Folding up the con-profits

One of the interesting things about the recession* we're headed into is the specific way the non-profit sector is going to implode. 

Earlier this year, the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) abruptly laid off its entire helpline staff. The announcement came just two weeks after the helpline workers voted to form a union, Helpline Associates United (HLAU). Workers were informed that they were being replaced by an artificial-intelligence chatbot named Tessa.

NEDA, the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to providing support to people struggling with eating disorders, launched the helpline in 1999. The organization claimed that the layoffs were unrelated to the success of the union effort—a claim that the workers and the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union representing them, categorically dismissed. Rather than having a phone helpline staffed by human workers, the association planned to run an online chat helpline operated exclusively by Tessa.

Incidentally, that's the A.I. bubble in a nutshell right now.  Capital is always looking for new and innovative ways to operate more efficiently ... um... intimidate workers into submission.  Does the chatbot even work?  What a ridiculous question. Everyone knows that's not even the point. 

Helpline staff continued their work when NEDA did a soft launch of the bot in late May. But within days, major problems emerged. People shared stories on social media about their disturbing experiences with Tessa; in one case, it dispensed weight loss advice. But shortly before NEDA planned to entirely eliminate the phone helpline and transition to Tessa on June 1, the organization announced that it would shut down both the helpline and the chatbot. NEDA no longer offers any resources by phone or online chat.

Who cares if a robot can actually replace the workers or not. Who cares if the job even gets done at all! This is far from the last we'll see of this phenomenon. So many ostensibly do-good missions will be thrown in the trash just so that workers can be punished as management hoards what's left of all the drying up donor cash.  And that cash is definitely drying up. This is very likely just the beginning.

 

* Yes let's call it that. We can argue about the technical "health of the economy" metrics in a different post later. But the short version is, in this economy people have been abandoned. Housing and health care costs are up. The COVID era safety net measures have been yanked away. Wealth concentration is worse than ever. Union density is lower than ever. And nobody has any belief that there's a better future ahead. The fact that stock prices haven't totally tanked doesn't help most of us. The fact that unemployment is low doesn't mean people have jobs that actually sustain them. 

Cyndi Nguyen's price

It's somewhere between $1500 and $20,000 but definitely not $1500. That's not nearly enough.

Nguyen, who said she understands the concern about the donation, considers the $1,500 contribution is a relatively small donation.

“If it was like a $20,000 question," Nguyen said she would understand the concern. "We’re talking about $1,500 to help boost a district that’s been neglected, and they are a company in the city” that supports those goals.

"We were going to do this ourselves in my office with our team and we realized there was no way we could pull this parade off and deal with constituent services,” she said.

To be clear, she's trying to relieve East New Orleans of  "neglect" by putting a Christmas parade on Crowder Boulevard. And that's fine and all.  I especially like the non-traditional Santa there on the poster.

Is this a Christmas parade or a Cyndi parade?  Also does "family come first" in District E? At the parade? Or just at Cyndi? What is this poster promoting? Councilwoman Cyndi Nguyen presents Councilwoman Cyndi Nguyen along with some other stuff.

So you can see why it's a dicey matter to have  Entergy underwriting the Cyndi presents Cyndi parade. Especially, as Kevin Litten points out in that NOLA.com article given the Lens's prior reporting on Entergy's relationship with Nguyen's non-profit.

Vietnamese Initiatives in Economic Training, or VIET, the nonprofit group Nguyen founded and ran, received more than $6,000 in grants and payments from Entergy as part of the company's campaign to get the plant approved.

Nguyen wasn’t the only politically connected person involved in Entergy’s $530,000 public-relations campaign. Two top officials in LaToya Cantrell’s mayoral campaign were also on Entergy’s payroll.

Bill Rouselle was Cantrell’s chief strategist. Bob Tucker was her campaign chairman and served on her mayoral transition team.

Their companies billed Entergy tens of thousands of dollars to bolster public support for the plant.

According to invoices submitted to the city council as part of its investigation, Entergy paid Tucker’s company Green Pastures Unlimited $95,240 for strategic messaging from 2017 to 2018.

Rouselle’s public relations firm Bright Moments received $336,583 from 2016 to 2018. At least $166,800 of that represented hours billed by another public relations firm, The Ehrhardt Group, which was a subcontractor.

