Charting a course through financial, legal and headline risk at Hmong College Prep Academy

Todd L. Ely

Chapter Chapter 13 in Case Studies on Nonprofit Resilience Management, 2025, pp 108-116 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In 2019, Hmong College Prep Academy, a large nonprofit charter school located in St. Paul, Minnesota, made a $5 million investment with Woodstock Capital, a hedge fund. The impermissible investment violated state law regarding public funds and the school’s own investment policy. The investment subsequently lost more than 85% of its value. In response, the school’s nonprofit authorizer issued a corrective action plan and the school enacted meaningful leadership, governance, and policy changes. An investigation by the state auditor and action by the state attorney general ensued. The founder and long-time school superintendent (who also served as chief financial officer) resigned. Despite the scandal, the school’s enrollments fared well through the crisis. The financial loss had little impact on the day-to-day educational experience of the stable and committed community of students and families, which helped the two-decade old charter school weather the highly-publicized financial loss. The school’s financial practices, including the maintenance of sizable reserves and the regular use of long-term debt for new facilities to meet rapid growth, meant that the loss of improperly invested funds proved surmountable.

Keywords: Charter schools; Internal controls; Financial safeguards; Oversight; Investment policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035328567
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035328574.00022 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23130_14

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().