SF's African American Arts & Culture Complex Cleared of Wrongdoing In City Audit

The nonprofit African American Arts & Culture Complex in the Fillmore District was under a bit of a cloud of suspicion while a city audit was underway, but that audit has revealed that its money problems mostly stemmed from poor accounting and mismanagement.

The 37-year-old African American Arts & Culture Complex (AAACC), which was once run by former Mayor London Breed prior to her tenure as district supervisor, had fallen under scrutiny since the pandemic by the SF Arts Commission — which provided most of the organization's $11 million in grant revenue over several years. The AAACC underwent a change of leadership last month, in part because of the ongoing audit, and now the City Services Auditor's report has been completed and made public.

The report concludes that, while some missteps were made in reporting with regard to its city grants, these were largely due to "gaps in AAACC’s management practices" and inadequate communication between the Arts Commission and the AAACC. Also, the report's recommendations are heavily focused on the Arts Commission and how it communicates its expectations for grant reporting.

The audit report finds that the AAACC’s former co-executive directors, twin sisters Melonie and Melorra Green — who are friends of Breed — were put in a position of managing re-granting responsibilities by the Arts Commission under the former mayor's Dream Keeper Initiative, while the organization lacked the operational capacity to manage these responsibilities and provide the necessary financial documentation. Moreover, the AAACC put much of its accounting in the hands of paid consultants, which left the organization without any institutional knowledge of how the usage of its funds needed to be accounted for.

As the Chronicle notes, following the launch of this audit in 2024, the Green sisters resigned from the AAACC last summer, after four years running the organization. (You can hear an interview with both of them on KQED from 2019 in which they optimistically spoke about creating a "center of Black joy" for the community.) The new executive director of the AAACC, former City College board member Murrell Green (no relation), began work there in July.

The audit looked at a sample of nine grants from the Arts Commission totaling $6.3 million, and found small issues, including $20,000 in one budget that listed some ineligible expenses including lodging, travel, and food. The AAACC also had trouble meeting the Arts Commission's deadlines for reporting on the usage of grants, with some reports coming in months late.

"We acknowledge that the AAACC experienced gaps in management, governance, documentation, fiscal oversight, and grant reporting," current director Murrell Green wrote in an official response to the audit report. "We appreciate the audit team's work and the constructive recommendations presented in the report."

This all stands in contrast with recent previous audits of city-funded nonprofits that have flagged major misuses of city funds, like with the now defunct nonprofit Collective Impact and its association with former Dream Keeper Initiative leader Sheryl Davis — who is now under criminal indictment and accused of misappropriation and self-dealing to the tune of $4.6 million.

Collective Impact, which was run by Davis's romantic partner and accused co-conspirator James Spingola, had been under city contract to operate the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center in the Fillmore. The center sits just over a block away from the AAACC, on McAllister Street, and that has caused some recent tension in the community over who should take over the center's operations.

Also currently facing criminal charges for misappropriation of funds is Gwendolyn Westbrook, the former CEO of another city-funded nonprofit, the United Council of Human Services (UCHS), who's accused of buying a Tesla with city funds, among other charges.

The AAACC, and its new director, now face the challenge of identifying a new temporary home of operations, because its 34,000-square-foot building at 762 Fulton Street is going to be undergoing necessary earthquake retrofit work beginning on January 1, 2027. That work, as the Chronicle previously reported, is expected to last 18 months.

The AAACC, which is not to be confused with the African American Arts and Cultural District in the Bayview, is currently hosting multiple art exhibits in its galleries, and has a regular calendar of community and cultural events.