I went ahead and quoted the whole bit about LaToya's friends also being on the take from Entergy just for kicks.  But, really, the broader context is worse than that. As the Lens has continued to report this week and previously, the whole of the New Orleans non-profit universe is really a network of bribes and kickbacks from which Entergy is not shy about calling in favors.

To avoid a $5 million fine from the city, Entergy New Orleans is recycling a tactic they used in the campaign that led to the potential sanction: leveraging their donations to lobby the City Council.

Communications obtained by The Lens show that in response to the possible fine — over the use of paid actors who appeared at public meetings to support a proposed power plant — several beneficiaries of Entergy’s charitable giving sent letters supporting the company to New Orleans City Council members. At least two of the authors were directly asked to write the letters by an Entergy employee who oversees the company’s charitable giving.

So maybe Nguyen is just the one haggling over the price, but she's far from the only person or entity for sale around here. 

The ol' NOLA cultural non-profit industrial complex

It's a tricky thing, that.  Creates all sorts of unsavory relationships. 

New Orleans city employees in seven departments were provided with hundreds of free tickets to Jazz Fest last year, a possible violation of state law that prohibits public employees from receiving gifts, according to a report issued Wednesday by the New Orleans Inspector General's Office.

Keep enough of the important people happy and they'll have your back when it counts.  It works both ways, in fact.

While officials at Entergy New Orleans appear ready to grudgingly pay a large fine related to the use of paid protesters, the utility in recent weeks has attempted to use its charitable largesse to fight back against the penalties likely to be imposed by the New Orleans City Council.

Communications obtained by The Lens show that in response to the proposed $5 million fine — over the use of paid actors who appeared at public meetings to support a proposed power plant — several beneficiaries of Entergy’s charitable giving sent letters supporting the company to council members.

At least two of the authors were directly asked to write the letters by an Entergy employee who oversees the company’s charitable giving.

It's fine, though. The principals involved here are all heads of non-profits, departmental higher-ups, and political appointees so nobody is in any real trouble. 

How we grift now

Broken record alert:

The problem illuminated by the Irvin Mayfield NOJO/NOPLF saga extends beyond the story of one egotistical grifter and his hubris. It's really about the larger consequences of outsourcing public services to so-called public-private partnerships via quasi-political "philanthropic" boards. Thanks to one guy's high profile carelessness/cluelessness the Mayfield thing just happens to be an easy one to spot. Like Bill Jefferson's freezer cash, $18,000 in hotel amenities gets a lot of attention. 

Of course it's all well and good that that the NOJO mess get sorted out. But you aren't really attacking the problem unless you're also talking about Audubon or Ogden or LEH or GNOF or many many other boards with overlapping memberships and the day to day abuses of privilege that go on there in the name of "serving the community" through privatized discretion over public funds.

Robert Cerasoli used to tell us the most striking thing about local corruption was in how unsophisticated it was.  But that really only refers to the boneheads who get caught making scandalous headlines out of their booty. But public-private "volunteer entrepreneurism" is the way the grifting is done now. And when it's done correctly, it's at least sophisticated enough to pass.

I dunno what's the deal with Nyx

There's a poorly written Facebook rant out there that kind of snobbishly attacks the krewe captain's taste cars and accessories and such. I guess the point is to suggest that the krewe is being used as this person's personal racket which wouldn't be out of character with the standard operating procedure for most local non-profit organizations. Maybe David Hammer should do a story.


Krewe of Muses 2016 float

Nyx did get attention this year for proclaiming itself a "Superkrewe" on account of its explosive membership growth. This became, as these things do, a topic of controversy in the press and on Hunkerdowncast Episode 8.5-B which might be a good one to cue up again since this week's show (coming later today in case you really want to hear it) suffers from serious audio problems. 

Just because they're after you doesn't mean you're not paranoid

You know, if you really wanted to, you could make a strong argument now that President Obama is running a frightening and repressive.. hell,  un-American, even... administration and I wouldn't complain too much about it. At least I wouldn't complain so long as you kept to the actual frightening and repressive policies the President is pursuing. Like, for example, persecuting whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. Or mandating that all federal employees actively snoop and snitch on each other's personal lives. Or indiscriminately killing people with flying robots.

