The new leadership at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts has begun an investigation into the apparent disappearance of $35,000 in grant money that cannot be accounted for.

Board chair Stephanie Smith made the admission last week, after issuing conflicting reports of the center's imminent closure. Smith assumed the role of board president on a volunteer basis in August. She also conducts the Lesbian and Gay Chorus.

Last week, Smith announced to board members and tenants that the center would close at the end of the month. This week she reversed herself, saying that the center would remain open at least through November. Smith cited the long-term difficulty of paying rent, paying the back rent that is owed, and the missing $35,000 as reasons for the possible closure.

Smith and Troy Coalman, who became a volunteer executive director in August, tried to keep the facility afloat when Marta Tejeda, who has been the center's interim executive director, was moments away from calling a bankruptcy lawyer. Tejeda was let go last week.

Coalman has since left the director's post.

The Sims center has been an institution in the queer community, beginning in 1978 with the formation of the Gay Freedom Day Marching Band. Founder Jon Sims died of AIDS in 1984.

Recordkeeping was "really sketchy," Smith learned last week, with missing files from January through May of 2006. Smith was unable to trace whether grants were received or where they went.

Approximately $35,000 mysteriously "walked off," said Smith. "Gone, poof."

Though no one is currently pointing fingers, the authorities might have to get involved if forensic accounting by CPA Duane Haaland – who soon will begin tracing grant filings, past and current year's taxes, and distribution of payroll – reveals embezzlement.

Smith said she feels that she is in "emergency mode" caught in an "ugly cycle" where negotiating with the landlord is eased by good faith back rent payments. The center has sold lighting equipment and plans to sell other items, she said. The rent on the building, located at 1519 Mission Street, is $6,000 per month.

Tejeda said her financial accounting and checks for rent, utilities, and other expenses from May through July were well-documented, though she could not find canceled checks from before her tenure as director.

"When I had access, from that point forward everything is recorded, with copies of everything," said Tejeda, who suspects ignorance, negligence, or sloppiness led to the missing records. "So when they asked, I said this is what I have."

Tejeda, who was operations manager for two years before becoming director, by her own account only stepped into the director's role because she thought a grant-receiving 501(c)3 nonprofit such as the Sims center required one.

"I didn't want to do it," said Tejeda.

Erin Nunn, who was the bookkeeper from July 2005 to May 2006, said Tejeda manually did recordkeeping of studio rentals, grants, and ticket sales, instead of using a computer accounting program.

"She had an idea of her skills but was not familiar with what I was doing," said Nunn, who had back-up copies, off-site, which she showed to Smith.

Tejeda said that working under former director Crystal Mason without access to electronic records, she started writing everything down "to correspond with everything." She said she later learned a computer accounting program.

Tejeda called the board of directors "completely not visible," and "not communicating for months on end."

"From April to August there was no board of directors, not a single person, only Marta, holding it together with string and duct tape," said new board member Shane Kroll, who is also on the Lesbian and Gay Chorus board.

But according to Susan Fleming, who joined the board in 2002, became its president in 2003, and left in 2005 to care for her ailing mother, after three executive searches in three years, the responsibility of recruiting new board members, and coming up empty when soliciting individual community support, members were dazed and disillusioned.

"At times I was the only one involved," said Fleming.

"Horrendous," was how Niels Teunis, a San Francisco State University assistant professor in human sexuality, who served on the board from 2002 to 2005, described it. Teunis believes artists in residence and tenants viewed the Sims center as a place to rent space instead of taking a cooperative attitude. The board consisted of three people at one point he said, and last winter the board was replaced twice.

"They were fried," said Fleming. "All along, we didn't have enough support from the community."

"Something about the culture of the place has not fostered a sense of community for people to take ownership," said Teunis, who said there was "a consumerist mentality on the part of the artists."

The perception that leadership is up in the air makes funders hesitant, they believe.

"Each time there was a transition in leadership, we were less fundable," said Fleming.

"All this temporary stuff doesn't instill confidence" in funders, added Teunis.

