Challenge

• VeraCruz was contacted by the College mid-way through their fall semester. The College had been experiencing declining student enrollment, board unrest, and declining donor engagement for several years. A new President was selected, but the institution was running out of cash and needed to determine how to make it through the current semester while developing a viable restructuring plan, keeping the faculty apprised and retaining/recruiting needed students for the following semester and year. Deteriorating finances led to loss of accreditation and Title IV funding.

Process

1. VeraCruz’s immediate task was to quickly understand the extent of the College’s trouble and determine whether or not it was possible to keep the College open while crafting a plan with the new president, faculty, board, major donors and creditors.  After collecting operational, financial, donor and enrollment data, and having extensive interviews/conversations with the executive staff and board, it was determined that the College could remain open if it took a two-pronged approach.  

   1. First, The College, with VeraCruz’s help created and implemented a strategic turnaround plan that focused on establishing financial stability and daily monitoring using a tailored, detailed financial model.  The financial model included weekly cash flow projections that were reviewed during weekly team huddles.  The information allowed the creation of a plan for specific resources to be used for Admissions and Marketing to increase enrollment and a realistic fundraising plan that was accepted by the board and executed by the president.  The board was revamped with more engaged members and a clear strategic direction.  The modeling and plan were also helpful in engaging with the accrediting body. 

   2. Second, Simultaneously, VeraCruz helped develop a real estate-backed financing with a mission-aligned lender and donors that provided the required liquidity to implement the turnaround plan. 

2. VeraCruz not only helped to create a well-crafted plan, but, at the request of the Institution, was retained for an additional year of plan execution support.

Result

• The College executed a financing that was large enough to cover two years’ worth of operating needed as it invested in marketing and donor cultivation. The following year the College had its largest freshmen class in its history and has been working toward growing its overall enrollment. Accreditation was restored as the president and board cultivated new donor relationships with an expanded universe of supporters. Having worked with directors on understanding roles and responsibilities and having performance metrics, the board is more active and involved in setting the strategic direction of the College.

Challenge

• Developer desired to purchase a failed mall to put into it two schools (K-8 and 9-12) as the main anchor tenants with additional retail support tenants such as coffee shops, etc. Developer sought $4.0 million bridge loan to complement developer equity and to bridge to an EB-5 $15 million financing for a total project cost of $20.0 million to cover the cost of the property purchase and all associated hard and soft costs required to refurbish the mall.

Process

• VeraCruz worked with the Developer and identified school tenants to create proformas for the underlying key tenants as well as the development as a whole. Once the modeling was completed, a credit profile was created and sent to a limited number of financing institutions that have showed an interest in these projects in the past. During the credit profile creation process, it became evident that the EB-5 moneys were not going to close, and the bridge financing increased to $6.0 million to cover the time required to obtain permanent financing.

Result

• Ultimately the property purchase and initial construction was financed through a combination of equity and a bridge loan provided by a Community Development Financial Institution. Upon completion of the construction phase, the CDFI and some of the equity was taken out by a bank term loan.

Challenge

• The University had created several different non-profit business units that all acted under different silos with separate budgets and management. Although these businesses provided complimentary services, all of them competed for the same funding dollars (external and internal), and rarely used each other’s services. VeraCruz was asked to help create an organizational structure that would allow each business unit to thrive while taking advantage of all the units’ strengths.

Process

• VeraCruz led the business units through a three-month process that included business unit surveys, facilitated meetings, and follow up one on one meetings with each business unit. The focus of the discussions and meetings was a combination of change management (in how the units interacted) as well as obtaining the necessary information to map the existing and planned Units’ capabilities, finances, operations, reporting lines and governance.

Results

• The University moved all the business units under one governance structure creating operational leverage of back office tasks as well as front office receptionist and sales tasks.  This governance structure also created greater accountability and coordination between business units and greater cross selling of each units’ unique services.  Ultimately, the change many of the separately unsustainable units to sustainability by reducing shared service type costs, while brining greater focus to their unique offerings.  

