As Yellowstone National Park is moving from winter into the season of rebirth, spring, so too is the Yellowstone Forever organization being reborn, so to speak, with new leadership, a leaner budget, closer operational scrutiny, and a renewed commitment to supporting the park.

After being severely hamstrung by overspending and allegations of insufficient financial oversight that nearly scuttled the nonprofit a year ago, a new CEO has cut her workforce, and their cumulative salaries, roughly in half, reduced spending in other areas including travel and IT, and worked diligently to engage donors.

"I think it's given a lot of folks good optimism that not only are we on the right track, but we’re on the right track a lot faster than we thought we would be,” Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cam Sholly, who had considered severing the park's relationship with Yellowstone Forever, told the Traveler.

Evidence to support Sholly's optimism could arrive in July, when Yellowstone Forever plans to release its 990 -- a financial report that nonprofits must file annually with the Internal Revenue Service -- for Fiscal Year 2021, which the organization closes on Sunday. The 2020 990 showed the organization still bleeding, financially, with an annual deficit of $2.8 million when revenues were matched against expenses, and net assets having slipped to $11.7 million from $14.5 million.

Standing out in that report were $7.3 million in salaries and fundraising expenses of $3.7 million. Heather White, who was hired as CEO and president when the Yellowstone Association and Yellowstone Park Foundation merged in 2016 to form Yellowstone Forever, left in June 2019 yet received a full year's salary and benefits (more than $320,000), an arrangement made before her successor arrived.

Despite the ailing ledgers, the board of directors was able to convince Lisa Diekmann to lead the organization. It was a homecoming of sorts, as Diekmann in 1996 had been the founding executive director of the Yellowstone Park Foundation. Between then and now, she worked for the Wilderness Society and as director of development for the Bridger Ski Foundation. Since arriving at Yellowstone Forever last August, she has reducing the outstanding $3.6 million balance on the organization's two lines of credit by $1.4 million, and plans to have it completely erased by June 2022.

"I'm confident we can do that," she said earlier this month during the first of two interviews. Diekmann also cut the organization's workforce, which had grown to 204, by about half, along with slicing the $7.3 million in salaries by half.

"It was, it was," replied Diekmann when asked if those cuts were painful. "But everybody really leaned in and I think we’ve turned the corner and things are looking good. I can tell you also that the leadership team took reductions in pay, including me." (How much of a reduction she took from White's $320,000+ package will be revealed in the upcoming 990.)

Near Collapse

The near disintegration of Yellowstone Forever was a staggering development. At its birth in 2016, it had been heralded by White as "a powerful force for education and philanthropy to protect this wonderland that we love so much."

At the time of the 2016 merger, Yellowstone Association arrived with assets of $13.6 million, while the Yellowstone Park Foundation came with $7.2 million. That nearly $21 million slowly but steadily declined in a short handful of years to $14.5 million at the end of FY20.

Yellowstone Forever's first 990, for 2016, shows the organization took in $4.5 million in contributions and grants, but had nearly $5.7 million in expenses, and wound up with a $380,323 shortfall for the year. In 2017, the nonprofit received $10.9 million in grants and contributions, but expenses had more than tripled, to $17.5 million, for another, bigger, annual shortfall of $1.6 million. For 2018, or FY19, the organization reported $10.3 million in grants and contributions, and expenses of $19 million, for a loss for the year of $3.8 million.

As the debts were growing, board disagreements also led to many of the directors that came from the Yellowstone Association resigning en masse.

Fiscal 2020 was a particularly tough year; not only was the organization going through a rebooting under Diekmann, but Covid-19 had upset its retail operations. Not only was Yellowstone closed for part of the year, but many of its largest visitor centers, where Yellowstone Forever maintains retail outlets, were shuttered entirely by the pandemic. Overall income for the fiscal year stood at $14.3 million, with income from grants and donations sliding to $9.7 million (from $10.3 million), while expenses rang in at $17.2 million. The annual loss was $2.8 million. The popular Yellowstone Institute, which offers interpretive programs throughout the park, was idled.

How Covid impacts operations this summer is a wild card Yellowstone Forever will have to react to. The organization last year did receive a $1.5 million PPP loan from the federal government, and it plans to apply for most of that to be forgiven. Looking ahead, Diekmann could find herself adjusting the organization on the fly if Covid again greatly impacts park operations.

"We didn’t have any education programs (last summer), but I think that was the right call with Covid," she said. "We did get those back up and running for winter, with winter lodging and learning. And then we are gearing up for lodging and learning again this summer, field seminars, private tours, retail. We’re waiting for our lead from the Park Service."

Diekmann also foresees an end to the red ink.

"We’re budgeting as if things will be the same this year as they were this past year with retail, which is very little, but we have our budget if we are able to open our three big stores," Diekmann added. "But the budget that we have worked out, for starting March 1, we have a balanced budget with net income for our FY22. The fiscal year that we’re coming to a close on (FY21, on February 28), we are also going to have net income, which I’m very happy about.”

And the organization is on track to send about $4 million in grants to the park this year, said Diekmann. "I think we’re back on the right track with this year that’s coming up, and I’m excited about that," she said.

What Do The Accountants Say?

