Oct. 13—When Jennifer Livovich founded Boulder homelessness support nonprofit Feet Forward in 2020, she didn't think she'd be resigning three years later. But in May of this year, that's exactly what happened after a dispute arose between Livovich and Feet Forward's board of directors over the organization's involvement in an ACLU lawsuit challenging Boulder's camping ban.
Livovich, who spent several years unhoused living on the streets of Boulder, was initially sympathetic to the lawsuit, filed in May 2022, and agreed to add herself and Feet Forward as plaintiffs.
But as time went on, Livovich started to feel the lawsuit was detracting from the mission and the day-to-day work of her organization, and she started to no longer see it as necessary or worthwhile. In March, she withdrew her name from suit, and she soon told the board of directors she also no longer wanted Feet Forward to be involved with it.
"I think a lawsuit similar to the one that's happening now with the ACLU could have potentially made some changes when I was homeless. But the reality is that no one's going to jail anymore," Livovich said of her change of heart. "And quite frankly, some of the homeless have told me that they think this lawsuit, no matter what happens, is going to make their life harder."
However, the board did not concur. Livovich made clear to the board members that if they did not vote to remove Feet Forward as a plaintiff, she would resign as executive director. After the board members overruled her and opted to move ahead with the lawsuit anyway, Livovich handed them her letter of resignation, effective immediately, on May 13.
When the board chose to move ahead with the lawsuit against Livovich's wishes, she said, that decision had a negative impact on the community.
"The board's decision to continue to push for the lawsuit ... and to put that over the work, came at a cost. And it came at a cost to people that were previously homeless, because Feet Forward was built on their backsides," she said.
Shortly after Livovich's resignation in May, Feet Forward board of directors member Darren O'Connor released a statement on Facebook about her departure, writing that "a strong majority of the board, after much discussion and consideration, felt that having originally unanimously committed to be a plaintiff in the lawsuit, it was important for Feet Forward to remain as a named plaintiff, as deciding to withdraw would require us to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit at a time when the lawsuit is potentially on track to be decided on the pleadings already filed."
Additionally, he wrote, "The board also felt that if the Court does invalidate the 'blanket ban' it will have a broad benefit to the unhoused community that Feet Forward is committed to serving. The board also felt that Feet Forward could continue to fulfill its mission while as a plaintiff in the lawsuit."
O'Connor told the Daily Camera that, after releasing this statement, board members consulted with attorneys and learned that the assertion about the lawsuit needing to be dismissed if Feet Forward withdrew as a plaintiff was actually untrue. Still, he said, he and the other board members felt it was important for Feet Forward to remain a plaintiff on the ACLU lawsuit, even at the expense of losing Livovich as executive director.
"We still felt that it was very important to be a named plaintiff. And our position hasn't changed. (Livovich's) has," O'Connor said.
Moreover, O'Connor said he sees Livovich as being the person who walked away and "quit over a disagreement" during a time when Feet Forward was thriving, even though she had warned the board of directors that she would resign if they did not agree to drop the lawsuit.
"What we had was an executive director demanding the board do something or she would resign," O'Connor said. "And that's not really a healthy relationship. You know, you can motivate people to see your point of view. But if you're going to put a gun to people's heads and say, 'Do this, or I quit,' you have to be prepared for them to say, 'Well, we're not going to do that.' And that's what happened."
A 'one-woman show'
That said, some former Feet Forward board members have expressed concern that other board members may be more invested in the success of the ACLU lawsuit than in the future of the organization.
Former board member Benita Duran questioned whether others on the board have been aligned with Livovich's vision for Feet Forward, which she described as a "one-woman show" that was created and developed "from the heart."
"Communities don't typically have a Jen Livovich who is so engaged, and so involved, in helping a population that a lot of people don't understand," said Duran.
And, according to Duran, the board of directors supplied little leadership for the organization and was not as fully engaged in providing services for Boulder's unhoused as Livovich was. She also said the other board members were people without much previous board experience.
