BALTIMORE (WBFF) — Waverly Main Street, a Baltimore nonprofit serving the Waverly business community, is facing scrutiny over missing funds and financial records from recent years.
“I had no idea that Waverly Main Street was in the disarray that it was,” said Kora Polydore, a small business owner who briefly took over the organization earlier this year.
Polydore said she started the job excited to help uplift the Waverly business community, but instead she found herself asking questions – and receiving few answers – about the organization’s finances and why required documentation wasn’t being provided to the mayor’s office or the IRS.
Waverly Main Street is one of nine Baltimore Main Streets programs, which work to promote neighborhood economic development, according to the city’s website. They all receive city grant funding, but the city doesn’t operationally control them.
Missing payments
Shortly after she got the job, Polydore said the organization’s former executive director, Diana Emerson, told her about a missing $60,000 check that the organization was supposed to receive from the mayor’s office for the 2024 fiscal year. Polydore asked about it shortly before she was let go from her position.
“[Emerson] said to me, ‘Oh, me and Eric have a meeting about it downtown,’” Polydore said. “So when I said, after a week passes, ‘What was the result of this meeting? Where’s the check?’ This is when all the things came out to then let me go, because I was asking too many questions.”
Asked why Waverly Main Street never received the money, Emerson told Spotlight that the city is sometimes “behind on vendor payments.” But the mayor’s office told Spotlight it did issue that payment.
Another concern arose when Polydore said she heard from a business owner, saying Waverly Main Street still owes them $13,000 for assisting with a book festival in 2025.
Polydore says she herself wasn’t paid for two months of work as the organization’s executive director and received only a partial payment just this week. A mayor’s office spokesperson told Spotlight they’ve been working to resolve the payment issue.
Polydore said her termination was explained as a transition to an all-board leadership model. “They didn’t want an executive director anymore because of financials, because basically they don’t have the money,” Polydore said. “And I was like, why do we not have the money?”
Emerson told Spotlight that Polydore was paid and that Polydore only worked for the organization for less than three weeks, not two months.
Mayor’s office concerned about records
The mayor’s office is also raising concerns about the organization’s finances, suspending payments until certain records are provided, according to a February letter that Polydore shared with Spotlight.
The letter detailed several concerns:
-The IRS’ revocation of the organization’s tax-exempt status in November 2024. (The IRS website shows an auto-revocation was triggered by three consecutive years of failure to file required tax forms. The site also shows the organization’s tax-exempt status was reinstated the same day.)
-A missing quarterly report for the first quarter of the 2026 fiscal year
-Missing financial statements for the 2024 fiscal year
-A discrepancy between IRS records showing revenues under $50,000 and records provided to the city showing annual revenues between approximately $150,000 and $180,000
-Differences between Form 990s (tax documents) provided to the city and the organization’s Profit & Loss statements and Balance Sheets
-Board members not listed on the Form 990s
-Lack of timely communication with the city’s grant coordinator
The city’s payment agreement with Waverly Main Street may be terminated if corrective actions aren’t taken by May 29, wrote Christopher Lundy, director of the Mayor’s Office of Small and Minority Business Advocacy and Development, according to the letter.
A spokesperson from the Mayor’s Office of Small and Minority Business Advocacy and Development told Spotlight their office is currently evaluating the organization’s documentation before disbursing this year’s funds.
‘I have no idea’
Emerson, who said she led the organization from 2022 to 2025, said the missing Form 990s were mistakenly filed under a different name by the organization’s accountant and that the issue has been rectified with the IRS. However, the filings are still not available online.
The accountant, Tiffany Duncan, did provide Form 990s to Spotlight for the 2022, 2023 and 2024 fiscal years. All of them were signed by Emerson and the accountant in late May of 2025, a timeline that wouldn’t have met the typical IRS filing deadline.
Prior to Duncan providing the forms, Spotlight asked Emerson approximately how much money the organization was receiving during those fiscal years. “I have no idea,” Emerson replied, adding that she hasn’t been officially working with the organization for some time.
The filings show the organization taking in gross receipts of $170,000, $180,000 and $155,000 in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 fiscal years.
Political party connections
Emerson serves as deputy treasurer of Maryland’s Democratic Party, represents the 43rd Baltimore City legislative district on the state’s central committee and leads Emerge Maryland, a nonprofit that advocates for Democratic women seeking political office.
“I don’t understand that,” Polydore said, referring to Emerson’s elected role. “She ran this into the ground. She was running for office, and my opinion is, don’t do that. Do not run for any type of office.”
Emerson described Polydore as “somebody who was not part of the organization long enough to even understand any of our operations” and said that her accusations are “not true.”
Emerson added that Waverly Main Street has done a lot for the neighborhood’s business community in the past few years, including paying for renovations, providing security cameras and removing graffiti.
‘What is going on with our neighborhood?’
Waverly Main Street’s office doors were locked when Spotlight visited this past week and most board members did not respond to inquiries, except for Duncan, who described Polydore to Spotlight in an email as a “previous terminated disgrustled [sic] employee.”
Duncan also wrote, “We are in the process of changing our internal processes and auditing our financial records while simultaneous [sic] working on our 2025 990.”
Polydore says she’s had many people contact her about negative experiences with the nonprofit and with Emerson.
“You were piss poor with this, and you’ve left a lot of businesses without advocacy,” Polydore said of Emerson. “You have caused people to be like, ‘What is going on with our neighborhood?’”
Have a news tip? Contact Brooke Conrad at bjconrad@sbgtv.com or 443-578-2126, or contact the Spotlight team at SpotlightOnMaryland@sbgtv.com or 410-467-4670. Spotlight on Maryland is a joint venture by The Baltimore Sun, FOX45 News and WJLA in Washington, D.C.