The hotel-tax-fund-created city Grants for the Arts has set aside $30,000 for the Sims center in 2006, but the money is on hold and has not been formally awarded, pending a meeting with the organization's leadership, said Khan Wong, Grants for the Arts operations and programs associate. They "want to make sure a plan is in place before," adding them to the docket, Wong said. Grants for the Arts gave the Sims center $33,100 in 2005.

Smith said she hopes to meet with Grants for the Arts in the next few days.

In 2001, with the parting of the last founding arts groups – the band and choruses – then-Director Charles Wilmoth started shifting the center's focus to providing access to diverse, experimental, and emerging spoken word and theater artists.

Wilmoth, who resigned suddenly in 2003, was replaced by Amy Robinson, who left a few months later. The next director, Mason, a founder of the Luna Sea women's theater space, asked board members to make a one-year commitment.

"Within six months everyone was gone," said Fleming. Mason resigned in April and moved to Germany.

Wilmoth's cultural institution model could not be sustained during dwindling art funding, Fleming said.

"With Charles, the mission was to get a space with total access for everybody, and you barely have to pay anything to see a show," said Fleming. "For a little while that can be sustained, but it's a business model not built for a bad economy."

Wilmoth told the Bay Area Reporter that the center lost $60,000 during the 2002 production of the Wuornos opera, which was initiated before his tenure, he said. The opera recounted the actual life story of Aileen Wuornos, the notorious serial killer and sex worker who was executed for the killings of seven men in Florida. The event was staged at the expensive Yerba Buena Center.

Wilmoth said that when he arrived in 1999, he sought energetic, adventuresome, political people of color and gender queer artists to produce original, multi-disciplinary art – "a queer cultural democracy," he called it. Under his leadership, the center began the Alchemy Playwrights, the San Francisco in Exile spoken word series, and gave the Airspace dance project more prominence.

Despite a $120,000 multi-year grant from the Haas Foundation, however, Wilmoth said the opera's flop "profoundly wounded" the center and it never recovered from the loss.

Wilmoth called the center's current problems "an enormous loss."

"I believe you need young people who feel like taking risks," he added.

The Sims center made available half a million dollars in free studio rental space over 10 years, so artists could shop their work and hone their crafts, estimates Fleming, who personally raised $10,000 in a three-year period, and as a graphic designer, donated time designing fliers.

"There's no money in that," said Fleming. "Young queer artists aren't going to whip out a checkbook. They're in survival mode, young, trying to figure it out."

The Sims center might have survived by broadening its appeal to straight arts goers, as other arts groups have done, said Sara Moore, who is creating an online archive of the center's spoken word performances.

Maintaining a small nonprofit is no easy task, said Horizons Foundations Executive Director Roger Doughty.

In a small nonprofit, the director "has stresses and strains on that individual to raise money, oversee programs, and find new" funders, said Doughty. "That's a tremendous burden."

Doughty noted that Horizons offers peer support and professional coaching for nonprofit directors who often jump right into their positions, working 12-14 hours per day.

To identify, solicit, and retain dedicated board members contributing unique skills such as a legal or financial background is a big challenge, said Doughty.

"How organizations manage a volunteer board is an important community question," he said. "This is not the first organization or the first time," this has happened.

Horizons gave a total of seven grants totaling $12,000 to the Sims center between 1999 and 2003 from donor advised funds, community issue grants, or other named funds.

Tejeda said that although she knew her career at Sims was coming to a close, she was hurt to be let go by voicemail on October 2, and observed while clearing out her office after the building's locks were changed.

"Professionally, it would have been nice to have a conversation face to face," she said.

"I couldn't get in touch with her," Smith said when asked about Tejeda's comment. "It's not ideal at all. It happened very, very fast."

Smith called Tejeda hard working, fair, and "a talented grant writer of persuasive letters to keep things going." She and wrote a personal check to pay her September salary.

"I'm kind of glad it's over," said Tejeda. "I was so worn out trying to make it work."

A Gay Comedy Showcase takes place at the center, Saturday, October 14 at 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.jonsimsctr.org.