Jacksonville’s children’s-services agency distributes millions through nonprofit and institutional providers. The central question is not whether their missions sound worthwhile, but whether taxpayers can easily see who receives the money, how recipients are selected and what measurable results are delivered.

Jacksonville’s public-private funding pipeline does not end with downtown development, riverfront projects or sports facilities. It also runs through organizations offering childcare, after-school programs, juvenile-justice services, mental-health support, workforce preparation and assistance for children with special needs.

At the center of that system is the Kids Hope Alliance, commonly called KHA.

KHA describes itself as Jacksonville’s funding agent for children and families. Its website says it works with more than 90 local nonprofits, while city law generally requires actual services to be delivered by third-party providers, government agencies or other outside entities.

That makes KHA one of the most important—and least broadly understood—public-money gateways in Jacksonville.

What Is the Kids Hope Alliance?

Kids Hope Alliance is not an independent charity and does not have a private “founder” in the conventional nonprofit sense. It is a City of Jacksonville agency governed by Chapter 77 of the city’s Ordinance Code.

Former Mayor Lenny Curry proposed the reorganization, and the Jacksonville City Council enacted Ordinance 2017-563-E in October 2017. The legislation combined two existing public initiatives: the Jacksonville Children’s Commission and the Jacksonville Journey.

The former Children’s Commission handled general children’s services, while Jacksonville Journey concentrated more heavily on at-risk youth, crime prevention and intervention. KHA officially replaced that divided structure at the beginning of 2018.

The stated goal was to create a more coordinated continuum of services covering early learning, literacy, school readiness, mental and behavioral health, physical disabilities, juvenile justice and youth development. KHA’s account of the 2017 legislation and the Council Auditor’s history of the agency confirm that background.

The accurate answer to “Who founded Kids Hope Alliance?” is therefore not one individual. The Curry administration championed it, City Council created it, and a publicly appointed board was charged with governing it.

How Much Public Money Does Kids Hope Alliance Control?

The scale is considerably larger than the agency’s relatively modest public profile might suggest.

KHA’s September 2026 finance packet listed a current fiscal-year General Fund contribution of approximately $64.64 million and total current revenue of about $65.27 million.

The same packet showed a $67.19 million grants-and-aids budget for programs delivered through private organizations and other providers. Total current expenditures were approximately $74.36 million, including about $9.09 million in prior-year encumbrances carried into the current budget.

KHA’s published program allocations were:

Those figures come from KHA’s September 2026 Finance Committee packet.

Earlier reporting said City Council approved approximately $52.4 million for KHA to disburse to children’s-services organizations in the 2025–26 fiscal year. That figure and the later $67.19 million current budget are not necessarily contradictory. The finance packet includes additional program categories, budget changes and carried-forward obligations that can cause the current operating budget to exceed the original annual appropriation.

The important point is the scale: KHA is overseeing a public-funding network measured not in thousands, but in tens of millions of dollars every year.

Kids Hope Alliance Is a Funding Intermediary

KHA does not directly operate most of the programs supported by its budget. Instead, it solicits proposals, selects providers, negotiates contracts, reimburses expenses and monitors performance.

The agency says funding is generally awarded through requests for proposals. Its service network includes after-school providers, childcare organizations, established charities, juvenile-justice programs, educational institutions and organizations providing health, disability or family-stability services.

This arrangement can provide specialized services without requiring the city to build every program from scratch. It can also make public spending harder to follow.

A resident examining the city budget may see one large appropriation to KHA. To understand where the money ultimately goes, that resident must then locate separate RFPs, board packets, award recommendations, provider contracts, amendments, reimbursement records, performance reports and nonprofit financial filings.

That is the pipeline: public money enters through one city agency and then branches into dozens of outside organizations.

Which Organization Received the Largest KHA Allocation?

In October 2025, Action News Jax reported that KHA had allocated more than $12.2 million to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida for the 2025–26 fiscal year.

According to that report, the allocation was approximately three times larger than the amount awarded to any other KHA-supported organization. The published report documents both the amount and the comparison.

