Investigators revealed new details Thursday about an ex-San Francisco department head who allegedly enriched herself through a corrupt scheme of bribes and illegal gifts that went on for years.
The city attorney’s office said Sheryl Davis, who resigned in September as Human Rights Commission director, received tens of thousands of dollars from a city-funded organization that benefitted her personal business ventures, expensive travel, and her son’s tuition to UCLA. Davis left the commission after The Standard’s reporting raised questions about her relationship with the nonprofit Collective Impact.
Davis and Collective Impact, led by executive director James Spingola, were already under heavy scrutiny. Last fall, The Standard reported that Davis and Spingola shared a home and a car while the nonprofit received multiple six-figure contracts from the Human Rights Commission. Davis failed to disclose her relationship with Spingola when she personally signed off on the contracts.
That money was paid through the Human Rights Commission and its Dream Keeper Initiative, a flagship program of former Mayor London Breed that directed tens of millions of dollars of city money toward the city’s Black community. Other partner organizations of Dream Keeper have since been found to be misspending funds or not using the money they were given.
Investigators made additional allegations in a 28-page administrative report:
- Davis’ personal podcast, “Sunday Candy,” received half of its booking costs from Collective Impact, amounting to more than $10,000 to pay her talent agency, GPS Speakers, which booked guests, including political activist Cornel West. Some of the money came from a city grant that was intended to support an out-of-school youth programming contract. That contract was also used to pay a singer, Goapele, $5,000 to perform at a party to launch Davis’ book “Free to Sing.”
- Collective Impact paid to upgrade Davis to first class on flights, including $870 on airfare in 2023 to and from Chicago, where she performed a reading for her book. The nonprofit billed this expense to a young adult workforce development grant. The grant was also used to pay for first-class upgrades for Davis and a companion to a Palm Springs event where she promoted her podcast and book.
- Davis and Spingola traveled together to a Martha’s Vineyard conference in August 2023, with the nonprofit billing nearly $50,000 to an educational grant to cover the expenses of the event. The grant explicitly prohibited using funds on conferences or travel. Collective Impact labeled the conference and travel expenses as “general supplies.” Another $16,319 was paid by Collective Impact for a weeklong stay at a “luxury” Martha’s Vineyard property used by Davis, Spingola, and others.
- Collective Impact paid $19,000 for Davis’ son’s tuition at UCLA. It then invoiced the city for the expense.
- Collective Impact also spent more than $75,000 in 2022 and 2023 on its own employees, including Spingola, and at least five city employees. In November 2023, the nonprofit paid for a Human Rights Commission employee’s rent, sending $2,469 to the staffer’s landlord. Collective Impact billed that payment to a Dream Keeper Grant.
- Collective Impact paid three public defender’s office staffers $5,950 for their work on a city-run initiative called MAGIC, which operates programs benefitting youth in Bayview Hunters Point and the Fillmore. City employees are not supposed to be paid by outside organizations for their city work. Collective Impact invoiced some of those payments to a Dream Keeper grant.
The report released Thursday is “rife with inaccuracies, omissions, and outright misinformation,” and the city attorney is participating in a “public lynching,” Davis said in a statement provided by her attorney Tony Brass.
“[The report] deliberately casts aspersions on the Black women the city pushed out of [the Dream Keeper Initiative] while conveniently failing to mention that the white and non-Black employees of color who established the very protocols it now criticizes remain employed and untouched,” Davis said. “This selective accountability is not just telling — it is a glaring example of the anti-Blackness embedded in San Francisco’s political machinery.”
Collective Impact, which has received $27 million from San Francisco since 2021, was suspended Thursday from receiving city funding.
“Sorry, I can’t talk right now,” Spingola wrote in a text message after The Standard called him for comment. A person who answered the phone at Collective Impact deferred comment to Spingola.
The public defender’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A Human Rights Commission spokesperson declined to comment on the allegations in the report.
“This department is now, as it has been over the last six months, cooperating with all investigations into HRC’s former director and department operations. Those investigations remain confidential,” said the spokesperson, Devi Zinzuvadia.
“Misusing grant funds for individual gain — or for the benefit of a select few — doesn’t just take away resources from the people in need,” Controller Greg Wagner said in a statement. “It erodes the confidence of those doing important work and unfairly casts a shadow on the organizations that are genuinely making every dollar count. Our residents deserve accountability.”
The city attorney’s office said there is an ongoing audit of the Human Rights Commission and Collective Impact.
“Our communities deserve these resources, and we cannot allow public monies to be diverted for personal benefit and self-promotion,” City Attorney David Chiu said in a statement. “All city employees have a responsibility to ensure that public funding is used as intended to deliver high-quality public services.”
The Rev. Amos Brown, a former president of the SF NAACP chapter who has been critical of media coverage surrounding the Dream Keeper scandal, suggested that such ethics investigations have disproportionately targeted Black leaders. He urged city leaders not to use the scandal to diminish the need for funding in the Black community, which has suffered historic injustices, causing the population to drastically decline.
“Right is right. Wrong is wrong. But we should be consistent for everybody,” Brown said. “The unfortunate thing in this society [is that] there are far too many instances where there has not been a consistent threat of justice.”
The city announced late last year that it was pulling five Collective Impact grants worth millions of dollars from two city departments. In October, Saidah Leatutufu-Burch resigned as director of the Dream Keeper Initiative, weeks after Davis’ departure.
Last week, the city controller’s office tied Davis to a separate nonprofit scandal, claiming that the Human Rights Commission had given special treatment to a nonprofit whose founder is facing bribery charges.