Inspector general says city failed in oversight of grants to Clara White Mission

The city of Jacksonville failed to adequately oversee grants awarded to to Clara White Mission, the nonprofit headed by City Council member Ju'Coby Pittman, and the organization could not provide accurate data for how many people it serves in its program that give meals to the homeless, according to a city Office of Inspector General report issued Monday.

The report says in addition to examining records, Office of Inspector General investigators monitored Clara White Mission's headquarters several times during the organization's meal distribution hours and did not see large numbers of people waiting to get meals.

Clara White Mission also provides assistance to veterans. The report says the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs determined the Clara White Mission overbilled the federal department by at total of about $98,000.

And the report says Clara White Mission did not provide vocational training, which is another one of its listed services, from 2019 until this April even while its website and official letterhead advertised that training as part of its ongoing operations.

The report by the Office of Investigator General is the latest in a round of investigations that started after five of six Clara White Mission executive board members abruptly resigned in 2021. The inspector general opened an investigation of the agency and turned it over to the FBI which closed its case in 2023 without publishing any disposition or findings, the report says.

Pittman has said in the past that board members who resigned did not understand how the process worked and were making false allegations against her.

Curtis Fallgatter, an attorney for the nonprofit, said in October the federal investigation was "initiated by disgruntled prior board members whose claims were vindictive and unfounded." He said the scrutiny had not prompted any changes at Clara White Mission because "given the fact these claims were nonsense, there exists no need" for any changes.

The report by the inspector general is an administrative review of how Clara White Mission has handled city grants and what the city has done to ensure the organization complied with contracts for properly spending the grant money.

The inspector general examined 11 grants totaling nearly $3.65 million the city awarded to Clara White Mission from September 2018 to October 2023.

The inspector general's report says the city Division of Grants & Compliance "did not provide a single contract file containing all required monthly, quarterly and annual assessments. Many of the files consisted of blank Xcel spreadsheets."

The report says the grants compliance division only had documented on-site assessments for four of the grants. Three of those assessments were "incomplete or illegible."

The report says the review of the non-profit's Feeding the Homeless Initiative found that Clara White Mission's methods for tracking its meal recipients are lacking and do not match the methods the nonprofit describes in its grant proposals.

The report says Clara White Mission does not require clients to identify themselves by name when they receive meals so it "cannot accurately account for new versus returning clients."

The report says the organization can only come up with estimates for the number of unidentified returning clients being assisted by the city grant funding. The report says despite using estimates, Clara White Mission says on its annual Form 990 submitted to the Internal Revenue Service it serves about 350 clients daily and the agency's applications for city grants list "specific numerical goals" for providing meals to initial and returning clients.

The report says Clara White Mission's "methods for tracking meal recipients are insufficient and do not coincide with methods described in the grant proposals. These numbers can only be estimated. OIG investigators monitored the (Clara White Mission) headquarters during meal distribution hours on several occasions and did not observe large numbers of clients waiting to be served meals."

The city's acting chief for grants and contract compliance said in response to the report that the division will strengthen its process for collecting documents in order to ensure tougher oversight of grant funding.

Maribel Hernandez, acting chief and grants administrator in the Division of Grants and Compliance, wrote to the inspector general she could not respond to the report's specific recommendation for Clara White Mission regarding how it has submitted specific target numbers for annual meal recipients.

Hernandez said she was not in the division at the time of those grants to Clara White Mission and has no "direct knowledge" of the contracts.

She said the division will "review, revise and revamp" all of its procedures so they are "clear and accurate."

More: Nate Monroe: Council-connected nonprofit in line for money was investigated by the FBI

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The inspector general also sought to examine vocational training offered by the Clara White Mission in culinary, janitorial and construction-related fields between 2018 and 2023. The agency provided documentation for culinary training courses in 2018 and 2019. Clara White Mission told investigators the agency suspended those training courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The vocational training resumed in April of this year.

The inspector general report says Clara White Mission "consistently advertised vocational training as an ongoing part of operations between 2019 and 2024, even though this initiative ceased at the onset of COVID-19 and did not resume again until April 2024."

The third area examined by the inspector general was Clara White Mission's program for assisting veterans. Investigators filed federal Freedom of Information Act requests with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and obtained records showing the department found Clara White Mission overbilled the federal government on federal grants.

A letter in February 2023 said Clara White Mission overbilled Veterans Affairs by $2,496, and a letter in June 2023 said Clara White Mission overbilled by $95,604. Clara White Mission told the inspector general the nonprofit was making repayments.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Inspector general: Jacksonville lax in monitoring Clara White Mission