Sara Holbrook Community Center Employees Saw Signs of Trouble 

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• Courtesy Of Sara Holbrook Community Center
• Kids in a Sara Holbrook afterschool program in 2018

In 2020, the Sara Holbrook Community Center, a prominent Burlington nonprofit that provided summer, afterschool and early education programs for city youths, got a much-needed overhaul. Following a five-year fundraising campaign, its humble building, near the intersection of North Street and North Avenue, underwent a $3.3 million renovation that more than doubled the amount of space, providing new classrooms, offices and a small gymnasium.

Picture windows on the second floor offered sweeping views of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. The center's new boxy, multihued façade looked both modern and playful. It was a space with promise and possibility for the hundreds of mostly low-income children that walked through its doors.

But just four years later, Sara Holbrook abruptly closed.

"After a deep assessment of our financial picture, the board had no other choice but to move forward with this difficult decision," a July 19 press release said. "Despite our best efforts to stabilize funding, the financial realities have made it impossible for us to continue our operations at this time."

In an interview days after the announcement, board chair Kristin Fontaine attributed the closure to a constellation of factors: an ambitious expansion project that cost more than expected; the loss of pandemic relief funds; stiff competition for grants and donations; and staffing challenges that led to raising employees' salaries and increasing benefits. The last day of operations was July 31.

Yet Fontaine's explanation glossed over other difficulties. Interviews with former employees and those who worked with and donated to Sara Holbrook describe an organization that was financially mismanaged and spiraling in the years before it closed its doors. Many staff members left as things worsened under Christine Lloyd-Newberry, who was named executive director in March 2020. Despite its financial difficulties, the organization, which was considered a pillar of youth services in the community, never publicly sounded the alarm about its fiscal challenges.

Lloyd-Newberry declined to be interviewed, instead sending a statement that said the decision to suspend programs at Sara Holbrook was "devastating." Throughout her tenure at the center, she said, "I have kept the interests of children and their families at the center of my efforts every day."

After initially agreeing to talk again, Fontaine said she had no time for an interview or to respond to a detailed list of questions about the organization, including allegations of mismanagement.

Some board members were similarly tight-lipped. "We're not really dwelling on the past," board member Larry Kupferman said. "[We're] not looking backward, just looking forward."

Despite the organization's demise, it appears the building will continue to house programs for children. Champlain Housing Trust is hammering out a deal to purchase the center, according to CEO Michael Monte. The agreement, which is expected to be finalized in the coming months, would enable Sara Holbrook to pay off its debts, Monte said.

Monte and Sara Holbrook's board declined to reveal the sale price or say how much debt the center has. But interviews with seven former employees and others who worked closely with the organization, and reviews of its 990 tax forms and email correspondence, suggest that its financial woes began years ago and ran deep. The organization lost a combined $1.1 million in fiscal years 2021 and 2022 — about a third of its combined budget for that two-year time period.

"Lack of strategic planning and financial oversight, and the lack of communication with donors and community partners all have contributed to the loss of a much needed service provider," the organization's former executive director, Leisa Pollander, wrote in a statement to Seven Days.

Pollander ran the organization for 21 years before leaving in February 2020 to care for an aging parent and address her own long-standing health issues. At the time, she said, the nonprofit had close to $500,000 in reserve that had never been touched. She remembered running in the red just one year during her tenure.

The organization's board, she said, is supposed to provide financial oversight, while the executive director, as the face of the nonprofit, must "identify, cultivate and solicit funders."

"In my view, both failed miserably," Pollander wrote, "and, unfortunately, it is the most vulnerable kids and families in the community that will suffer the consequences."

Sara Holbrook was one of Burlington's longest running nonprofits. It was founded to serve low-income families in 1937 by its namesake, who was a University of Vermont education professor and clinical psychologist. She started childcare programs and did outreach to non-English-speaking immigrants.

In recent years, the center offered a variety of year-round programming including preschool, camps for children who settled in Vermont as refugees and teen programs aimed at combating chronic absenteeism. It also offered an on-site food pantry. Funding came from local, state and federal grants, as well as private donations.