That concentration does not prove that the award was excessive. Boys & Girls Clubs operates numerous locations and may serve substantially more children than smaller providers. Scale, staffing, transportation, facilities, food service and program duration can all affect contract value.

But a $12.2 million allocation deserves a clear public accounting of the number of children served, cost per participant, locations operated, services delivered and results achieved.

Taxpayers should not have to assume that the largest provider produces the largest measurable benefit. KHA should make that relationship visible.

The Kevin Carrico Connection Requires Disclosure, Not Assumption

The Boys & Girls Clubs allocation attracted additional scrutiny because Kevin Carrico was serving as Jacksonville City Council president when the funding was reported.

Carrico is also listed by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida leadership team as vice president of strategic initiatives.

Those facts do not establish favoritism, improper influence or misconduct. A connection is not proof of a corrupt process.

It does, however, make transparency especially important. The public should be able to see Carrico’s disclosures, any recusals, the RFP scoring, the identities of evaluators, award recommendations and the final approval trail.

When an elected official holds an executive position with an organization receiving one of the city’s largest children’s-services allocations, complete disclosure protects both taxpayers and the organization. It permits the public to judge the process from evidence instead of suspicion.

Who Runs Kids Hope Alliance Now?

KHA’s current staff directory identifies Dana Kriznar as interim chief executive officer. It lists Kenneth Darity as chief administrative officer and Rodger Belcher as chief strategy officer, followed by directors responsible for finance, grants, purchasing, contract management, data systems, program effectiveness and other functions.

The breadth of that structure illustrates that KHA is more than a small grantmaking office. It has its own executive, administrative, financial, contracting, data and monitoring operation. The current leadership roster is published on KHA’s website.

Kriznar became interim CEO after a period of leadership upheaval. KHA has had several permanent or interim leaders since its creation, including Mike Weinstein, Joe Peppers, Donald Horner III and Saralyn Grass.

That degree of turnover matters because stable leadership is especially important at an agency responsible for multiyear contracts, provider oversight and performance measurement.

What Happened to Former CEO Saralyn Grass?

Saralyn Grass joined KHA in 2019 and became CEO in 2023. The KHA board voted 6–1 to terminate her employment on October 22, 2025.

Grass was earning $216,000 annually, according to Action News Jax.

The controversy involved a consulting company Grass formed with her husband and questions about the timing of her required secondary-employment disclosure. Jacksonville’s Ethics Office and Office of General Counsel ultimately approved the outside employment with restrictions, and Grass maintained that she had not violated agency policies.

The board nevertheless cited concerns about transparency and its expectations for agency leadership when it removed her. Jacksonville Today documented the leadership history and termination, while Action News Jax reported the salary and board vote.

The episode should not be overstated as proof of financial wrongdoing. It does show why conflict disclosures, outside-employment records and executive accountability are material issues at an agency that distributes millions to outside organizations.

How Much Do KHA Executives Make?

The most recent individual executive salary confirmed through published reporting is Grass’s former $216,000 annual salary.

KHA’s September 2026 finance packet budgets approximately $4.60 million for salaries and benefits across the agency. However, the staff directory and finance materials reviewed for this article do not provide a current employee-by-employee breakdown for the interim CEO, chief administrative officer, chief strategy officer and department directors.

That distinction is important. It would be inaccurate to assign current salaries to those employees without documentation.

Because KHA is a city agency, its leadership compensation should be easy to find without requiring a special records request. A public compensation table should include position, base salary, benefits, allowances, employment status and any additional compensation.

Publishing only an aggregate personnel budget tells taxpayers how much the agency spends on staffing. It does not tell them how that money is distributed among executives, administrators and program personnel.

What Have City Auditors Found?

The Jacksonville Council Auditor released a grants audit of KHA in 2021. The audit examined KHA’s management of grants received by the agency and its predecessor, the Jacksonville Children’s Commission.

Auditors reported significant weaknesses, including missing written procedures, untimely grant closeouts, compliance problems, inadequate record retention and instances involving reimbursement or matching expenses that did not comply with the controlling agreements.

The original audit contained 24 issues: nine internal-control weaknesses and 15 findings.

