanding that campus administrators intervene to ensure that board policy was being followed, and creating new policies to address concerns they had.

A Sun investigation in spring 2006 found that the Institute for Security Studies, under the control of the UNLV Research Foundation, had little to show for nearly $9 million in federal funds to develop UNLV as a leading academic authority on anti-terrorism technology and homeland security.

Regents were frustrated when the research foundation refused to release documents detailing its work, citing national security concerns. The foundation's then-director, Tom Williams, also came under scrutiny for his use of $84,000 in travel funds. Williams was following federal, rather than university, guidelines on travel, which drew the regents' ire.

The Sun also found that the research foundation was taking significant bites out of research grants to cover overhead costs before forwarding the grants to UNLV, which also tapped the grants to reimburse itself for overhead costs.

In January, Regents Steve Sisolak and Mark Alden raised questions after revelations in the Sun that the foundation had taken out a $125,000 loan to outfit a new office.

UNLV officials have restructured the foundation, limiting its duties primarily to commercial development of a research park in the southwest valley and moving the Institute of Security Studies under the university's academic umbrella. Both the security institute and the foundation are under new leadership.

The UNLV Foundation, the university's fundraising arm, is also under new leadership after a Sun investigation raised questions about how donations were being counted in a $500 million campaign.

Regents have previously said - and echoed their concerns again this week - that they are confused about foundation operations, which are handled by university staff members even though the foundations are private entities. Beyond appointing trustees - usually community leaders and university administrators - regents have little say about the day-to-day operations.

Foundation trustees are reviewing its policies and checking that they are consistent with university and Nevada System of Higher Education policies, said Ted Quirk, a Las Vegas lawyer and chairman of the UNLV Foundation. For their part, regents will formalize their hands-off approach to the foundations at a later meeting and will look at whether they need to revise policies.

There was one area where foundation trustees said they could use regent help: lobbying the state to pick up some of the foundation's operating costs so more donations can reach the campuses.

The UNLV Foundation raises about nine times what it spends on fundraising for the university, but struggles to meet its $6 million operating costs. The foundation recently dropped a policy of keeping 5 percent of every gift to help pay for overhead costs, because donors refused to pay it.

Donors do not want to pay for fundraisers to solicit them, said university system Chancellor Jim Rogers, one of UNLV's major benefactors.