After Lloyd-Newberry started in March 2020, the nonprofit grew rapidly, tripling its staff and increasing its budget. The center closed for several months at the start of the pandemic, and the organization received a $98,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan in April 2020 that was later forgiven, according to a ProPublica database.

Publicly, Lloyd-Newberry delivered a rosy forecast for the organization. In a 2021 interview that aired on Town Meeting TV, Lloyd-Newberry spoke about the growing demand for services in the community, the "big, new, beautiful building," and the "absolutely insane and wonderful" expansion of staff from 9 to 31 since she had come on as executive director a year before.

"We are in a place, I think, finally, where we're moving out of that sort of grassroots functional style into a much more sustainable, long-term organization," Lloyd-Newberry said. "It's never going to be easy ... but we are in a place where it is a little bit more sustainable than maybe it's been in the past."

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• Alison Novak ©️ Seven Days
• Sara Holbrook Community Center

Behind the scenes, though, the Sara Holbrook center was in disarray, former employees said. The organization stopped obtaining external financial audits, several said, which disqualified it from receiving certain grants. Annual reports and holiday fundraising appeals also ceased in recent years, which some say alienated previous donors and made it difficult to attract new ones. Donations and grants dried up, causing the organization to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars for at least two years in a row.

Former staff members began to realize things were amiss in the months after Lloyd-Newberry's Town Meeting TV interview. An office manager hired in fall 2021 — who asked not to be identified by name because she was worried about retaliation — told Seven Days that part of her job was to log bills into a digital platform so that the executive director could pay them. She soon noticed that many of the bills were past due, and credit card balances were accruing late fees. She, and several other former employees, told Seven Days that they began getting notices from their health insurance company saying benefits would be terminated because their employer was not paying its share. Workers' compensation insurance was canceled several times due to lack of payment.

When she asked Lloyd-Newberry about the issue, the office manager said, she was told it wasn't a big deal and was made to feel like "Chicken Little screaming the sky was falling."

During summer 2022, the office manager said, Lloyd-Newberry announced she was taking a "staycation" as summer camp began. On the first day, staff tried to rent bikes for the campers using a Sara Holbrook credit card, but the organization's account had been frozen due to lack of payment. It wasn't until the third day of camp, the office manager said, that Lloyd-Newberry made a payment and got the card reactivated.

On June 24, 2022, the office manager sent an email to Fontaine, the board chair, saying she was about to resign. In the lengthy missive about her concerns, which the office manager shared with Seven Days, she wrote of the "huge cracks in the foundation of this organization," and attached to the email six overdue invoices as evidence of unpaid bills.

"I have a feeling that there are other folks on their way out the door in the coming months too, and the uneasy feelings about how this organization is being run will probably have a lot to do with it," the office manager wrote. "I'm not sure if this email will be suitable for you and the board to take a look into how things are actually going around here, but I would also be willing to sit down with you."

In response, the office manager said, she got a brief email from Fontaine that thanked her for letting the board know about the issues.

Several months later, in September 2022, Lisa Guerrero, who had recently started as Sara Holbrook's early childhood program director, noticed that retirement funds deducted from her paycheck, as well as employer contributions, were not being deposited in her Vanguard 401k account. For eight months, Guerrero said, she tried to get to the bottom of it by communicating with Lloyd-Newberry, Vanguard, and, eventually, state and federal labor departments. In April 2023 — the month Guerrero left Sara Holbrook — missing contributions started showing up in her Vanguard account. Payments have been made regularly since, but she said Sara Holbrook still owes her around $800, including money withheld from her paycheck.

Guerrero said she tried to inform board members about the 401k situation in reports she wrote for them. When Guerrero never heard from the board, she asked an administrative assistant to show her a copy of one. Filed at three pages, her report had been whittled down to around five bullet points — none of which mentioned her concerns about the 401k issue.

Guerrero and three other staff members also told Seven Days that they were promised $1,000 retention bonuses in December 2022 as part of a state-funded initiative for early childhood educators. One educator said she eventually reached out to the state agency in charge of the grant, which confirmed it had sent the funds to Sara Holbrook. She, Guerrero and another former employee said they received retention checks for $1,000 in the mail in January 2024 — months after they had left their jobs.