Whether the organization's accountants are happy about things remains to be seen. That firm, Anderson Zurmuehlen & Co. of Bozeman, Montana, had said a year ago that "there is substantial doubt about the ability of Yellowstone Forever to continue as a going concern."

Rob Bush, who had served as Yellowstone Forever's vice president for operations until he was let go last June as the organization faltered, told the Traveler at the time that he thought there needed to be a forensic audit to straighten out the organization's books and instill confidence in them.

Diekmann wouldn't say whether such an audit had occurred, saying instead that, "I’m very comfortable with where the books are. We would not have had clean audits if there was any concern about allocations, and all of the projects that we have committed to fund at the park are funded. Things are exactly where they should be. We have separate accounts for restricted projects from unrestricted projects, so I’m very comfortable where we are financially right now.”

The accountants, she added, gave the financials "a clean bill of health."

While Diekmann initially said the organization would not be making public the accountants' financial statement regarding the FY20 990 because it was not required, earlier this week during a second interview, which included board Chairman Kevin Butt, she said it would be released. "As soon as those audited financials are approved by the board, we will post them to our website," she said.

Butt had a ringside seat for the near-breakdown of Yellowstone Forever and is working hard with Diekmann on its recovery. The environmental sustainability director for Toyota North America, Inc., he had joined the Yellowstone Park Foundation shortly before the 2016 merger. After Kay Yeager, who was chair, left the board when Diekmann's hiring was announced, Butt moved in as interim chair, and soon thereafter the "interim" title was dropped.

One of the first things he told the rest of the board when he assumed the chairmanship was that the directors need to keep moving forward, but also not forget to look backwards from time to time "so we learn from exactly what went wrong," he said.

"One of the other things I said we had to do was complete transparency. We have to be transparent not only with ourselves, but with those that are our customers. Our main customer and the one we always have to work with is the park. That’s our focus. So we’re trying to do everyting we can to keep that in mind," he said. "We’re developing, and have developed, some leading indicators to help us maintain a good positive view of where we’re at at all times, so that we don’t repeat any of those mistakes that were made in the past. And we’re doing a good job of that. To me, that’s a tremendous step forward for us."

Those "mistakes," he said, were not paying close attention to the revenues and expenses.

"We’ve got to pay close attention to what’s going on financially, and to understand what monies that we’re bringing in, are those monies that we can actually talk about and use?" Butt said from his Kentucky office. "And not go out over the skis, if you will. So we went over the skis a little bit and overcommitted ourselves. We were thinking really big and we might have overstaffed and we didn’t gain the financial benefits of where we thought we might be as we did that.”

Regaining Donor Trust

Diekmann understands the hesitance of past donors to renew their commitment to the organization.

"I appreciate their concern and I think that the best thing that they can do is just watch our progress," she said. "I think we will please them and they will see that we are doing a really great job on behalf of Yellowstone.”

A good part of the donor outreach has involved Sholly.

“I probably had more direct conversations with donors, both old donors who had disengaged and want to reengage, and than new donors who are just wanting to get in the mix with Yellowstone since Lisa has been the CEO then I did for my first year-and-a-half in the job, total," he said. "Not that I didn’t speak to donors that first year-and-a-half, I did. But I can't even count the number of people that she’s facilitated me talking to about park priorities, about progress that we’re making, whether that’s on conservation, education, visitor experience type projects. I think that that’s a big reason why the philanthropy has gone up.”

As disruptive as the past year might have been for Yellowstone Forever, the president and CEO sees great opportunity for the organization.

"I think for us it’s still a transitional year, and any growth is going to be thoughtful," she said. "I am absolutely committed to fiscal responsibility. But, I am not going to settle for anything less than the best. I think there are ways that we can do things better, better in philanthropy, better in education, better in retail. And just because we did it before doesn’t mean that we need to do it again. But we are going to do it to the best of our ability.”

While Sholly, Diekmann, and Butt all talk optimistically about the organization's future, near- and long-term, the board's current makeup is almost identical to that which was in place under White. Butt said that will change.

“We’ve had some people that have rotated off the board, and we’re getting ready to fill some seats with new people," he said. "Getting some fresh looks and fresh talent that can add to our discussions. ... I think we’re really turning this thing in the right direction with the right people and with the right involvement.”

Also new, in a way, to Yellowstone Forever is Kristi Mills, who followed Diekmann back to the organization to be chief financial officer. Mills, who has a deep background in accounting, had for 10 years (2000-2011) served as the Yellowstone Park Foundation's director of operations. She returns after stints as a corporate controller, accounting instructor and, most recently, director of finance for the Museum of the Rockies.

“Put this in perspective of where we were and where we are now and dealing with the Covid year as well," Butt said near the end of our conversation. "I think we’ve really made a tremendous turnabout in getting us back on the right track and focusing on what I think we need to be focusing on. I’m really happy that we’re able to do $4 million to the park. It’s a start and hopefully we can grow from that. So we’re definitely moving in the right direction.”

“I think Yellowstone Forever gets to work with an iconic park, Yellowstone, and I think we all realize what benefits we can bring to the table for Yellowstone and maintaining it as the iconic park that it is," he continued. "It is a responsibility, but it’s also a tremendous privilege. We want to make sure our customer stays happy, and we can do that through the work that we do. That’s what makes it so exciting."