Wayne County Arts Alliance Has Been Soliciting Donations Without a Valid Pennsylvania Registration Since 2014. Its Books Show $75,000 in Unexplained Debt.
Editor’s note: Mayor Derek Williams has previously declined to answer Pocono Review’s questions in writing. In prior emails, Williams stated he prefers “in person interviews with newer news outlets” because “made up characters who are not real people ask questions as if they were actual reporters.”
HONESDALE, Wayne County — The Wayne County Arts Alliance has operated as an unregistered charity in Pennsylvania for more than a decade, soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public — including a building fund campaign that raised at least $150,000 — without a valid registration with the state’s Bureau of Charitable Organizations. Its last registration expired November 11, 2014. It has never renewed. Pennsylvania law required it to register. It didn’t.
The Wayne County Arts Alliance’s current 2nd Vice President is Lisa Glover. Glover’s domestic partner is Derek Williams, the mayor of Honesdale and a paid employee of the Wayne County Community Foundation — the same foundation that sent $96,500 to the Wayne County Arts Alliance in the first fiscal year Williams appeared on its payroll. Before he joined the Wayne County Community Foundation, the foundation sent the arts alliance nothing.
The Wayne County Arts Alliance received at least $171,500 from the Wayne County Community Foundation, as Pocono Review previously reported. A separate analysis of the WCAA donor wall documented Williams and Glover’s personal donations to the same building fund his employer was financing, and the undisclosed relationships behind them.
The new financial records raise a further question: the Wayne County Community Foundation described its contribution to the building campaign as a $75,000 matching grant. The Wayne County Arts Alliance’s own tax filings record a $75,000 liability as “mortgages or other loans payable.” A search of Wayne County Recorder of Deeds records finds no mortgage recorded against the property from the foundation or any institutional lender. The source of that debt has not been publicly disclosed by either organization.
Lisa Glover: Vice President of the Wayne County Arts Alliance on Federal Filings
Lisa Glover is listed as 2nd Vice President of the Wayne County Arts Alliance on the organization’s IRS Form 990-EZ for both fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2024. Those filings were signed under penalty of perjury by WCAA Treasurer David Harvey on October 30 and October 31, 2025. The 2023 filing shows Glover averaging five hours per week in the role. The 2024 filing shows the same.
Her title is not a courtesy listing. It is a governance position on a federally registered nonprofit, documented on public tax returns, in the years the Wayne County Arts Alliance received $96,500 from the Wayne County Community Foundation — the organization that employs her domestic partner. That relationship does not appear in any public disclosure connected to the foundation’s grant to the arts alliance, in the Wayne County Community Foundation’s own 990, on the WCAA donor wall, or in any borough proceeding where Williams participated in governance touching the same network of organizations. Nobody disclosed any of it.
The Money Follows the Hire
The Wayne County Community Foundation’s IRS Form 990 filings tell a clear before-and-after story.
For fiscal year ending June 30, 2021, the foundation’s Schedule I lists no grants to the Wayne County Arts Alliance. For fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, no grants to WCAA. In both years, Derek Williams is not on the payroll.
In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023, two things happen simultaneously: the foundation’s other salaries line jumps to $78,514, consistent with Williams joining the payroll. And the Wayne County Arts Alliance appears on Schedule I for the first time, as the recipient of $96,500 in “Program Grants” — the second-largest single organizational grant the foundation made that year, behind only Wayne County government itself.
In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024, WCAA does not appear on Schedule I. The entire documented Wayne County Community Foundation grant relationship with the Wayne County Arts Alliance, across four consecutive annual filings, is $96,500 in a single year — the first year Williams worked there. WCAA’s own contribution history mirrors the pattern. The organization collected $35,840 in 2019, $37,937 in 2020, $39,231 in 2021, and $43,567 in 2022 — steady, modest growth. In 2023, contributions jumped to $133,810. The following year they fell back to $46,749, near the pre-Williams baseline.
The Wayne County Community Foundation’s conflict-of-interest policy covers directors and officers. Derek Williams is neither. He is a staff employee — and the policy the foundation certified as adequate to the IRS does not cover the employee whose domestic partner is listed as Vice President of the organization his employer sent $96,500 to in the first year he was on payroll. The foundation has not stated publicly whether its board reviewed the grant in light of Williams’s position, or whether any recusal occurred.
