After conflict concerns, top UNC fundraiser drops investment gig
UNC-Chapel Hill’s chief fundraiser quit moonlighting as an advisor to a Charlotte investment firm with political and university connections after The News & Observer reported the outside work two weeks ago.
David Routh, vice chancellor for university development, confirmed Thursday that he had notified his staff that he dropped the outside job, which university officials had approved. He told his staff hours after the N&O reported that state Senate leader Phil Berger said Routh should step down.
The decision was his alone, Routh said in a brief email to the N&O on Thursday. He went into more detail in a June 28 email to his staff.
“I am choosing to end this relationship for one reason – so that I will not be a distraction to the university I love, our development team, the capital campaign I lead, or frankly, the team at New Republic Partners,” the email read.
Routh, 61, had been working for New Republic Partners for roughly two months, according to a letter the firm shared with “shareholders, clients and friends” dated May 3. That was a day before a UNC human resources director had signed a university document noting that she had reviewed Routh’s proposal to do the outside work.
New Republic’s letter said Routh would serve as an independent consultant and senior advisor “available to talk with successful families and individuals, as well as endowments and foundations, about the investment management solutions, wealth advisory offerings and concierge financial services.”
It was a more expansive role than what Routh described in his written proposal to UNC officials when disclosing his plans for outside work.
Routh’s work for New Republic Partners created at least the appearance of a conflict of interest, three outside experts, including a former UNC system vice president who helped craft outside-work policies, told the N&O. One said Routh should resign and return any compensation he had received.
Routh said in the proposal that he would only work three hours a week in the role, and only outside his UNC work hours. Routh told the N&O in an email that he would be compensated with stock options and couldn’t say how much they would be worth.
After the N&O’s report, Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, said UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz shouldn’t have supported Routh’s outside work. John Preyer, a UNC trustee, said senior officials shouldn’t be moonlighting, but another trustee, Charles Duckett, supported Routh’s outside work.
Neither Routh nor the university announced that he was leaving the role. The Assembly, an online publication, reported his exit first on Wednesday, in a story mostly focused on events leading to New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones turning down a tenured professor’s job at UNC.
“I never thought this activity would create a distraction and there are so many important initiatives that we are pushing forward at the moment with great potential benefits to our university and to the state of North Carolina,” Routh wrote in his staff email. “I am also too committed to our chancellor, our faculty and staff here at Carolina to tolerate a distraction for everyone.”
He said in the message that he thought the outside work was “completely appropriate” and that UNC’s conflicts of interest review was “extra thorough.”
In the 2019 fiscal year, Routh began receiving a pay increase of $225,000, boosting his total annual compensation to more than $850,000. The extra pay was intended to retain Routh while the state’s flagship campus finished up a $4.25 billion fundraising campaign, according to tax records for the UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation.
That money came from the foundation, which receives donations on behalf of the university. Routh is the foundation’s chief executive.
The UNC-CH Board of Trustees requested and approved the additional payments based on a recommendation from then-Chancellor Carol Folt. The $225,000 bonus must be approved annually by the chancellor and Foundation board. The trustees also requested Routh be paid through 2025, three years after the campaign ends.
This story was originally published July 8, 2021 at 4:14 PM with the headline "After conflict concerns, top UNC fundraiser drops investment gig."