LGBTQ youth center accused Pierce County AIDS group of stealing $200K. Lawsuit has settled
Nearly a year after Tacoma’s LGBTQ youth center filed a lawsuit against the Pierce County AIDS Foundation, alleging PCAF stole more than $200,000 from the center in a breach of contract, the Oasis Youth Center announced the lawsuit has been settled.
In a message sent to supporters Friday, Oasis Youth Center executive director Matthew Wilson said the nonprofit settled the lawsuit with PCAF, its board of directors and its former CEO, “restoring all $231,315.67 in funds to Oasis and repaying its legal fees.”
“PCAF served as our fiscal sponsor for a decade until 2023, when it spent all of our funds as it navigated a budget crisis. Oasis reluctantly sued PCAF in Pierce County Superior Court to retrieve our money,” Wilson wrote. “Without funding last year, our doors could have closed, but you, the Pierce County community, rallied around us. Thank you.”
Thanks to local support and the settlement funds, Wilson said in the email, “we are in solid fiscal health once again.”
The Oasis Youth Center is a community organization that serves about 430 LGBTQ youth in Tacoma and served over 1,000 pre-pandemic, offering weekly programs, advocacy work, mental health and housing referrals, emergency financial assistance and peer and adult support, among other services, according to its website. It’s been around since the 1980s.
As previously reported by The News Tribune, last year saw the tumultuous end of PCAF, which provided a variety of services to about 3,000 residents living with HIV/AIDS in the South Sound region for 37 years.
Last fall some ex-PCAF employees said they believed they were fired for speaking out about a toxic workplace environment less than a week after PCAF reported issues receiving funding from the state Department of Health. DOH later terminated contracts with PCAF amid allegations of financial mismanagement, and PCAF laid off its CEO and most of its staff after the Oasis Youth Center filed a lawsuit alleging PCAF misappropriated more than $200,000 in a breach of contract. PCAF’s CEO alleged anti-Black racism played a role in his termination.
As reported by The News Tribune in June, PCAF dissolved, and global nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation was chosen by DOH to take over providing case management and other prevention-focused services in Pierce County starting in July. PCAF’s building at 3009 S. 40th St. was sold to AHF, and the PCAF board would be dissolved, PCAF mission and arts supervisor jill frey, who prefers her name in lowercase, told The News Tribune.
According to a complaint filed in court, Oasis Youth Center alleged PCAF breached its 2013 Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement, which agreed to hold Oasis’s funds separately and use them solely for Oasis’s benefit. Instead, Oasis Youth Center said PCAF used nearly all of its reserve funds to cover its own expenses, leaving Oasis leadership in the dark. Upon terminating the agreement, PCAF did not immediately return the funds owed, according to court records.
In response, PCAF board members, including president Will Wayburn, argued as volunteers for a nonprofit they should not be personally held liable for harm caused by PCAF and denied engaging in “willful criminal misconduct, gross negligence or reckless misconduct” and said members, “At all material times … acted in good faith, and their actions have otherwise been justified,” according to an answer to the complaint e-filed on March 28. They denied allegations of wrongdoing.
In response to Oasis’s complaint, former PCAF CEO Ace Robinson denied using funds belonging to Oasis in violation of the agreement and denied he took wrongful actions toward Oasis, according to court records.
The case was settled on Sept. 11 and dismissed without prejudice on Oct. 8, according to court records.
