Ferrum College

“One of our trustees is a senior vice president of a bank where at least one officer has an account.”

“The bylaws were changed in april 2021 to define board compensation and voting members and further define board responsibilities: the articles of incorporation were adjusted where necessary to be consistent with changes in the bylaws.”

“Four ex-officio trustees shall serve with the vote - they are 1) president of ferrum college alumni association, 2) resident bishop of the virginia annual conference (vac) of the united methodist church (umc), 3) superintendent of the danville district of the umc, and 4) the president of the united methodist women of the virginia annual conference of the united methodist church or designee (ex-officio); the remainder of the voting trustees are elected by the board of trustees.”

“The audit committee of the board of trustees accepts responsibility for detailed review of the 990 and after their review, the 990 is made available for the full board of trustees for review prior to filing.”

“Ferrum college has policies for regularly and consistently monitoring potential conflicts of interest for the governing board and employees. In both cases, at a minimum board members and employees are required to complete conflict of interest forms which require notice of potential conflict of interest if it should arise within the annual reporting. This notice would be provided to the chair of the board if from a trustee or the director of human resources if an employee. The audit committee of the board of trustees reviews the conflict of interest policy as it relates to the board of trustees to ensure that potential conflicts are adequately resolved and documented. They also review related party transaction of board members. The president has delegated the responsibility of oversight of the employee conflict of interest policy to the director of human resources and the vice presidents for the functional areas of the college. If a board member is deemed to have a conflict of interest he or she shall be disqualified from voting on any matter that presents a conflict unless such disqualification has been waived by the executive committee of the board of trustees.”

“In establishing compensation for the president, the executive committee of the board obtains comparative data from similar institutions, conducts an annual review of performance, and may use a firm specializing in compensation and benefits for executive officers. Notes regarding compensation discussions are made by the chair of the board, a member of the executive committee, and presented verbally during an executive session of full board in which the full board votes for/against the recommendation by the committee. This process last occurred in june 2021. The president's administrative council receives normal budgeted increases. However, there were no budgeted increases in fy 2020-2021. If the president determines that an additional increase is deserved based on additional responsibilities, exceptional performance, or other factors, he reviews comparable salary data prepared by yaffe & company when establishing an amount. He reports the president's council compensation to the executive committee at the spring board of trustees meeting.”

“No such documents were made available to the public.”

“Government grants (contributions) include the covid-19 stimulus funding that is comprised of student aid and institutional aid. The college is accounting for these funds as conditional contributions, recording revenue as qualifying expenses are incurred. The student aid portion totaled $996,208, and was directly passed-through to students. The institutional portion totaled $961,056.”

“There were no changes to this process”

“The college received higher education emergency relief funds (heerf) of $1,957,264, of which $1,875,555 of expenses were incurred for covid-19 related expenses. $996,208 of those expenses were for the student aid portion of the grant, and the remaining $879,347 were for the institutional portion of the grant.”