The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office published a report on Tuesday asserting a Nashville nonprofit misspent over $40,000 from a state grant, with the majority of the diverted money allegedly going to the group’s executive director or the church where he is a pastor. The office referred the matter to Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk.
According to the investigators in a press release, the Successful Survivors that claims to assist individuals with mental illness and substance abuse issues received $299,670 in grant funds from the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (MHSAS) to purchase and renovate a Nashville home for use as a “rehabilitation house.”
Of that grant, the comptroller’s report claims Successful Survivors, a 501(c)(3) organization, spent $42,249.74, about 14 percent of the total, on “unallowable payments, including checks written to the executive director.”
By time the purchase and renovation of the building were completed, Successful Survivors allegedly paid executive director Rev. Curtis Bryant $29,000 in “developer fees.”
According to the press release, Bryant (pictured above)”told investigators that he believed he deserved the payment for facilitating the property purchase and overseeing the renovation.” The investigators further claimed that Successful Survivors “failed to provide any written documentation justifying the payments” and “did not receive approval from MHSAS” to pay Bryant the “developer fees.”
The report also found $4,000 in grant funds were donated to Greater Heights Missionary Baptist Church, where the agency revealed Bryant “serves as a pastor.” The investigators allege the donation is prohibited under the Code of Federal Regulation grant guidelines.
In addition to the money that went to Bryant or the church, the investigators claim, “Successful Survivors also failed to provide invoices or receipts for 34 payments totaling $9,404.11 related to the renovation of the Nashville home and paid miscellaneous unallowable taxes totaling $1,845.63 with grant funds.”
Additionally, the report claimed Successful Survivors failed to acknowledge the grant on their federal tax forms, “understating their prior year’s revenue by over $299,000.”
A 2021 profile of Bryant’s work with Successful Survivors by Main Street Media the group sought “to help people not only survive what they’ve gone through but also help them be successful in the process.”
“For me as a pastor, I see that being a spiritual venture, an economic venture, just a life venture,” Bryant told the outlet.
In 2022, however, Successful Survivors faced scrutiny from News Channel 5 during an investigation of how the money raised after tornadoes devastated Tennessee, and was included in a list of charitable organizations that received money from the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee but refused to tell the outlet “specifically where it went or how they spent it.”
Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower said in a statement about the report, “Nonprofits must ensure they collect and retain adequate documentation to support grant expenditures” and declared it “vital” for a nonprofit’s Board of Directors to “provide adequate oversight to implement internal controls over financial reporting and other operations.”
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Curtis Bryant” by Curtis Bryant.