"(I recognized) that the board wasn't as aligned with the programmatic elements that (Livovich) was taking on ... and they weren't necessarily helping to advise on some of these things that they really had no knowledge of or background in. And that's when I started realizing that maybe the board was more focused on this lawsuit than they were on the programmatic sides of the organization," Duran said.
In a separate statement, O'Connor said he doesn't see Feet Forward as purely a vehicle for the ACLU lawsuit and that he is committed to the organization's future. However, he affirmed that Feet Forward is committed to the ACLU lawsuit and will be staying on it.
Despite the board's official position that Feet Forward can still accomplish its mission while also pursuing the lawsuit, people who have been involved with Feet Forward in recent months are worried the organization has withered in Livovich's wake.
Under Livovich's leadership, Feet Forward offered a myriad of services for people experiencing homelessness: hot meals, peer support from people with lived experience, housing assessments, animal care and more. Livovich had cultivated relationships across the community and forged partnerships with the ambassadors, the Focus Reentry program, mental health providers and other community resources. She had a cadre of dedicated volunteers and staff members. And when she left, many of them left with her.
Now, months after Livovich's resignation, she is preparing to launch a new homelessness nonprofit, STREETSCAPE Peer Support Services and Outreach. Feet Forward, meanwhile, appears to offer few services apart from the meal service in Central Park near the Boulder Bandshell that has run on Tuesday afternoons for years. There have been multiple notices of late payments on a storage space Feet Forward is renting, which O'Connor said was due to an issue with changing the banking information on the account. The Colorado Secretary of State website shows Feet Forward as being in noncompliant status for failing to file a periodic report due at the end of August, and the organization will go into delinquency at the end of this month if the issue is not resolved.
O'Connor said the organization has been struggling because Livovich's departure created a "vacuum" from which it has been difficult to recover. He said the organization is working to "build back up" after Livovich's departure and has been awarded grant funding through the American Rescue Plan Act to hire more peer support specialists, particularly a supervisor who can oversee trainees and help more specialists become certified, since most of the specialists who had been working for Feet Forward left when Livovich did.
"We're on a path to growing those capabilities again," he said.
In addition, O'Connor said, Feet Forward has hired Libby Ogletree as its program director and is searching for a new executive director.
'We're continuing to do the work'
In addition to these challenges and administrative hiccups, since Livovich's resignation, donors to Feet Forward have expressed their disappointment that Livovich is no longer with the organization and said they intended their donations to support her work. One East Coast donor asked for her money back after Livovich informed her she was no longer with Feet Forward, but the organization refused to return her donation.
Naomi Eisenberger, executive director of the Good People Fund, a group based in New Jersey that offers grant funding for small to mid-size nonprofits, said Livovich made an immediate impression on her the first time they talked.
"Our connection is to (Livovich) and then to her work," Eisenberger said. "We were introduced to her and, while I have not yet met her face to face, I and my board were very, very impressed with her and her demeanor and her story. And so we agreed to fund her."
Eisenberger offered $10,000 in grant funding for Feet Forward, which Livovich accepted. After Livovich resigned, Eisenberger said, she notified her immediately.
"I felt badly for (Livovich) because this was her baby. This was an organization that was born out of her own trauma," Eisenbeger said.
However, because Livovich was no longer with Feet Forward, Eisenberger contacted Feet Forward's then-Interim Executive Director, Gwen Farnsworth, and asked for her money back. Although she said Farnsworth initially seemed amenable, the communications stopped for a while.
After sending an email to follow up in mid-July, Farnsworth called her back one evening, told her she would not get her money back and said Feet Forward had no obligation to return her donation.
Eisenberger spoke with an attorney, who confirmed Feet Forward was not legally obliged to return the money to the Good People Fund, but said it would be appropriate to ask for proof of how the money was spent.
