A charitable program run by a woman with close ties to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan received $358,000 in city grants and also benefited from a fundraising campaign that a top city official spearheaded at the mayor’s direction, the Free Press has learned.

An email obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request shows that Duggan ordered the city’s chief development officer to raise money for Make Your Date, which is a nonprofit medical organization according to state and federal records, where Dr. Sonia Hassan serves as president and director.

Hassan was seen late last year arriving after hours at the same suburban residence as Duggan in an edited surveillance video taken by a private investigator. She was handpicked by the mayor to lead Detroit's efforts to reduce preterm births in Detroit.

The Free Press has not named Hassan in previous articles about the surveillance video, which shows Duggan arriving at that location on three occasions without his personal protection team. But the city’s financial support, attempted fundraising campaign and Duggan’s repeated promotion of Make Your Date raises ethics questions about whether the mayor used city resources to benefit Hassan's program.

The Free Press has been examining Make Your Date's operations and funding for several months. As part of its investigation, the newspaper requested documentation of communications involving Hassan, Duggan and the mayor's chief of staff, Alexis Wiley. City officials had previously downplayed Duggan's assistance to Make Your Date as typical of the mayor's support for city-backed philanthropic efforts. But the records obtained in late March revealed a significant commitment of resources from the development office at the mayor’s direction.

Duggan orders fundraising effort

The fundraising campaign Duggan ordered began with an email introduction between the city’s development officer and Hassan. The email's subject line was "Make Your Date Fundraising."

“I’d like to introduce you to Ryan Friedrichs,” Wiley wrote in the August 2017 email to Hassan. “He is our chief development officer and the Mayor has tasked him with launching a large scale fundraising effort to Make Your Date. He’ll be in touch soon!”

The fundraising effort was eventually deemed unnecessary, officials stress, but not before several city staffers collaborated on the campaign. The effort did not result in any donations. However, Make Your Date has raised more than $1.5 million since its inception.

Dr. Sonia Hassan, in red, sits with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan during the 2015 fundraising gala for Hassan's Make Your Date program at MGM Grand Detroit. makeyourdate.org

Duggan has never directly addressed the allegations of an extramarital affair, insisting his marriage is a private, personal matter unrelated to city business. Representatives of both Duggan and Hassan refused this week to answer direct questions about the nature of their relationship.

“Dr. Hassan does not comment about personal matters,” spokesman Bill Nowling said in a statement.

Wiley referenced a previous statement from the mayor's office that declined to characterize Duggan's relationship with Hassan. "This was addressed last November and we made clear then that there would be no further comment," Wiley wrote in an email.

In addition, the mayor's office vehemently denied the city ever provided money directly to the Make Your Date nonprofit. The city contends Make Your Date is administered as a Wayne State University program, sentiments echoed by university officials.

"All funding went solely to the institution of Wayne State University," Wiley wrote in an email.

But contracts that govern the city grants all name Wayne State and Make Your Date as recipients. While Make Your Date is not described as a nonprofit in the contracts, the organization is registered as a nonprofit with the state and the Internal Revenue Service. Donors at the 2017 annual gala were directed to make their checks payable to Make Your Date Detroit, "a 501(c)(3) organization," which is the IRS designation for a nonprofit.

Furthermore, Make Your Date’s own website describes its purpose as: “The Wayne State University School of Medicine is raising funds to support Make Your Date Detroit, a free program to help pregnant women ensure a safe delivery. Mothers-to-be can take advantage of this powerful and free nonprofit program, offered through the City of Detroit, for assistance in delivering healthy full-term babies on or after their due date.”

Mayor Mike Duggan's ties to Sonia Hassan, explained An email obtained in a Free Press investigation shows mayor ordered special attention for a nonprofit run by Dr. Sonia Hassan, with whom he's linked. Kat Stafford and Joe Guillen, Wochit

Duggan wasn’t just supportive of an effort to tackle preterm births — he approached Wayne State about creating a program to address it, according to a statement from the mayor's office.

City commits resources to raise funds

After Wiley sent that email to Hassan in 2017, Friedrichs wrote to the doctor, sending an email to her at 10:36 p.m. that committed “all three of our lead Development Officers to the discussion” and said the fundraising campaign would focus on public and philanthropic grants and corporate donations.

