Sex-ed nonprofit banks heavily on public funds

Heritage gets millions, but operations are secret and success questioned

File/The Post and Courier

A poster heralds the Heritage sex-education abstinence focus.

Heritage gets millions, but operations are secret and success questioned

Heritage Community Services, a well- connected North Charleston nonprofit that teaches students to abstain from sex until marriage, has received or been allocated more than $23 million in state and federal money since 1997, including a $1.4 million infusion of state funds last year, tax documents and other records show.

But a recent federal evaluation of its work in Edgefield County found that one of its key programs might not work.

An analysis of tax and other government records also shows that Heritage Community Services depends almost entirely on government funds to operate — more than some government agencies.

Despite this dependence on tax dollars, Heritage has hidden behind its nonprofit status when state officials and reporters asked for basic information about its operations in South Carolina.

Heritage Community Services has received nationwide attention — positive and negative — for its focus on teaching students that chastity is the only sure way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

But a look at its finances shows how lines between nonprofits, for-profits and government sometimes blur.

It also shows how state lawmakers quietly tuck hundreds of thousands of dollars in the state budget for favored nonprofits without signing their names or explaining why the money is needed. Some lawmakers have vowed to change this practice during the current legislative session.

Questions about Heritage's funding and effectiveness also come amid emerging resistance to the Bush administration's focus on abstinence-until-marriage to reduce teen pregnancies. Since George W. Bush's election to the presidency, the federal government has poured nearly $1 billion into these efforts.

But last year, Virginia became the 14th state to turn down federal grants for abstinence programs. In doing so, the Virginia governor cited recent studies showing that teaching teens about chastity and birth control is a better way to prevent teen pregnancies than teaching only about abstinence.

'Wait'

Heritage's offices take up at least seven storefront units in a brick strip shopping center off Ashley Phosphate Road. Next door is a Mexican grocery store and the Lowcountry Crisis Pregnancy Center. Heritage runs several marriage and family-support programs, but its flagship program is the Heritage Keepers abstinence course.

In 10 45-minute courses or five 90-minute sessions, Heritage's staff teaches students that sex is like fire: Safe within the right place, unsafe outside a protected place, with marriage being the only protected place. They teach students how to refuse advances and that condoms can fail.

Heritage teaches its programs in 14 Charleston County district schools, down from 19 a year ago. Heritage also has programs in Colleton County's high schools and middle schools, but Berkeley and Dorchester County school officials don't use the organization's services, preferring to use their own staff to teach sex education.

Heritage sells T-shirts for $10 on its Web site that say "Virgins are hot" and "Wait," but the main source of the group's revenue comes from state and federal grants and other government sources, records show. Since 1997, Heritage's revenue totaled about $23.5 million, according to tax forms and state and federal budget documents.

Of that $23.5 million, about $23.2 million, or 99 percent, came from grants and other government sources, those records show, though it's unclear from the group's tax forms in the late 1990s exactly which government agencies contributed how much.

When the newspaper asked for this information, Heritage declined, saying it would require paying an accountant. Todd Carroll, Heritage's lawyer, said that the group "acknowledges that it is funded primarily through federal grants, as well as some state-level resources."

The group's success in nabbing these public dollars is largely due to its political connections.

Anne Badgley founded the nonprofit in the mid-1990s when the abstinence movement picked up steam. In 1997, the group's budget hovered at $50,000. In 1999, with help from then-Gov. David Beasley and state lawmakers, its budget grew to $1.5 million.

That year was a turning point. During his first presidential campaign stop in South Carolina, George W. Bush visited one of Heritage's workshops. "I could see he was very sincere, and I worked hard to get him elected," Badgley told Washington Monthly magazine in 2002. Badgley declined to comment for this story but did provide a statement outlining studies that found the program works.

Today, Badgley and her family hold key positions with the group. She is chief executive officer, drawing a salary of $83,576, according to 2006 tax records. She also received $5,000 in compensation from the Lowcountry Crisis Pregnancy Center, where she is listed as a former officer. Badgley's husband, Gordon, is Heritage's operations director, making $68,576.

The Badgleys' son-in-law, Gerald Raymond, pulls down $65,476 as a regional director, and the Badgleys' daughter, Sally Raymond, also has a director-level job, tax records show.

In addition, Gordon and Anne Badgley run a for-profit business called Badgley Enterprises that benefits from Heritage's publicly funded operations.

In 2003 and 2004, Heritage paid Badgley Enterprises $290,095 for 10,000 student manuals and other materials, tax records show.

How to get $800,000

Heritage continues to have powerful friends, with Cyndi Mosteller, a notable Republican operative and sister of Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, sitting on the group's board, according to its 2006 tax form. Charleston-area lawmakers, such as state House Speaker Bobby Harrell and state Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Bonneau, have sponsored grant applications for the group.

Last spring, lawmakers quietly penciled $800,000 for Heritage into the state budget in what's known as a budget proviso. No lawmaker's name was attached to the proposal. Through word of mouth, The Post and Courier learned that Grooms initiated the budget outlay.