"I've never had to outline exactly what we expect, because basically, our relationship with our grantees is a very personal one. And I would tell you, after 30 years of doing this, that I don't think they've been duped very often," Eisenberger said. "But I think, on some level, (Livovich) was probably duped. And that's unfortunate, because this is a very personal thing for her."
"I would never deal with an organization that deals that way with the founder," she added.
Farnsworth, who now serves on Feet Forward's board of directors, could not be reached for comment for this story.
O'Connor confirmed that Eisenberger had made a donation to Feet Forward and that the organization did not return the money. He said the donation was given to Feet Forward, not specifically to Livovich, and that the organization is "doing the work that we said we would do." He also said the organization had already used much of the funding by the time Eisenberger asked for it back.
"We're continuing to do the work of our mission, which was developed with (Livovich). So, no, we did not return (the money)," O'Connor said. "Once you award funding to someone, unless you put conditions upon it, you're basically asking to rescind the contract. There was nothing in there originally that said, 'We're funding Jennifer Livovich.' It went to Feet Forward."
He said Feet Forward relied on such funding to regroup in the wake of Livovich's departure.
"We had to scramble to continue to meet our mission in the large vacuum that was created," said O'Connor. "We stepped up and continued to do that. And that requires funding and funding that's already been granted. We have to count on that to be able to do that work."
Relations between Feet Forward and some of its other major donors also may have soured. At least three people made substantial donations for a shuttle bus that was to be refurbished and used as a mobile office. Livovich had spearheaded the project and bought the shuttle using those donations.
Boulder City Councilmember Rachel Friend wrote in a statement that she was one of the primary donors for the shuttle bus and she made the donation to support Livovich in doing work that she is "uniquely qualified to do."
"I watched Jen build Feet Forward from the ground up — to me, Feet Forward was Jen," she wrote. "So when Jen left Feet Forward, I hoped they would give her the shuttle bus to use in her new nonprofit; that would have matched my intent as a donor."
When Livovich left, Feet Forward kept the shuttle, and so far it has not been in use. O'Connor said the shuttle was in an auto shop getting some repairs, adding that it needed a little more work but he expected it to be up and running within the next month or two.
According to O'Connor, donors have reached out to him and expressed that they wanted Livovich to be able to use the shuttle. He said he told them he'd be open to creating an agreement with Livovich to share the shuttle, but that Feet Forward would not consider simply giving the shuttle to Livovich because it technically belongs to Feet Forward.
"The money for that (shuttle) was raised through Feet Forward," O'Connor said. "It is the board's property. And we are going to use it to do outreach, just like we intended from the beginning to do. So, no, we would not give away a resource like that."
'People have been really personally hurt'
It is difficult to surmise what the future may hold for Feet Forward. But the complex chain of events that has unfolded in recent months has been tremendously painful for many of those involved.
Although Livovich has focused on looking ahead to her next nonprofit venture, she thinks back on her time at Feet Forward — and the changes that have happened since — with disappointment.
"When I look back on Feet Forward and how it all began, it was a collective movement of people that had very little that used to be homeless in this community who all got together and gave back to their community," she said. "I think that the board completely lost sight of the uniqueness of the organization and its mission."
In O'Connor's statement in May, he wrote that board members were "saddened" to receive Livovich's resignation and they hoped she would continue to work with Feet Forward in some capacity. Livovich and O'Connor independently confirmed they did not reach agreement on acceptable terms for continuing to work together. However, Livovich said the board was largely unresponsive to her requests, while O'Connor said it was Livovich who stopped communicating with board members.
One former volunteer, Bruce Shaffer, said he wasn't privy to what caused the rift between Livovich and the board of directors but found the whole situation regrettable.
"I just wish that all concerned could have handled this ... in a way that better suited the uniqueness of the project and the history, the circumstances and the sensitivities of the personnel involved," Shaffer said.
"People have been really personally hurt, big time, by this breakup, way beyond the loss of a job. ... However it happened, it seems, to Livovich and others for whom this was really important in their lives, it's a huge loss for them."
