Florida HBCU backs away from dubious $237M donation

School leaders — including Robinson and Shawnta Friday-Stroud, FAMU’s vice president for university advancement — said they were barred from discussing the gift publicly due to a non-disclosure agreement. They defended accepting the donation from Batterson Farms Corporation, noting the potential upside should the company go public. Batterson Farms did not respond to a request for comment about the potential future value of its stock.

Still, the shares could be worth “$500 million or it could be zero,” Laurence A. Humphries, a member of the foundation’s board, noted at the meeting.

“Yes, there is clearly risk, and we are seeing that in everything that has shaken out,” Friday-Stroud said during the meeting. “But at the time that was the decision.”

FAMU did not reach out to Coastal Carolina University as they vetted Gerami’s gift, officials confirmed Thursday.

That failed donation was one of several red flags that should have been raised during the vetting of FAMU’s gift, according to finance experts.

The gift would have been paid out over the next decade, according to an agreement obtained through a records request Thursday by the Tallahassee Democrat. The agreement shows that Gerami “donated 14 million shares of stock of intrinsic value worth at least $239,000,000 and will donate an additional $61,000,000 over 10 years” — valuations that don’t match what the school announced only days ago.

The agreement, though, does not specifically name a company, and it’s unclear where and how the stocks were valued.

“Where does this valuation come from?” Rebel Cole, a professor of finance at Florida Atlantic University, said in an interview. “It raises more questions than it answers. If I were a dog, my hackles would be up.”