In an interview, Grooms said he thinks highly of Heritage's work, and that "the folks at Heritage let me know that it looked like they were going to lose some federal money." While most of his district is in Berkeley and Dorchester counties, which don't use Heritage's programs, he represents a portion of Colleton County. "And Colleton is very pleased with them," he said.

Grooms said he went to the chairman of a Senate subcommittee and asked him to meet with Heritage representatives. Later, the Senate Finance Committee added a sentence to the state budget saying that $800,000 should be sent to the state Department of Health and Environmental Control on the condition every penny goes to Heritage Community Services.

The proviso didn't offer any other details about how the money would be used.

According to Thom Berry of DHEC, the agency isn't required to monitor how that money is spent. "The money comes to us, and we cut the check (to Heritage), and that's the beginning and the end of it," he said.

Heritage also received $600,000 last year through the state Department of Social Services, and federal grant records show the group was awarded an additional $1.4 million in federal money.

During this year's session, several lawmakers, including Harrell, are pushing legislation requiring lawmakers to attach their names to provisos and earmarks.

Denying information

In some respects, Heritage is more dependent on tax dollars than some government agencies.

While Heritage receives nearly all of its money from government sources, the city of North Charleston gets about 87 percent of its budget from property taxes, grants and business licenses, with the remaining $10 million from donations, fines, fundraising and other non-tax-dollar sources. CARTA, the local bus service, gets about 79 percent of its budget from government sources, with most of the rest picked up by riders.

Even though Heritage gets most of its money from public sources and does most of its work in public schools, it isn't particularly forthcoming about its finances or operations.

When The Post and Courier requested information under the state Freedom of Information Act about its income from government sources, Heritage's president, Dick Pruet, wrote back that Heritage "is not considered a 'public body' for FOIA purposes" and "we will not be providing the information you request."

Jay Bender, a lawyer for the S.C. Press Association, said that nonprofit groups supported in part or in whole by public funds are considered a public body under the Freedom of Information Act. "If they're getting funds from the state budget, that clearly makes them subject to the law," he said.The Post and Courier is pursuing the issue.

In recent years, Heritage officials also declined to provide basic information about their work to state officials.

The state Department of Education has asked the group to list the schools and districts that use its programs and materials, said Lynn Hammond, director of the South Carolina Healthy Schools program.

She said it's the agency's job under the Comprehensive Health Education Act to monitor who's teaching what in the state's schools.

She said the agency also has asked to see what kinds of materials the nonprofit uses in public schools. "They don't typically respond to requests from us," she said.

Carroll, Heritage's lawyer, said the General Assembly has determined that sex education should be addressed by local governments, not state agencies, and that the group only provides its curriculum materials to local school officials.

He said the Education Department is free to ask the districts themselves whether they use Heritage's services.

Does abstinence work?

While Heritage continues to acquire millions of dollars in grants and other public money, it's unclear whether the group's abstinence-only approach works.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commissioned Mathematica Policy Research Inc. to study Heritage's work in rural Edgefield schools.

In a report last year, researchers found that participants "reported similar rates of sexual abstinence, number of sexual partners, and age at first sex" as those who didn't participate. Researchers also found that participants in Heritage's program were just as likely to engage in unprotected sex as those who didn't take part. The study concluded that Heritage's program had little or no impact on "sexual abstinence or activity."

The Mathematica study followed a larger one the consultant did in April on four other abstinence- only programs. That evaluation also found these programs had little or no effect. Another study released in November by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy reached similar conclusions.

In a statement, Heritage said that it adjusted its program in response to the Mathemetica study's findings in Edgefield, and that its surveys about these changes show encouraging results.

Heritage also has hired its own researchers who found that the group's programs do help prevent unwanted pregnancies. Those studies have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and have been cited by noted sex-ed researchers, the group's statement said.

On its Web site, Heritage said an analysis of 2,000 students who went through the program shows those students initiate sexual activity at a rate of 42 percent lower than those who didn't participate "and 72 percent lower when they have had the course twice." Heritage said these results "are being prepared for publication."

In its statement, the group noted that since Heritage started its programs in 1996, teen pregnancy rates in South Carolina have declined 35 percent. "Skeptics predicted rates would go up; they didn't. They went down."

Transparency

As the debate continues over abstinence programs, nonprofits as a group are trying better measure their performance, experts say.

Dennis Young, director of the nonprofit studies program at Georgia State University, said research is mixed about whether government money affects a nonprofit's autonomy, but he said nonprofits dependent on public money tend to do more to account for their funds.

One of the biggest changes in the nonprofit field is that charities' tax forms are now posted on the Internet by GuideStar and other companies, giving the public easy access to nonprofits' financials, Young said. "I think there's general agreement in the nonprofit community that it's good to be transparent."

Reach Tony Bartelme at tbartelme@postandcourier.com or 937-5554.

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