That history deserves scrutiny, but so does what happened afterward. A 2023 follow-up reported that 23 of the 24 issues had been cleared. A second follow-up in September 2025 concluded that the remaining issue had also been resolved.

In other words, the audit identified legitimate management failures, but the most recent Council Auditor follow-up says KHA addressed all 24. Both facts belong in any fair account. The reports are available through the city’s Council Auditor archive.

Clearing old audit findings does not eliminate the need for continuing oversight. It demonstrates why independent audits, documented corrective action and public follow-up reports matter.

Are Children Being Served—or Are Outcomes Improving?

KHA says it monitors provider implementation and program outcomes. Its public materials describe services covering academics, enrichment, nutrition, mental health, special needs, juvenile justice and workforce development.

But enrollment is not the same as effectiveness.

The number of children registered, meals distributed, program sites funded or hours of service delivered are useful operating measures. They do not necessarily show whether children improved their reading, attended school more consistently, avoided repeat involvement with the justice system, obtained lasting employment or experienced better health outcomes.

A useful public dashboard would allow residents to compare each provider using measures such as:

• Total contract amount and actual payments

• Number of children enrolled and completing the program

• Cost per participant and cost per successful outcome

• Contracted performance targets

• Actual results compared with those targets

• Prior-year results and multiyear trends

• Monitoring findings and corrective-action plans

• Contract amendments, extensions and renewals

• Independent evaluations or audits

The materials reviewed for this article did not reveal one current, consolidated and sortable public ledger containing all of that information for every provider.

KHA publishes substantial material through board and committee packets. The problem is accessibility: a technically public document is not necessarily meaningfully transparent if residents must reconstruct the funding system one meeting packet at a time.

Public Contracts Should Not Be Treated Like Charitable Donations

Many KHA-funded organizations perform valuable work. Some serve children facing disabilities, unstable homes, academic challenges or exposure to crime. Questioning a contract is not the same as questioning the worth of the children served.

But once a nonprofit accepts public money, the transaction is no longer simply charity. It becomes a public contract carrying obligations to taxpayers as well as clients.

A compelling mission statement cannot replace competitive scoring. Community goodwill cannot replace financial controls. The number of children reached cannot replace evidence that a program produced the outcome taxpayers were promised.

This standard should apply equally to large legacy organizations and small neighborhood providers.

What Jacksonville Should Publish

KHA could make its funding system substantially easier to evaluate without disclosing confidential information about children or families.

The agency should maintain one downloadable public table showing every provider, original award, amendments, total authorized amount, payments to date, program location, population served, executive leadership, scoring results, outcome targets and actual performance.

It should also publish current executive compensation, conflict disclosures, recusals and outside-employment approvals in a consistent location.

None of those measures would prevent KHA from funding children’s programs. They would help the public distinguish effective providers from organizations that are merely effective at obtaining public contracts.

The Next Branch of the Pipeline

Kids Hope Alliance is the gateway. The next stage of this investigation should follow the money from KHA into individual recipient organizations.

The logical first case study is the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida because of the reported $12.2 million allocation, its position as KHA’s largest recipient and the organization’s employment of a then-City Council president.

That examination should review published contracts, RFP scores, amendments, IRS Form 990 filings, executive compensation, related-party transactions, program locations, participant counts and measurable outcomes.

The same method can then be applied to childcare organizations, behavioral-health providers, medical charities, family-service nonprofits and other entities receiving large city-supported awards.

Jacksonville may conclude that many of these programs deliver excellent value. If so, public performance data should demonstrate it.

The principle behind the Public Money Pipeline series remains the same: worthy causes do not require less accountability. They require accountability strong enough to protect their missions, the people they serve and the taxpayers who finance them.

Research note: This report was prepared from documents and information already published online, including city budgets, KHA meeting materials, Council Auditor reports, agency webpages and local news coverage.

Public Money Pipeline IX

Public Money Pipeline VIII:

Public Money Pipeline VII: Understanding the Kids Hope Alliance

The Public Money Pipeline Part VI

The Public Money Pipeline Part V

The Public Money Pipeline Part IV

The Public Money Pipeline Part III

The Public Money Pipeline Part II

The Public Money Pipeline Part I