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A dispute over proceeds from a GoFundMe campaign has torn apart a Southwest Portland neighborhood association.
The organizers: Residents of the South Burlingame neighborhood, which lies just south of the Terwilliger curves of Interstate 5.
The beneficiary: The crowdfunding campaign, launched in 2018, was set up to finance a land use appeal intended to block construction of a 21-house development in South Burlingame. In February of that year, the Portland City Council sided with the neighbors and spiked the development.
But six years later, the whereabouts of more than $9,000 from that GoFundMe account is a question that has imploded the South Burlingame Neighborhood Association.
The dispute: On March 4, the SBNA board of directors held a special meeting. Board members said they had come to believe that Shannon Hiller-Webb—immediate past president of the neighborhood association and the controller of the GoFundMe account—had improperly taken $9,798 from the fundraiser, including over $6,000 in unpaid legal fees owed to the lawyer neighbors retained in 2018 to fight the development.
After receiving materials for the March 4 meeting in late February that made clear the Board was seeking to oust her, Hiller-Webb resigned March 2. At the March 4 meeting, members voted 50-0 to accept Hiller-Webb’s resignation and present her with a settlement agreement requiring her to pay the lawyer and return the remaining alleged missing funds.
“Hiller-Webb refuses to provide an accounting of the funds,” the March 4 settlement agreement reads, which was drafted by the SBNA and a lawyer, Lindy Laurence, “despite persistent and repeated requests for such information.” The agreement pledged the neighborhood association wouldn’t contact local law enforcement authorities or government agencies “regarding the missing funds” if Hiller-Webb returned them by March 31.
Hiller-Webb denies she’s done anything wrong and tells WW she’s provided a thorough accounting to the board of where all the money went. (Hiller-Webb also says the GoFundMe campaign was never under the umbrella of SBNA; it was, in fact, the effort of an informal group of South Burlingame residents.)
She characterizes the unpaid lawyer bill as a “series of accidents with multiple parties” and says it’s since been resolved. Land use lawyer Carrie Richter confirms to WW that her firm received payment in full on March 11.
But the beef isn’t quashed. In fact, Hiller-Webb says her ousting from the association fits into a pattern of “extensive and well-documented bullying” she’s experienced over the years. Hiller-Webb alleges the SBNA’s settlement agreement “seems plainly like an attempt to extort money from me.”
Hiller-Webb alleges the board’s actions are political retribution for her earlier legal crusade to get Southwest Neighborhoods Inc., an embattled coalition of neighborhood associations, to hand over certain public records. A Multnomah County judge sided with Hiller-Webb and her co-plaintiff in March 2022, two years after they filed the lawsuit.
What’s next: Both parties are threatening to go to the cops.
Hiller-Webb says she filed a report with the FBI and another with the Portland Police Bureau. (She has also filed two grievances with the SBNA.)
On March 6, Laurence, who told WW she represented “a private individual” but in emails says she was asked for assistance by the SBNA, wrote to Hiller-Webb that if she didn’t sign the agreement, the board would be “left with no choice but to take more formal measures, including reporting this matter to state and federal law enforcement authorities.”
Neither the SBNA nor Laurence responded to WW’s requests for comment.
Clarification: A previous version of this story said the neighborhood was fighting a 21-unit apartment complex. In fact, they were fighting a proposed development for 21 single-family homes.