A new CEO is expected to lead Yellowstone Forever on a course to success/NPS file, Jacob W. Frank

A new CEO is to take the helm at Yellowstone Forever next week, a move expected to begin a transition for the troubled nonprofit organization that the National Park Service seriously had considered jettisoning from its role as the main fundraiser for Yellowstone National Park.

The appointment of the CEO, an individual well-versed in nonprofits and fundraising on a national basis who also is very familiar with Yellowstone, is seen as way to pull Yellowstone Forever from the flames of self-immolation spurred largely by a lack of financial oversight.

Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly for weeks had been debating whether it made sense to sever the Park Service's operating agreement with Yellowstone Forever. In the end he decided that would create untenable risks, including the loss of key assets used by the Yellowstone Institute.

"I think if you want to look at the fastest way to get the institute restarted, it’s to stay under the umbrella of YF," Sholly said Saturday. "If you pull it out it's very vulnerable. All the assets and things don’t come with it.”

When Yellowstone Forever arose in 2016 from the merger of the Yellowstone Association and the Yellowstone Park Foundation, its proponents believed it would become a giant in nonprofit fundraising for the park. But rapid spending, frictions between the board members brought together from the two predecessor organizations, and questionable accounting hamstrung the organization.

Earlier this year Yellowstone Forever's leadership shut down the venerable Yellowstone Institute and terminated a great number of staff, including its vice president of operations and the teams that worked under him. The organization also invited real estate agents to look at some of its properties, decided it couldn't afford to run institute programs even on a limited basis this summer due to Covid-19 and the associated costs, and has been continuing to explore further cost-cutting.

"This is a way for us to get the institute restarted as quickly as possible," Sholly said Saturday, pointing to the incoming CEO and some transitions on the current YF board. "I think we can make some adjustments to that business plan that the team worked on already that can be implemented."

There have been calls for Sholly to sever the park's relationship with YF. In a Facebook post to the superintendent, Gardiner, Montana, resident George Bumann said the organiziation's board was unredeemable.

"Ample proof has shown that the requisite change will not come from within; therefore it must come from without. If a dissolution of the YF/YNP cooperating agreement is not possible, shall we call upon all individuals and resources at our disposal to enact maximum legal, financial, media and political pressure to bring this organization to order or an end?" wrote Bumann. "Wasting further energy on this current board is a non-starter and it needs to be refocused on what’s next."

While Sholly said he appreciates the passion, the emotions, and the concerns of those who want the board out and the Yellowstone Institute restarted as soon as possible, even possibly as a free-standing entity, he said that's more complicated than it sounds. There's the matter of untangling assets and liabilities, organizing a new 501(c)(3), getting funding and personnel, having to purchase vehicles to conduct programming in the park, and finding housing for staff, since a severing of the current agreement likely would send YF into bankrupcty and force it to sell the assets used by the institute.

"I don’t think they understand the consequences to the institute. It’s not as easy as, 'Let’s separate and go it on our own.' There’s a lot more to it," the superintendent said.

The Yellowstone Association brought assets of $13.6 million to the 2016 merger; among them the "Arch House," which was designed by Robert Reamer, the same architect who designed the Old Faithful Inn, near the north entrance of the park in Gardiner; the "NEC," or Northeast Education Center that accommodated Yellowstone Association staff, and; the 80-acre Yellowstone Overlook Field Campus, which the association acquired in 2010 for $2.25 million.

If Yellowstone Forever were to default on the $3.6 million taken out from its lines of credit, those facilities could be lost, said Sholly.

During the past two months the superintendent has been in discussions with National Park Service leadership in Washington, D.C., about how best to handle the situation, and has searched for possible donors who could save the institute's assets if YF headed towards bankruptcy. He even reached out to NatureBridge, a nonprofit organization that runs interpretive and educational programs in Yosemite and Olympic national parks, to see if it could operate the institute programs, but that organization has largely reined in its operations due to Covid-19.

The current approach seemed to make the most sense to Sholly.

"I have a lot of confidence in the CEO they’re bringing in. To me, if we didn’t have a high-quality CEO candidate, I think it would be a more difficult decision," the superintendent said. "But we do, and I think people are really going to like her. I think the liabilities are clearly something that are hanging over the organization’s head, and those have accumulated over years at different times for different reasons, but it’s a large amount of money."

In addition to the $3.6 million owed against the lines of credit, Yellowstone Forever earlier this year received a $1.5 million PPP loan from the federal government, though Sholly was fairly confident the bulk of the loan would be forgiven under the PPP guidelines.

A strong month of fundraising in June helped YF get its operating overhead under control, aided the search for a CEO, and if the trend continues could relatively quickly get the organization back on its feet, said Sholly.

"The credit line I feel like we’re going to be able to pay down pretty quickly. I believe in 12 months, 12-18 months, we won’t have everything paid off, but we will have substantial progress in the right direction, including the Institute back up and running," said the superintendent.

Depending on how things go with the organization and with the Covid-19 situation, the institute might be able to offer some of its winter programs later this year, he said.

"There’s a lot of work that has to be done there, a lot of relationship mending that needs to be worked on." Sholly said. "I feel good that the new CEO is going to make that happen. What I need is an open mind from those who understandably have the emotions that they do and perhaps wanted to see a completely different type of setup. That’s not going to happen.

"The faster than people kind of get their head around that and start rowing in the right direction with us, the better that it’s going to be for the institute."

Along with a new CEO coming aboard, the board's chair, Kay Yeager, left the board this week, and "several other board members have transitioned off over the past months, and additional transitions will be forthcoming once the CEO is in place," according to Sholly.

At the end of the day, the superintendent acknowledged the faith he's putting into the current approach to saving YF.

“We’ve been talking to a lot of people, and a lot of people wanted to help," he said. "They did want to see some changes and some restructuring. I feel like this is going to go faster than you think and it’s going to be different.

"If it’s not, it’s on me.”

Looking around the National Park System, Sholly said there are a lot of great cooperating associations that Yellowstone Forever can learn from.

“There are some good things that we can take from some other park partner success stories and bring them in,” he said.

Still to be resolved is an intensive review of YF's accounting.

"I think that’s a good thing, for us to make sure that we know where money went, where it was allocated," Sholly replied when asked if there still needs to be a forensic accounting of the books. "I think there’s some truth to some issues with financial accounting, and I think there’s some hyperbole around it as well. I think it’s important to kind of separate those two.”