A charity raises money to recover the Shenandoah Valley’s Black history. Its tax filings show the money going to New York.

The Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project makes a local promise. Its mission, in the words of its own federal tax return, is “recovering the rich African American history of the Shenandoah Valley,” sharing that history “with the descendants of their families,” and “illuminating the way it was by adding to the research that has been done.” [1] Everything about the appeal is rooted here, in Harrisonburg and the counties around it, and that appeal has drawn local donations, foundation grants, and, most recently, federal dollars.

The organization’s own filings tell a different story about where the money ends up. Over the four years from 2021 through 2024, the Heritage Project paid out roughly $238,000 in grants to other organizations, and on the face of its returns almost none of the recipients have any connection to the Shenandoah Valley, or to Black history here, at all. [2] The money went to theaters and dance companies hundreds of miles away, most of them in and around New York City.

Follow the grants

The largest single grant the organization made in those four years did not stay in the Valley and did not fund Valley history. It was $62,000, sent in 2021 to Theater of War Productions, a performance company in New York City. [3] That one grant was larger than everything the organization spent that year running its own programs. [4]

The pattern held. In 2022 the Heritage Project sent $13,000 to The Joyce Theater in Manhattan, $10,000 to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, $8,000 to a group in Washington, D.C., and $5,000 each to arts organizations in Astoria, New York, in Rockport, Massachusetts, and in Oakland, California. [5] In 2023 it sent $27,500 to the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, another $20,000 to The Joyce Theater, and $10,000 to a theater foundation in Croton Falls, New York. [6] In 2024 it sent $32,500 more to the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and paid out an additional $30,000 to two individuals it identified on its return only as “community grants.” [7] The stated purposes for the out-of-state grants are generic: “support programming,” “program sponsorship,” “support expansion.” [8]

Across all four years, of every itemized grant the organization made, exactly one has an obvious local, mission-related character: $9,035 to Fairview Cemetery in Staunton, for summer maintenance. [9] Everything else in the grant column went out of state, to organizations whose work is dance and theater, not the recovery of Shenandoah Valley Black history.

The mission, and the gap

The Heritage Project does do local work, and it describes that work in its own filings: the Roots Run Deep driving tours from Berryville to Staunton, genealogy help for local families, free DNA kits, an African American cemetery database, a heritage center in Harrisonburg. [10] But that local, mission-aligned work is paid for out of the organization’s “events and tours” spending and its payroll, not out of the grants. [11] The grant money, the single largest category of what the organization gives away, flows almost entirely to out-of-state arts groups.

Nowhere in the filings does the organization explain how underwriting a New York theater company advances the recovery of the Shenandoah Valley’s Black history. The purposes listed are too thin to bridge the gap, and the recipients are too far afield to bridge it on their own. It is possible those groups produced work connected to Valley history that simply is not described on the returns. But on the documents as they stand, the organization is raising money on a local mission and spending a large share of it a long way from the mission, and its donors are entitled to an explanation.

Where the money comes from, and who watches it

The Heritage Project runs almost entirely on other people’s money. In every year on file, it reports that one hundred percent of its revenue comes from contributions and grants, with no earned program income of any kind. [12] Its largest year was 2024, when it took in $223,260, a figure inflated by a one-time $72,000 federal appropriation that Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine secured for the group. [13] Who provides the rest of the money is not public: the organization’s returns indicate a schedule of major donors was required, but federal rules do not force charities to disclose donor names, and its public filings do not include them. [14]

The people minding that money are few, and, in one year, were a single person. On its 2023 return, the organization reported exactly one voting member of its governing body. [15] The reported board has swung from six members in 2017 to seven in 2022, down to one in 2023, and back to three in 2024. [16] Its executive director, Monica Robinson, signed the 2024 return as the organization’s president while also serving as its executive director, concentrating the top staff role and the top board role in one person. [17] None of the filings reviewed were independently audited or reviewed by an outside accountant, though the 990s show they were prepared by Harrisonburg accounting firm, Brown, Edwards & Company LLP. [18]