The Registration Lapse
Pennsylvania’s Solicitation of Funds for Charitable Purposes Act requires any organization soliciting charitable contributions from Pennsylvania residents to register with the Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations before doing so, unless the organization qualifies for an exemption. The primary exemption applies to organizations receiving less than $25,000 in contributions per year.
The Wayne County Arts Alliance’s registration — number 34906 — expired November 11, 2014. The Bureau’s public database shows no renewal.
Based on its own tax filings, the Wayne County Arts Alliance solicited charitable contributions from Pennsylvania residents without a valid state registration for at least five consecutive years, in apparent violation of the Solicitation of Funds for Charitable Purposes Act, 10 P.S. § 162.1 et seq.
That means the Wayne County Arts Alliance was not a registered charity in Pennsylvania when it launched its building fund campaign. It was not registered when it solicited over 190 donors. It was not registered when it accepted donations through Mightycause and Network for Good. It was not registered when it raised the $75,000 needed to trigger the Wayne County Community Foundation’s matching grant. Every ask it made during that campaign — every donation page, every social media post, every appeal to the public — was made by an organization that had been out of compliance with Pennsylvania charitable solicitation law for nearly a decade.
The contribution figures from WCAA’s own 990-EZ filings show the arts alliance had been above the $25,000 exemption threshold every year from at least 2019 onward: $35,840 in 2019, $37,937 in 2020, $39,231 in 2021, $43,567 in 2022. Each year unregistered. The building campaign pushed that figure to $133,810 in 2023 — still unregistered.
Pennsylvania’s late fee for unregistered charities is $25 per month. Penalties can include fines and loss of fundraising privileges. The Wayne County Arts Alliance has made no public statement about its registration status — not when the building campaign launched, not when it closed, and not since Pocono Review began reporting on the organization’s finances.
The People’s Playground Project — the Honesdale playground campaign co-founded by Glover — also does not appear in the Bureau’s public database. WCAA and PPP are separate organizations, but both operate within the same network, and both were raising public money in Wayne County without registration.
The Building Purchase
The Wayne County Arts Alliance purchased 959 Main Street in Honesdale on February 23, 2023, according to Wayne County Recorder of Deeds records. Instrument number 202300001066 shows the grantor as Missing Pieces and the grantee as Wayne County Arts Alliance.
Missing Pieces was an art gallery that operated at that address before the Wayne County Arts Alliance took over. Its former owner, Sue Stephan Foster, is listed as the top individual donor to the WCAA building campaign — at the Platinum level, above the $10,000 Diamond tier. The building’s largest individual donor outside institutional funders was the former owner of the building the arts alliance purchased from her. That relationship is not disclosed on the donor wall.
WCAA’s 990-EZ for 2023 carries the building at $183,793, with a $75,000 liability recorded in Schedule O as “mortgages or other loans payable” — appearing at zero at the start of the year and $75,000 at year end. It remains unchanged on the 2024 filing. No payments appear to have been made.
The $75,000 Question
The Wayne County Community Foundation described its contribution to the building campaign publicly as a $75,000 matching grant from the Florence Longmire Treat Fund. The Wayne County Arts Alliance had to raise $75,000 on its own before the foundation’s money would release.
The foundation’s Form 990 for fiscal year ending June 30, 2023 lists $96,500 in cash grants to the Wayne County Arts Alliance, described only as “Program Grants” — $21,500 more than the publicly described match. No further breakdown appears in the filing.
On the Wayne County Arts Alliance’s books, $75,000 sits as a liability. Not grant revenue. A debt, unchanged across two annual tax filings.
A search of Wayne County Recorder of Deeds records for the property returns a single instrument: the deed itself, instrument number 202300001066, recorded February 23, 2023. No mortgage was recorded against the property at closing or at any point in 2023 under any name — not the Wayne County Community Foundation, not Honesdale National Bank, not the seller. Whatever obligation WCAA carries on its books as $75,000 in “mortgages or other loans payable” is not secured by a recorded lien on the building. The Wayne County Community Foundation has not publicly explained the discrepancy between its description of the payment as a grant and the arts alliance’s recording of it as debt. The Wayne County Arts Alliance has not publicly identified the holder of the liability or stated the terms.
This article is part of Pocono Review’s ongoing investigation into Honesdale Borough governance. Related coverage: Honesdale Mayor’s Employer Sent $171,500 to His Girlfriend’s Arts Organization · Who Paid for the WCAA Building? Start With the Donor Wall. · Is People’s Playground Project Soliciting Your Money in Violation of Pennsylvania Law?
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