Challenge

• Developer required $4.0 million financing closed within two months to buy a failed K-8 charter school facility and surrounding property out of Bankruptcy. The school itself served a rapidly growing Hispanic population in an area of poor public school performance.

Process

• VeraCruz worked with the Developer create proformas for the underlying new charter school operator that was to operate the building. Once the modeling was completed, a credit profile was created and sent to a limited number of financing institutions that have the ability to close quickly and easily, and have showed an interest in these projects in the past.

Result

• Property purchase was financed by a CDFI with a particular mission to serve the Hispanic community. The school now serves close to 500 students and was recently expanded to include an additional 23 classrooms to almost double its capacity.

Challenge

• Diocese had significant debt payments coming due to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per year for several years until all the debt was repaid. In addition, although the overall diocese was healthy (combination of all parishes, schools, chancery, cemeteries, etc.) there were specific area pain points including increasing subsidies to parishes and schools. Each major entity within the diocese (schools department, cemeteries, parishes, etc.) operated in a siloed manner primarily seeking to increase its share of the pie.

Process

• Working with the Diocesan CFO, VeraCruz put together a working representing the key diocesan entities and constituencies. The purpose of this working group was both for a change management process to break down the individual silos and get the entities thinking about what was needed for the greater diocesan good, as well as to obtain required information to create a forward looking bottom-up financial model. Ultimately, the working group was further split into subcommittees drawing on a broader base of support and volunteers to develop detailed plans and recommendations for the Bishop to consider. The internal planning and modeling enabled VeraCruz to create a detailed credit profile and conduct an intentional RFP process to obtain the optimal debt refinancing solution.

Result

• Greater team cohesion has led to bi-annual financial updates and joint efforts on dealing with troubling situations. Ultimately several schools that had been unsustainable for years and received significant diocesan financial and managerial support were closed and a new school network with a limited number of schools was created. The network was separated from the diocese and given its own governing board to ensure greater operational control and accountability to ensure long term viability of the schools in the future. Operational controls and support were created for the remaining schools with schools deemed at risk provided joint financial and school department support through regularly scheduled meetings. In addition, the debt was refinanced into an amortizing loan at a lower interest rate and principal payments spread out over a much longer time period providing cash flow relief. All in all the diocese made structural changes to coordinate and focus limited resources (money and time) on locations and ministries that will make a greater impact than before.

Challenge

• Diocese had a declining enrollment going back decades along with a declining number of schools. A new superintendent was brought in to help revitalize schools, and create a plan where every Catholic family with a desire for a Catholic education could send their child to a Catholic school. However, the School department lacked the data and analytical capacity on staff to fully understand the nuances of the situation nor to create a complete plan including finance and governance changes.

Process

• Working with the superintendent, VeraCruz was initially engaged to create a high-level view of the diocesan “system of schools” to understand the enrollment trends on a grade level basis for each school, market share each school possessed, and likely future sustainability for each school.  Based on this data, and working with the schools department and volunteers, VeraCruz helped draft a high level set of recommendations that pointed to potential solutions that would enable all Catholic families to send their children to a Catholic school as well as create sustainable schools.  Further detailed analytic work including analyzing the current tuition and scholarship policies, and actual payments from families along with school interviews (pastors, principals and business managers) enabled the creation of a more detailed set of recommendations, and an adjustment to some of the initial recommendations.

Result

• Detailed recommendations were provided and accepted to create greater accountability and capacity building including performance benchmarking and early red flags.  In addition, schools were given a tool to provide annual recommendations on improving their operating model.  Variable rate tuition combined with increased diocesan wide parish support and central marketing and development efforts were recommended to create greater school accessibility, while improving sustainability.  Finally, re-examining and adjusting governance dynamics in certain circumstances was called for.  The Diocese is currently in the process of implementing these recommendations, and the benchmarking and early red-flags along with the operating model tool proved a great benefit in dealing with the recent Covid-19 epidemic.