Friedrichs, who oversees the Office of Development and Grants, offered to host a meeting to discuss the effort in the mayor's office.

“I look forward to the discussion and to being an ally for your work however I am able,” Friedrichs wrote to Hassan.

Ultimately, the city's fundraising efforts for Make Your Date did not raise any money. City workers met with Wayne State's philanthropy staff, made a number of preliminary inquiries and provided "concept papers" to the Skillman Foundation and the Children's Hospital of Michigan Foundation, Wiley said.

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"After those initial meetings, Wayne State philanthropy staff concluded they already had strong relationships with the potential funders and did not need (the city) to solicit funds for Make Your Date," Wiley said.

The controversy involving Hassan began in November when Detroit businessman Robert Carmack broadcast the surveillance video of Duggan on giant screens outside City Hall, creating a public spectacle during rush hour. Carmack, who is embroiled in various disputes with the city, suggested the video showed the mayor having an affair. After the video aired, Duggan and his wife, Lori Maher, issued a statement defending their marriage. Speculation about an affair also was referenced in an open records lawsuit government agitator Robert Davis filed in December, against Wayne State and Hassan. The Free Press has not independently corroborated the allegations suggested in the video.

On Thursday, three planes towing banners referencing Duggan and Hassan flew over downtown, catching the eyes of thousands partying during Tigers' Opening Day events. At least one of the banners, which Carmack said cost $1,500 each, named Hassan, misspelling her name, and continuing in cheeky language: "Dr Hussan marry me? Love Mayor Duggan" followed in red letters by, "Oh I forgot I'm married"

A banner flies over downtown Detroit on Thursday above crowds partying at Opening Day events. The banner was one of three flown over the city, paid for by Duggan agitator Robert Carmack. Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

City fundraising rare

Government ethics experts said it is uncommon for cities to raise money for nonprofit organizations and questioned whether Detroit's fundraising effort for Make Your Date was offered to other nonprofit groups.

“It’s not at all unusual for cities to make grants or write contracts for nonprofits, that’s done all the time,” said University of Southern California professor Terry Cooper, who authored the book “The Responsible Administrator: An Approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role.” But "to raise money for a nonprofit, that’s quite unusual. It seems to me there are several dimensions to this beyond a conflict of interest.”

Hui Chen, the former compliance counsel expert at the U.S. Department of Justice, said that all local nonprofits aligned with the mayor’s mission to reduce preterm birth should have been given the opportunity to benefit from a city-staffed fundraising campaign.

“Every organization that’s got a mission that’s aligned with your objective, not just a single organization,” Chen said. “You don’t just have a private conversation with one single organization, ‘We’re going to help you.’

“My stance is, to really do things in a fair and transparent way for a public organization, if you want to offer this kind of help, offer it to everybody.”

Detroit’s decision to assign city workers for nonprofit fundraising is not common, said Elizabeth Boris, a fellow at the Urban Institute and co-editor of the book, “Nonprofits and Government: Collaboration and Conflict.”

“I would say that I don’t know of other instances, which is not to say that they don’t exist, but it seems to me that it’s probably rare,” said Boris, founding director of the institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy and former founding director of the Aspen Institute’s Nonprofit Sector Research Fund.

Like Chen, Boris questioned the city’s process for deciding to raise money for Make Your Date.

“Did they do campaigns for other organizations?” Boris said. “Or is there some process by which they raise money and dole it out and this one is an aberrant case? I guess those are the things I look for.”

A state directory of maternal infant health programs lists about a dozen agencies in Detroit.

Officials won't talk; email withheld

The mayor's office would not make Friedrichs available for an interview about the Make Your Date fundraising campaign. It offered only to respond to written questions for Friedrichs, who is married to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and has a city salary of $181,983. The Free Press declined to submit detailed written questions without an opportunity to interview Friedrichs.

"We see no reason for Mr. Friedrichs to do a wide-ranging interview where he would be responding to various detailed financial questions only from memory, instead of having (office) staff assemble the full and accurate information for your questions," Wiley wrote in an email.

Friedrichs' office of more than 20 employees is responsible for finding grants and other sources of revenue to support the city's priorities. Make Your Date was among 41 priorities listed in a 2018 annual report summarizing the work of Friedrichs' office. The priorities list is a mix of general city initiatives, such as recycling, brotherhood, sustainable housing, and the Motor City Makeover, as well as some specific groups, such as professional development for the Detroit Public Schools Community District.

