RISE Foundation Closes After $250,000 in State Money

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Waynesboro’s RISE Foundation will close its doors on October 31. Four years ago, the General Assembly handed this small after-school reading program $250,000 of state taxpayer money. Its last public tax return shows less than $6,000 in the bank, a $10,000 loan whose balance did not move in a year, and negative net assets for two straight years.

The co-founders, Chanda McGuffin-Tucker and Sharon Fitz, told supporters by email that the organization is ceasing operations. According to Augusta Free Press, the same email asked for money.

Nobody needs to allege a crime to say this: when a nonprofit takes a quarter of a million dollars from the Commonwealth and then folds, the people who paid for it are owed a final accounting. I read RISE’s last three federal tax returns, its state budget history, and its charitable registration file. Here is what the public record shows, and what it doesn’t.

How a local nonprofit got a line in the state budget

RISE did not win its money in a competitive grant process. It got a member earmark: a named line item in the Department of Education’s budget, under Direct Aid to Public Education.

The 2022 budget amendment provided $250,000 from the general fund in fiscal year 2023 “to the RISE Foundation of Waynesboro for preventive services for at-risk youth.” Then-Delegate John Avoli of Staunton carried it. He announced the money at RISE’s offices in June 2022, with help from other legislators and Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, according to WHSV. In that same story, Fitz said RISE did not yet have a set plan for how to use all of it.

The earmark ended up being a one-time payment, though not for lack of trying. In 2023, Avoli filed an amendment for another $250,000 in fiscal 2024. RISE later sought $250,000 a year in the 2024-2026 budget through Richmond Democrat Delores McQuinn, and again in the 2026-2028 budget through Waynesboro Republican Ellen McLaughlin. None of those made it into a final budget.

The sponsors came from both parties, and that is the point. Earmarks for favored local groups are a bipartisan habit. They skip the scrutiny a competitive grant would get, and they tend to arrive with a ribbon-cutting and leave without a report card.

What the tax returns show

RISE filed a short Form 990-EZ for 2022 and 2024 and a full Form 990 for 2023. All three are public through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.

202220232024
Total revenue$177,929$260,769$121,092
Total expenses$163,528$276,936$122,037
Occupancy (rent)$29,138$70,715$63,085
Executive director pay$25,000$34,375$2,000
Net assets at year end$13,071($3,096)($4,041)

Three things stand out.

First, the state money doesn’t add up on the 2023 return. The appropriation was $250,000. The 2023 Form 990 reports $150,000 in government grants. RISE keeps its books on a calendar year, while the state’s fiscal 2023 ran from July 2022 through June 2023. So the likeliest explanation is that $100,000 arrived in late 2022 and was lumped in with other contributions on the 2022 short form, which doesn’t break out government money. That is plausible, but the returns can’t prove it. Only the Department of Education’s payment records can.

Second, rent ate the organization. Occupancy more than doubled in 2023, the year the state money arrived, and barely came down afterward. By 2024, rent was 52 percent of everything RISE spent. When the grant money ran out, the executive director’s pay was cut from $34,375 to $2,000. The lease stayed.

Third, the balance sheet slipped underwater and stayed there. RISE ended 2024 with $5,959 in cash and a $10,000 loan from a lender listed only as “Piedmont.” No interest expense appears in either year the loan is on the books, and the terms aren’t disclosed.

In fairness to RISE, its pay was modest by any standard. The executive director’s reported salary works out to roughly $12 to $16 an hour. The returns report no loans to insiders, no family business dealings, and no excess benefit transactions. Nothing here suggests anyone got rich. What it suggests is a program that grew its fixed costs on the strength of one-time money and could not sustain them.

The paperwork problems

The money is only part of the story. The filings raise questions that should have been caught by anyone handing this group a quarter of a million dollars.

What kind of entity is RISE? On all three federal returns, RISE checked “Other” for its form of organization and wrote in “Partnership.” Its charitable registration with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services lists it as a “Limited Liability Partnership.” A 501(c)(3) has to be a corporation, a trust, or an association. A partnership isn’t eligible, and neither is an LLP. Either these are clerical errors repeated for years across two agencies, or RISE never incorporated as a nonprofit. The State Corporation Commission’s records would settle it. Its online system was down for maintenance when I checked, and I will report what it shows.

Is RISE still registered to solicit? VDACS’s public portal shows RISE as “Registered,” but with an expiration date of May 15, 2026. It received an approved extension in April. I found no renewal filed after that. If the registration has lapsed, RISE should not be asking Virginians for donations, including in its farewell email.