But even when encouraged by Bobby Jindal to "put on your big boy pants" and make an effective case against the President, Republicans can't even seem to figure out which leg goes in first.  Instead of focusing on the actual scary things the administration is doing, Republicans prefer to fixate on the actually not so scary things they imagine it does.

Take their so-called IRS scandal, for example.  It took a while for someone to finally say so, but clearly this was never about partisan political persecution.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service’s screening of groups seeking tax-exempt status was broader and lasted longer than has been previously disclosed, the new head of the agency said Monday.

An internal IRS document obtained by The Associated Press said that besides “tea party,” lists used by screeners to pick groups for close examination also included the terms “Israel,” ”Progressive” and “Occupy.” The document said an investigation into why specific terms were included was still underway.

In a conference call with reporters, Danny Werfel said that after becoming acting IRS chief last month, he discovered wide-ranging and improper terms on the lists and said screeners were still using them. He did not specify what terms were on the lists, but said he suspended the use of all such lists immediately.

“There was a wide-ranging set of categories and cases that spanned a broad spectrum” on the lists, Werfel said. He added that his aides found those lists contained “inappropriate criteria that was in use.”

Werfel’s comments suggest the IRS may have been targeting groups other than tea party and other conservative organizations for tough examinations to see if they qualify. The agency has been under fire since last month for targeting those groups.

I don't mean to downplay the significance of this too much. It's probably not the IRS's finest hour.  But it's also not a deliberate attempt at political retribution. What was going on here was an attempt to catch up with the post-Citizen's United universe of money in politics (Not to mention outright fraud.)

An instructive case in this was provided a few years ago by Lamar's look at how Gene Mills' Louisiana Family Forum appears to shuffle money between its tax deductible 501c3 and its politically active 501c4.

It’s not an insignificant amount of money. The LFF is apparently spending six figures every single year on consulting services that are not disclosed. This begs the question: Who is getting paid? And while the nuances in the tax code between 501c3s (tax-deductible non-profits) and 501c4s (advocacy arms) may seem impossibly labyrinthine, it’s actually quite simple: Under the current tax regime, a 501c3 that effectively operates as a lobbying group may attempt to shield itself from exposure by setting up a 501c4, as long as the 501c4 raises its own funding. The problem for the Louisiana Family Forum, insofar as I see it, is that it’s engaging in an obvious shell game, operating its 501c4, almost entirely, with the tax-deductible donations it receives from its 501c3. You can do that, no doubt, but there is no obvious advantage: Every penny that a 501c4 receives from a 501c3 is subjected to laws that govern 501c3 expenditures. Or, at least, it’s supposed to be.

I need to be careful here: I am not accusing Mr. Mills or the Louisiana Family Forum of doing anything illegal. I’m merely suggesting that they’re being shady, that, to me, it appears as if the organization has, for years, acted like it has something to hide– whether it’s shielding the full disclosure of hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting services or ineptly exploiting the distinctions between 501c3s and 501c4s. But more importantly, I strongly believe that, as a matter of public policy, we should not provide a tax advantage to a small, politically-connected cabal of powerful lobbyists who pretend as if their alleged religious convictions entitle them to special treatment under the law.

LFF was precisely the kind of new animal the IRS was trying to figure out. And there were hundreds more like it. It just happened that many of these new creatures most of them, in fact were right-ish flavored politically. 

The IRS did not only pick on conservative groups. It also flagged liberal groups, using word searches for “progressive” in their names, though fewer. Data just released of 175 approved applications reveals that about 122 were conservative and 48 liberal or simply publicly involved, with six indeterminate. Right-wing or conservative groups, however, were responsible for more than 80 percent of the roughly $260 million spent by 501(c)(4)s on the 2012 election cycle.

Though some of the 300 groups under investigation complained about IRS harassment, tax experts and former IRS officials contacted by the New York Times said the groups’ actions “provide a legitimate basis for flagging them for closer review.”

None of this will stop Republicans from continuing to play victim, though.  Just like today's Supreme Court decision to nullify Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act won't stop them from pushing through a whole new raft of voter suppression measures next year even as they cry the whole time about "voter fraud."