The annual report indicates the Office of Development and Grants completed work on its Make Your Date efforts on Feb. 6, 2018, with at least "some level of ODG support."

The city's fundraising campaign for Make Your Date followed a series of grants that the city directed to the program from 2015 to 2017. The money came from Detroit’s allocation of state money for maternal and child health programs.

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Make Your Date, as an integral part of the city’s plan to reduce preterm birth, is designed to help pregnant women deliver full-term babies. The organization holds pregnancy education classes and says it connects women to doctors and midwives, and provides other medical services.

A program representative told the Free Press that Make Your Date has served more than 8,000 Detroit women. Although Hassan would not discuss program services with the Free Press, Wayne State provided a sample from 2017 that showed 1,715 women were serviced in three key areas — educational sessions, cervical length screenings and group prenatal care.

The city did not disclose its fundraising campaign for Make Your Date when the Free Press asked for information in December. In response to written questions about the city’s and the mayor’s relationship with Make Your Date — and specifically asked then whether city staff helped raise money — city spokesman John Roach provided the following written response:

“The mayor volunteered to serve as honorary chair of Make Your Date’s annual fundraiser, as he has done for many philanthropic events and the city of Detroit has been generally supportive of Make Your Date’s fundraising efforts as we have done for a variety of philanthropic efforts.”

The Free Press obtained the emails between Wiley and Hassan last month through a supplemental response to a Freedom of Information Act request for their communications.

The messages from the city officials to Hassan were not included in the city’s initial 395-page response, which had been reviewed by the law department. Instead, the initial FOIA response included a single email between Wiley, Hassan and Friedrichs with a message body that read, “Attachment is corrupted.” After the Free Press questioned the "corrupted" notation on the attachment, the city provided the emails about the fundraising campaign and explained that “clean copies” were eventually discovered during a “manual search.”

“It appears this particular email thread was corrupted during (the city’s IT department) process of transferring the emails identified as part of its search parameters,” according to a March 18 letter from the city’s FOIA coordinator.

The Free Press made several attempts to reach Hassan for comment but she declined through Nowling, who specializes in crisis communication, and through Wayne State University, which also declined requests for an in-person interview. A university spokesman instead offered to answer only written questions via email.

Nowling, who said Hassan was at a medical conference in Europe, provided a statement Thursday afternoon that asserted there was nothing wrong with the operation and described questions about any relationship as "a personal matter that is and should remain private."

Wayne State Vice President and General Counsel Louis Lessem characterized the newspaper's reporting as a sensationalist attack on a “highly respected scientist.”

"Make Your Date was from the beginning a program administered appropriately and ethically by Wayne State University. … The only beneficiaries of the Make Your Date program are the neediest among us," Lessem said in a written statement.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan poses with headlining comedian Louie Anderson and Dr. Sonia Hassan, the president and director of Make Your Date, at the 2015 fundraiser gala at the MGM Grand Detroit. makeyourdate.org

Duggan backs Make Your Date early on

Duggan’s professional relationship with Hassan goes back at least to the beginning of his administration. Shortly after he was elected in 2013, Duggan handpicked Hassan to carry out his mission to reduce Detroit’s preterm birth rate, which is among the nation’s highest.

By the time Duggan picked her to lead the effort, Hassan, a lauded doctor, had distinguished herself in the field of obstetrics and gynecology. She “achieved a national and international reputation of excellence” thanks in part to her role as a lead investigator on a breakthrough medical study to prevent preterm birth, according to a favorable recommendation letter in 2014 from Wayne State’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology Promotion and Tenure Committee.

Hassan, a professor and associate dean for maternal, perinatal and child health at the university's School of Medicine, earned about $512,000 in 2015, according to school documents. She launched the Make Your Date nonprofit in 2014 with support from the city and Wayne State. Duggan was a key speaker at its initial news conference, touting the organization’s role in his ambitious mission to fight preterm birth.

"Carrying her baby to full-term is the most important thing a mother can do for the development of her child," Duggan said in a May 2014 WSU news release about the launch. "The Make Your Date program is designed to make sure every baby born in Detroit is given a chance at a healthy start in life."

