Last October, Brown and three other Providence-based colleges and universities agreed to provide over $177 million in voluntary payments to the city over the course of 20 years.
The Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT, agreement takes the form of a memorandum of understanding signed by Brown, the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence College and Johnson and Wales University. The agreement accounts for the fact that the four non-profit educational institutions do not pay property taxes to Providence.
Brown also signed a separate agreement with Providence to provide an additional $46 million in voluntary payments on top of the funding outlined in the MOU.
Providence recently published a website detailing each of the four schools’ community contributions to the city. The Herald reviewed the recently published data and found five key takeaways.
Brown made the largest PILOT payments
In the MOU, all four Providence schools pledged to provide “community contributions” to the city. Voluntary payments are the mandated cash payments from each university to the city. The exact amounts each institution must pay every year are explicitly outlined in the 2023 MOU.
Community contributions include a wide variety of additional cash or in-kind services provided to the city and its residents. Each institution can choose how to break down their community contribution requirement and it can vary each year.
The schools are expected to provide community contributions in an amount equal to or exceeding that of their voluntary payments.
According to the data, Brown paid the most in both community contributions and voluntary payments out of the four schools.
Brown’s community contributions totaled over $11 million in fiscal year 2024 and voluntary payments totaled $5.1 million, bringing the University’s total PILOT contributions to about $17 million. Brown has pledged to pay $175 million in direct voluntary payments between 2024 and 2043, according to University Spokesperson Brian Clark.
But the reported voluntary payments and community contributions are only “a partial view of how Brown makes an economic impact in the city,” Clark wrote in an email to The Herald.
Clark cited campus visitors, investments into building projects, research spending and entrepreneurial startups coming out of Brown as important ways in which the University “injects” funds into Providence’s economy.
Institutional payments more than doubled under new PILOT agreement
The new PILOT agreement more than doubled the voluntary payments that Providence received from the four educational institutions, “making Providence a national leader in redefining how tax-exempt entities and communities can collaborate,” City Spokesperson Anthony Vega wrote in an email to The Herald.
Before 2023, Providence had signed several individual agreements with each school, but had not entered a PILOT agreement with all four schools since 2003. Brown entered a separate voluntary payment MOA with the city in 2012, which expired in 2022.
According to the prior agreements, payments to the city totaled $94 million between 2003 and 2023. Between the new joint MOU and Brown’s revamped MOA, payments to the city under the new agreements total $223 million over the next 20 years, over double that of the previous two decades.
More than half of each university’s community contributions are through scholarships and financial aid for Providence residents
All four schools in the PILOT agreement targeted scholarships and financial aid for local residents as their primary form of community contribution.
According to Clark, close to 90 Providence residents studying at Brown received financial aid in fiscal year 2024, amounting to over $6 million in aid and scholarships. RISD enrolled 54 undergraduate and graduate students from Providence, constituting close to $2 million in aid. PC gave aid and scholarships to 87 Providence students, amounting to around $4.4 million, while JWU gave more than $3.6 million to 213 Providence residents.
Clark added that Brown’s contributions come in tandem with the University's commitment to supporting K-12 education citywide. The University also has a number of programs for Providence-area K-12 students, including Pre-College programs, Brown’s new Collegiate Scholars Program, Brown Summer High School and medical school pathways programs.
Providence College made an active choice to prioritize aid to local students, said PC Spokesperson Steven Maurano. “No one is mandating us to provide scholarships or financial aid to students who are residents of Providence. We do it because we believe those students are deserving of them, but that’s our decision,” he said.
Community contributions included everything from “Pumpkinfest” to fraternity fundraisers
This year’s community contributions from all four institutions totaled nearly $30 million. For fiscal year 2024, each school’s community contributions exceeded their voluntary payments by several millions of dollars.
“From providing financial aid to students from Providence to sharing its facilities and offering hundreds of hours of community service annually, there are so many ways JWU gives back to the city,” JWU Spokesperson Lynzi DeLuccia said.
This year, PC logged over $5,000 in contributions for hosting a fall festival called “Pumpkinfest” and $67 in cash contributions for Delta Sigma Pi fundraisers. Brown’s contributions included over $120,000 in “in kind” work by the Brown Tutoring Corps and $11,000 of “in kind” street tree maintenance.
Brown Health agreed to its first PILOT deal
Brown University Health, formerly known as Lifespan, entered into a PILOT agreement with the city on Nov. 15. The hospital system agreed to contribute $1.5 million in voluntary payments over the course of three years.
None of the hospital system’s new PILOT funding comes from the University, Brown Health Spokesperson Sharon Torgerson wrote in an email to The Herald. Brown Health’s PILOT negotiations with the city are “completely unrelated to our affiliation agreement with Brown,” Torgerson added.
Brown Health will make its first payment of $750,000 in FY2025 and its second in FY2026. The hospital system and city will enter negotiations to develop a new MOU before the agreement expires.
Maya Kelly is a Metro senior staff writer who covers health and environment. When she's not at The Herald, you can find her hanging from an aerial silk, bullet journaling, or stress-baking.
Ciara Meyer is a section editor from Saratoga Springs, New York. She plans on concentrating in Statistics and English Nonfiction. In her free time, she loves scrapbooking and building lego flowers.