How much went to programs? The 2023 return claims about 89 percent of spending went to programs. But nearly every expense line is split by the same formula, 80 percent program, 10 percent management, 10 percent fundraising, from salary to rent to the accountant’s fee. That is an assumption plugged into a spreadsheet, not a measurement of how money was used.

The returns also describe the same results year after year, word for word: 75 to 100 “scholars,” reading gains of one to two grade levels, a library of 1,500 books. Expenses appear on the returns that no program description explains, including about $16,000 in travel and lodging in 2022, a “Women’s Summit,” and internet and TV service. None of these is improper on its face. All of them deserve an explanation from an organization that took public money.

What RISE’s co-founder told a bankruptcy court

Chanda McGuffin, listed on the tax returns as RISE’s co-founder and identified in news coverage as its chief financial officer, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Virginia on August 6, 2025 (Case No. 25-50455), and received a discharge on November 13, 2025. The court’s notice of prior filings shows three earlier Chapter 7 cases, filed in 1995, 2002 and 2012, each ending in a standard discharge.

Personal bankruptcy is a lawful remedy, and it is not evidence of wrongdoing at RISE. The petition lists no debts belonging to RISE, including the Piedmont loan. It reports no wages from the foundation, which matches the tax returns showing she was unpaid. The filing matters to this story for two other reasons.

The first is oversight. McGuffin signed RISE’s federal tax returns. The Commonwealth sent $250,000 to an organization whose finances were overseen by someone with four personal bankruptcies over three decades. A member earmark involves no application and no review, so there is no sign anyone in Richmond asked.

The second goes to what RISE actually is. In her Statement of Financial Affairs, signed under penalty of perjury, McGuffin was asked about her connections to any business in the previous four years. She listed “Rise Foundation, Waynesboro,” an “Education Non-profit” in existence “From 2018 To Present.” She did not check the box for “officer, director, or managing executive of a corporation.” She checked “owner of at least 5% of the voting or equity securities of a corporation.” A nonprofit has no owners and issues no equity. In the same filing, she answered “No” when asked whether she held any interest in an incorporated or unincorporated business, or in a partnership.

That makes three descriptions of the same organization in three official records. It is a partnership on its IRS returns, a limited liability partnership with the state’s charity regulator, and a corporation she partly owns in federal bankruptcy court. An organization that received $250,000 in public money should be able to say which one it is.

A charity, a business, and a PAC at one address

RISE was never just a charity. A 2022 JMU alumni profile of McGuffin described RISE as working through “its for-profit side, the nonprofit RISE Foundation and a political action committee.”

The PAC is Power of the People PAC, registered with the Virginia Department of Elections as PAC-20-00032. Its campaign finance reports list its address as “c/o RISE PO Box 1183, Waynesboro,” the same post office box the RISE Foundation uses on its tax returns. The PAC’s balances have been small, a few hundred dollars per report.

Sharing a mailbox is not illegal. But a 501(c)(3) is flatly prohibited from participating in political campaigns for or against any candidate, and it cannot let its staff, space, or money be used for a PAC’s work. When one group operates a tax-exempt charity, a for-profit side, and a political committee from the same address, the public is entitled to know where one ends and the next begins.

That question is more than academic this fall. Augusta Free Press reports that McGuffin-Tucker played a role in the controversy that ended Kelvin Washington’s campaign for the Ward C seat on the Waynesboro School Board, a candidate she had also supported financially. Individuals are free to back whomever they like. A charity is not.

Where does it all go now?

When a 501(c)(3) dissolves, its remaining assets can’t go home with the founders. Federal law requires them to go to another tax-exempt charity or to a government for a public purpose. That includes cash, equipment, furniture, and the library of more than 1,500 books that RISE called the centerpiece of its work. RISE’s final federal return must include Schedule N, which reports exactly what was distributed and to whom.

I am sending public records requests and questions to the agencies that can answer what the tax returns can’t:

  1. To the Virginia Department of Education: when and in what amounts the $250,000 was paid, and what grant agreement, reporting, or spending requirements came with it.
  2. To VDACS: RISE’s Form 102 registration filings, including the financial statements filed with them, and whether its registration remains in effect.
  3. To the State Corporation Commission: whether the RISE Foundation exists as a Virginia nonstock corporation, a limited liability partnership, or not at all.

Chanda McGuffin-Tucker and Sharon Fitz are welcome to respond, and I will publish their answers in full.

RISE may have done real good for the children who came through its doors. That is not the question. The question is whether the Commonwealth checked what it was buying with $250,000, and whether anyone will check now that the doors are closing. Taxpayers in Waynesboro and across Virginia deserve to see the receipts.

Sources

Updated: October 22, 2026 — 8:39 pm

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