City and university officials contend the nonprofit was never actually operational, even though it has been filing state and federal documentation of its charitable mission. "At an early stage in the program’s development, consideration was given as to whether a 501(c)(3) corporation would be an appropriate structure, a subsequent determination was made that the financial and administrative services necessary to its functioning could be more effectively and much more economically provided by existing university resources," according to Lessem.

Yet the program continues to promote itself as a nonprofit on its website, in fundraising materials and required government reporting documents. When asked why it continues to file such paperwork, Lessem responded: "It is not evident to me that dissolving the corporation would serve to advance the Program’s ends or benefit those who it serves."

Big donations for Make Your Date

Make Your Date was launched with help from major health organizations in the area, including St. John Providence Health System, Henry Ford Health System and the Detroit Medical Center, which Duggan ran as CEO until he resigned in 2012 to run for mayor.

Some of those health groups also gave Make Your Date significant financial help early on.

The Detroit Medical Center and the DMC Foundation donated $100,000 each and Meridian Health gave $33,000 to Make Your Date in its first year. All three groups would continue to contribute over the next several years as Make Your Date expanded its donor base.

DMC declined to answer specific questions about its contributions and instead provided a brief statement saying, “like many organizations in Detroit, the DMC and its Foundation have provided support to this charitable organization.”

DMC Foundation President Mariam Noland confirmed its monetary support for the organization. A spokeswoman for Meridian said late last year that the health care insurance organization has contributed to Make Your Date since 2014, but did not respond to several specific questions about its donations.

Of the $1.5 million Make Your Date has raised, the newspaper could identify from university records about $500,000 in the form of grants and another $900,000 in donations. Many contributions were made through its celebration galas, where Duggan served as honorary chairman for three straight years, from 2015 to 2017.

Photos from one gala posted on its website show Hassan and Duggan sitting at a table together and posing for a photo with comedian Louie Anderson, the headlining entertainment act.

While onstage at the 2015 gala at MGM Grand Detroit, Duggan credited Hassan with starting Make Your Date and carving a new path to reach pregnant mothers in Detroit.

“She’s gone the next step and said, 'It’s good that I made the breakthrough. I want to make sure the moms and kids really get treated,' and she’s gone to the extent of organizing this event. And on behalf of everybody in Detroit, Sonia, thank you,” Duggan said in a video posted on Make Your Date's Facebook page.

Joe Mullany, a former CEO of DMC who left the health system in January 2017, also spoke at the gala and noted that he had worked with Duggan for a few months before Duggan became mayor. Mullany, whom Duggan hired at DMC, said the mayor personally reached out to ask him to support his initiative to fight preterm birth.

“When I got the phone call from the mayor, it was, ‘Joe we gotta collaborate, we gotta bring everybody into this together.’ You know? I was like, ‘Really Mike? Ok, whooo, we can do that,’ ” Mullany said to laughter in the audience. “This is bigger than any institution, bigger than any entity. It’s a big issue we need to attack together. And I’m so proud that egos got put aside. The institutions were able to come together and really make a commitment to make this happen.”

In 2015, the City of Detroit began sending to Make Your Date a portion of its state allocation of money for maternal and child health programs. The city directed more than $358,000 in grant money to Make Your Date between 2015 and September 2017. The state, Wayne State and the city’s grant administrator — the Southeastern Michigan Health Association — all approved the city’s grant contributions to Make Your Date.

Make Your Date used the city grants for many purposes — nurses’ labor costs, office supplies, computer equipment and advertising were among the expenses, records show. There has been no suggestion that Make Your Date or Hassan have misused any funds.

The city’s third and final grant to Make Your Date, for $100,000, was finalized in May 2017 and expired on Sept. 30, 2017.

The Detroit city charter — a document that lays out the rules of city government — prohibits the mayor, other elected officials and city employees from rendering services that are in conflict or incompatible with the proper discharge of their official duties. Also, one of the 2017 contracts governing payments to the program also contains conflict of interest guidelines.

Cooper, the USC professor, said the public deserves to know more about the city's support of Make Your Date.

“Are we being fair to other nonprofits in the city if we give money to a particular nonprofit?” Cooper said.

"We’re always concerned about when we give out public funds. We want the receivers to be accountable for how they’re used so we can determine they were used in the most effective or efficient way.”