NPR
Monique Hanson will start as NPR’s chief development officer in October, filling the last position left vacant since a turbulent period in late 2010 and early 2011, when three of the nonprofit’s top executives left.
Hanson will oversee “major and planned giving, and foundation grants, which taken together are NPR’s third largest source of revenue,” according to NPR. She’ll work with the NPR Foundation, which holds most of Joan Kroc’s $230 million endowment.
Hanson has spent the last several years raising money for the YMCA, which NPR notes is a $5 billion organization.”She was specifically brought on board to dramatically enhance contributed revenue and reposition the national corporate and foundation profile,” NPR says in a news release.
In May, The Washington Post reported that NPR ran a deficit of $2.6 million for the first six months of the fiscal year and that it has dipped into its endowment three of the past four years.
The tumult started in October 2010, when Ellen Weiss, senior vice president for news, fired Juan Williams for remarks he had made about Muslims. She resigned in January 2011 following a review of how she had handled that.
A few months later, Ron Schiller, NPR’s head of fundraising, was caught on video saying impolitic things about the tea party. (It turned out that some of his remarks were edited out of context.) He resigned, and President and CEOÂ Vivian Schiller left NPR too.
Margaret Low Smith stepped into Weiss’ role and took the job permanently in February of this year, when Kinsey Wilson was named chief content officer. Gary Knell became CEO in December.
Earlier: Amid diversity improvements at NPR, fear and challenges remain |Â Gary Knell defends public funding in first day as NPR CEO
