The permanent endowment safeguarded and administered by the Corporation of the Diocese (COTD) – a nine-member elected fiduciary body – will receive $8.72 million transferred from the Bishop as Corporation Sole.
Initiated by Bishop John Harvey Taylor and accepted by the COTD at its July 15 meeting, the transfer moves Corp Sole’s Mr. and Mrs. Ledger T. Smith Memorial Fund for the poor and needy to permanent COTD management and will increase the diocese’s endowment to $11.72 million.
The move is in keeping with Taylor’s commitment to move all assets – except real estate for which property tax liability would be increased – out of Corp Sole, an entity formed in 1907 and now largely outmoded, and for which the incumbent diocesan bishop is the sole trustee.
“My episcopacy began in a time of anxiety over Corp Sole resulting from the controversy over the attempted sale of St. James in Newport Beach,” Taylor said. “To balance its budget, the diocese depended on the sale of real estate as well as cash grants from a fund over which the bishop has sole discretion. Our long-term financial stability is better served by having all our funds under the corporation’s control, with protections guaranteeing that they won’t be liquidated.”
The corporation will continue to abide by the Smith Fund’s requirement that proceeds be used to aid the economically disadvantaged. In recent years, the Smith Fund has been used to support mission congregations. As with all other funds in the endowment, governed by the diocese’s investment and endowment policy, only 4% a year can be used.
Corp Sole’s Poor and Needy Fund was established with a $6.3 million corpus in 2017 by then-Bishop J. Jon Bruno. The funds came from the sale of commercial property held in Anaheim by Corp Sole, which had received the initial parcel as a gift from Ledger and Gladys Smith some 35 years earlier.