Robinson’s pay is a smaller sum than the out-of-state grants, but it moved in the same direction, away from the modest scale the mission implies. Reported at $12,466 in 2021, her compensation rose to $18,800 in 2023 and to $49,494 in 2024, for a position the organization lists, every year, as 20 hours a week. [19] In 2024 her pay equaled roughly 22 percent of everything the organization raised, in a year it spent more than it took in and posted its first operating deficit. [20]

None of this is concealed. The grants, the salary, the shrunken board, and the missing audit are all disclosed on the face of the returns. But disclosure is not explanation. A charity that asks the public to fund the recovery of the Shenandoah Valley’s Black history, and then sends the largest part of its grant dollars to theaters in New York, owes the people who gave that money an account of why. Its tax filings do not provide one.

[Editor’s note: Republitarian sought comment from the Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project and from Monica Robinson and received no response.]

Notes

1. Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project, Inc., IRS Form 990 (2024), Part I and Part III (mission statement). EIN 81-1709430. The organization’s filings are available through the IRS and third-party databases such as ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.
2. Grants to organizations are reported on Part IX, line 1 of the Forms 990: $75,863 (2021), $68,388 (2022), $61,400 (2023), and $32,500 (2024). The 2024 return also reports $30,000 in grants to individuals on Part IX, line 2.
3. Form 990 (2021), Schedule I, Part II (Theater of War Productions, New York, N.Y., $62,000). The same schedule reports $7,000 to Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Tex.
4. Form 990 (2021), comparing Part IX, line 1 (grants, $75,863) with the program service expense figures reported in Part III.
5. Form 990 (2022), Schedule I, Part II: The Joyce Theater ($13,000), New Jersey Performing Arts Center ($10,000), Groundswell, Washington, D.C. ($8,000), IndieSpace, Astoria, N.Y. ($5,000), Windhover Performing Arts, Rockport, Mass. ($5,000), Give2Asia, Oakland, Calif. ($5,000).
6. Form 990 (2023), Schedule I, Part II: Brooklyn Arts Exchange ($27,500), The Joyce Theater ($20,000), Schoolhouse Theater Foundation, Croton Falls, N.Y. ($10,000).
7. Form 990 (2024), Part IX, lines 1 and 2, and Schedule I (Brooklyn Arts Exchange, $32,500; $30,000 in “community grants” to two individuals).
8. Grant purposes as stated in column (h) of Schedule I on the respective returns.
9. Form 990 (2022), Schedule I, Part II (Fairview Cemetery, Staunton, Va., $9,035, “summer maintenance”).
10. Program activities are described in Part III of the 2023 and 2024 Forms 990.
11. Form 990 (2023) and (2024), Part IX, which report “events and tours” and salary expenses separately from the grants on lines 1 and 2.
12. Program service revenue is reported as zero on Part VIII of each Form 990; the public-support schedule (Schedule A) reports public support at roughly 92 to 100 percent.
13. Form 990 (2024), Part I, line 12, and Part VIII, Statement of Revenue (a $72,000 item, with $151,260 in other contributions). See also “Shenandoah Valley Black Heritage Project to get $72,000 through senators’ support,” WHSV-TV3, Aug. 21, 2023.
14. Part IV, line 2 of each Form 990 indicates Schedule B is required; donor identities are not included in the public filings.
15. Form 990 (2023), Part I, lines 3 and 4, and Part VI, Section A, line 1a (one voting member of the governing body).
16. Form 990-EZ (2017), Part IV; Form 990 (2022), (2023), and (2024), Part I, line 3 (seven, one, and three voting members, respectively).
17. Form 990 (2024), signature block, Part VII, and Part VI, Section C, line 20.
18. Schedule D, Part XII, line 2, of the 2021 through 2024 Forms 990 (no independent audit or review).
19. Executive director compensation and hours are reported on Part VII, Section A, of each Form 990, and compensation also on Part IX, line 5: $12,466 (2021), $12,000 (2022), $18,800 (2023), $49,494 (2024), at 20 reported hours per week.
20. $49,494 compensation against $223,260 total revenue (2024), Form 990 (2024), Part VII and Part I, line 12; deficit of $5,969 at Part I, line 19.