The New College Institute’s board of directors voted unanimously Wednesday to support a new, independent nonprofit foundation to raise money to supplement its state funding.
Incoming board chair Richard Hall, who was approved to the position during the meeting, said there are no binding obligations at this time, but said, “In this beginning stage, NCI supports the steps in place to move forward.”
The move was proposed after a 90-minute closed session with a representative of the state attorney general’s office, which serves as legal counsel for the state-run higher education center in Martinsville.
The board indicated it was beginning mediation with its foundation in late April, when Hall was chosen as the institute’s point person for the process.
Board member Valerie Crummie Johnson on Wednesday asked whether the outcome of mediation would drive the institute’s direction moving forward, during a brief discussion where Hall acknowledged the institute being “at a turning point.” But the board’s relationship with its foundation, which broke away from the institute last year, was not discussed further during the public session.
The New College Institute and its foundation have been at odds since February 2023, when the New College Foundation renamed itself the Martinsville-Henry County Academic Foundation and broadened its scope to serve educational causes throughout the region.
The attorney general’s office quickly got involved because the foundation had been created solely to support NCI through fundraising. Hanging in the balance is about $13 million in assets, including about $7.5 million from the 2020 sale of the New College Institute building to the state.
The possibility of NCI launching a new foundation to raise money on its behalf was first proposed in a September 2023 meeting, where then-chair Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, said he could “see the light at the end of the tunnel” regarding relations with the foundation.
Stanley is no longer on the board, which is required by the state to have several members who are elected to the General Assembly. Stanley this spring asked the Senate Rules committee for his appointment not to be renewed for another term.
“Senator Stanley had always planned to retire from the NCI Board this year after serving on it for over a decade,” his legislative chief of staff, Aaron Arnold, said by email in May. “He stayed on just to ensure that the funding for New College was restored.”
The higher education center — which faced a period of leadership turnover and low program enrollment during the pandemic — was cut from the governor’s original budget for 2025-2026. After Gov. Glenn Youngkin visited Martinsville and received the institute’s business plan, funding for the full biennium was restored to the budget.