Guerrero and other employees also described an environment that felt unsupportive and unprofessional. Staff were ignored when they raised concerns about work challenges, they said.

"I was defined as having a bad attitude or always finding something to complain about," Guerrero wrote in an email. "Despite my advanced degrees and professional reputation and competence, I felt like I was seen as more of a nuisance than an important perspective and resource."

Eventually, Guerrero said, she'd had enough and quit.

"My experience there ended my 30-year career in early ed," Guerrero said. "They not only burned me out of the organization, they burned me out of the field."

The same month that Guerrero left, Sara Holbrook announced it would close the early childhood program it had run for more than two decades. At the time, the organization said the move would save money and allow it to focus on serving school-age children.

"Ongoing workforce shortages and financial losses related to lack of adequate state and local reimbursement for such programs has hastened this decision," a press release said. It quoted Lloyd-Newberry, who said the program's challenges existed for more than a decade.

That didn't sit well with Pollander, the former executive director.

In an email to board members Bruce Chattman and Larry Kupferman, Pollander wrote that she was "heartbroken" to hear of the early ed closure, noting that it was one of the hallmarks of Sara Holbrook. Lloyd-Newberry's assertion that the early education program had been in financial trouble for 10 years was "grossly incorrect," Pollander wrote.

"I never would have recommended that we move ahead with a capital campaign to expand programs that were losing money," Pollander wrote.

She also questioned why more donor outreach wasn't being done.

"In the last few months, four donors have reached out to tell me that they did not receive holiday appeal cards from the center," Pollander wrote. "Two long standing annual funders have told me they haven't received grant requests from the Center in 3 years."

One donor, Vicky Smith, said she gave Sara Holbrook as much as $15,000 over several years — and never got a thank-you letter or any follow-up correspondence, which she found odd. Cultivating positive relationships with donors is an important part of successful fundraising, noted Smith, who served as executive director of Burlington's King Street Youth Center for 14 years before retiring in 2021.

During that time, Smith oversaw a large building renovation. Such projects, she said, are challenging but can bring new energy, exposure and donors to a nonprofit.

For whatever reason, it appears Sara Holbrook wasn't able to capitalize on its remodel. Bob Duncan of Duncan Wisniewski Architecture, the architect in charge of the project, said construction came in just $15,000 over budget.

Smith said the loss of the center is a tremendous blow to the Burlington community. Along with King Street and the Boys & Girls Club of Burlington, Sara Holbrook "is such an important organization in the work of supporting marginalized youth and families," Smith said.

Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak echoed that sentiment in a statement to Seven Days.

The closure "is an upsetting moment for our community," the mayor said. "The loss of these youth services will be impactful."

It's unclear when the board decided the organization would have to close. Last year, the organization received a large loan from Frank and Ducky Donath, two longtime supporters who are both in their nineties. Ducky Donath was also a longtime board member but said she hadn't attended meetings in recent years. As recently as this spring, the nonprofit was searching for a new executive director to replace Lloyd-Newberry, who planned to move to Georgia this summer.

One person who applied — and spoke on condition of anonymity — told Seven Days she withdrew from consideration after seeing the large losses reported on Sara Holbrook's public tax forms. Soon after, Fontaine, the board chair, asked the candidate to join the board, and she did. But what she saw only deepened her concerns.

During the five or so meetings she attended, board members weren't asking the executive director any questions related to the organization's finances, which surprised her. She quit this spring.

"I just realized they were really in bad shape and there was nothing I could do to help them," the woman, who has a background in nonprofit management, told Seven Days.

Last month, two days before the closure announcement, the center posted a thank-you on Facebook to a local company that donated office supplies.

"Our admin and management team is stocked up and ready to tackle new adventures this fall!" the post said.

That won't be happening. But board chair Fontaine told Seven Days that she hopes the new building can be used as "a public asset for ongoing value to the community."

That's where the Champlain Housing Trust comes in. Monte, the CEO, said the deal to buy the building should be completed around October 1. The Burlington School District has a lease for a portion of the building this school year, and Monte hopes a new tenant, such as a childcare center, will eventually move in.

It's a solution that would at least allow the building to serve as a resource for Burlington families for years to come.