The controversial nonprofit operated by Yolanda Hill, the wife of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, appears likely to close at the end of April.
In an email obtained by The Assembly, Hill told clients of Balanced Nutrition Inc.—which assists daycares in securing federal funding to feed low-income children—that “with a heavy heart” she had decided to exit the Child and Adult Food Care Program, Balanced Nutrition’s sole revenue source.
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the federal program in North Carolina, confirmed that Balanced Nutrition will no longer participate in it.
In her email, Hill said her husband’s political career had made it impossible to continue running the nonprofit she started in 2015.
“Some of you may or may not be aware that my husband is the Lt. Governor of North Carolina and is currently running for Governor of North Carolina,” Hill wrote. “With that being said, my life has gotten extremely busy over the last few years and those obligations no longer allow me the time to be a sponsoring organization.”
Robinson, a conservative populist with a long history of incendiary comments, secured the Republican nomination for governor on March 5. In November, he’ll face Attorney General Josh Stein in one of the country’s most closely watched statewide elections. Robinson will be the first Black governor in North Carolina history if he wins.
Over the last year, however, Balanced Nutrition has become a potential political liability, as The Assembly reported in January. Some conservatives have criticized the nonprofit for “recruiting customers for the social welfare state,” as Brant Clifton, editor of the conservative website The Daily Haymaker, wrote last May. Such a business is at odds with Robinson’s denunciations of “government charity,” they say.
“How do you go around claiming to be Mr. Conservative, or the King of Conservatism, when your family business is solely based on keeping the trains running on the welfare state?” Clifton told The Assembly earlier this year.
Critics also pointed to two Paycheck Protection Program loans Hill took out in 2020 and 2021, totaling $57,000, which were eventually forgiven. The federal program was intended to bail out businesses struggling during the pandemic, but records show that Hill gave herself a $28,000 raise in 2020—almost the exact amount of her first PPP loan—and from 2019 to 2021, Balanced Nutrition’s revenue rose from $950,000 to more than $1.3 million.
In addition, in 2021 and 2022, Balanced Nutrition’s tax filings failed to list the salaries of its top employees, including Hill. The nonprofit’s tax returns also did not acknowledge that family members were “key employees,” as required by federal guidelines.
And while DHHS rules required Hill to obtain permission to hire relatives, records show that she did not do so until 2023, even though her adult son, mother, and Robinson himself had previously worked for her. As of January, Balanced Nutrition, which is based in Greensboro, listed two full-time employees in state documents: Hill and Kimberly Cephas, Hill and Robinson’s daughter and a former Guilford County assistant district attorney.
The Robinson campaign previously dismissed Clifton and other conservative critics as “fringe,” and their concerns didn’t dent Robinson’s appeal to the Republican base. He won a three-way primary with 65 percent of the vote.
At his victory party last month, Robinson obliquely acknowledged the criticisms of Balanced Nutrition.
“My wife has been right out front,” Robinson said, with Hill standing beside him. “And she has been there with me. She’s even been attacked in this race some. But we weathered it. We stood tall. We didn’t get down in the mud.”
The Robinson campaign referred questions to Balanced Nutrition, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Before Hill opened Balanced Nutrition, the family dealt with numerous financial hardships. They filed for bankruptcy three times, lost a home to foreclosure, and lost a previous business—a daycare. In 2012, they were evicted from a rental home after failing to pay $2,000 in rent to Robinson’s elderly landlord. Robinson also failed to pay county vehicle taxes for more than a decade and federal income taxes for seven years.
As a politician, Robinson has framed those episodes as testaments to his determination.
“I have had my ups and downs with finances a time or two,” Robinson wrote in his 2022 memoir, “but they are the ups and downs of a man who is determined to make a go of it in the world without a steady stream of government ‘charity.’”
One prominent critic is skeptical that Hill is quitting Balanced Nutrition because of her husband’s schedule.
Don Carrington, the former executive editor of Carolina Journal, the journalism arm of the conservative John Locke Foundation, notes that in 2022, Balanced Nutrition generated almost $1.8 million in revenue, and state records indicate that Hill pays herself between $150,000 and $199,500 a year. (Carrington obtained the documents that fueled The Daily Haymaker’s reporting on Balanced Nutrition.)
Given the Robinsons’ past financial difficulties, that’s a big paycheck to walk away from, he said.
“That doesn’t make sense to me, because now that the primary’s over, the governor’s campaign is fully staffed,” Carrington said. “I don’t see Yolanda out there making a lot of appearances or giving speeches.”
Carrington wonders why someone else—Hill and Robinson’s daughter, who appears to have joined the nonprofit within the last year, for example—didn’t take over for Hill instead of shutting it down.
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