Dianne Morales, the nonprofit-industrial complex, and neoliberal rot
Tags: Progressive, NYC

Dianne Morales, the nonprofit-industrial complex, and neoliberal rot

The race to become New York’s next mayor is heating up, with a crowded field and no clear progressive standard-bearer. Dianne Morales, formerly the Executive Director and CEO of Phipps Neighborhoods, an organization which seeks to “fight poverty” by providing social services to South Bronx residents, has sought to distinguish herself as the most left-wing and progressive candidate in this crowded race.

Morales’ personal story is compelling: she was raised in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn by working class, immigrant parents and attended Ivy League graduate schools before founding an educational nonprofit and later leading Phipps Neighborhoods. Morales would also be the first Afro-Latina and female mayor if elected; this, along with her progressive (albeit somewhat vague) policy proposals, which include defunding the police and a guaranteed minimum income for city residents, have made her a compelling candidate for the left.

On her campaign website, Morales writes that her experiences as a nonprofit executive helped her to understand many of the city’s challenges with poverty, homelessness, and inequality. This makes sense: as neoliberal governments have failed to provide necessary social services, nonprofits have increasingly filled in the gaps, becoming a rapidly growing sector.

However, as many have written, the nonprofit sector is problematic for many reasons. Firstly, they often exploit idealistic young people who want to make a difference into working long hours with low pay and poor working conditions. Secondly, the growth of this sector has led to the development of a management class which is often highly paid, self-serving, and primarily interested in creating personal brands which can later be leveraged for political or career advancement reasons. Morales’ tenure at Phipps Neighborhoods is a perfect example of both of these trends.

Reviews posted on Glassdoor by current and former employees of Phipps Neighborhood and its parent organization, Phipps Houses, are nearly unanimous: rank and file employees are overworked and underpaid. One reviewer writes that workers “struggle to make ends meet,” while another writes that staff are “one paycheck away from being clients.” Morales herself concedes this in a 2017 press release, writing “Our employees work to help children, youth and families rise above poverty in New York City — but, too often, they live on the edge of, or below, that poverty line themselves.” Salaries reported on Glassdoor range from hardly above the minimum wage for “group leaders” and “superintendents”; for positions requiring a college education, salaries cluster in the $40–50k range.

Morales claims to be concerned about income inequality and wants to create a “solidarity economy,” but Glassdoor reviews suggest otherwise, with many reviewers noting the existence of an exclusive, overpaid management class at Phipps Neighborhoods. The organization’s Form 990 for the 2018 fiscal year confirms this: the eleven highest paid employees were paid a combined $3 million, or 58.7% of total compensation for the organization as a whole. Phipps Houses CEO Adam Weinstein made $975,884 in total compensation in 2018, while Morales made nearly $345,000. Other senior employees received total compensation in the six figures.

Morales misleads voters through her attempts to portray herself as an ordinary New Yorker; her campaign website describes her as a “single mother” and a resident of Bed-Stuy, a working class neighborhood. But over the last five years for which records are available, Morales received over $1.65 million in total compensation from Phipps Neighborhoods. It’s evident that Morales is attempting to coast on the recent upsurge in progressive energy in the city in order to secure herself more fame and political power. Well-meaning progressives have often been taken advantage of by grifters and others who disingenuously portray themselves as allies of working people and who, once in office, betray their interests and only further neoliberal rot. For this reason, the left should be suspicious of Morales’ attempts to market herself as a pro-worker candidate and should recognize her for what she really is — a member of the management class enriching herself off of the nonprofit-industrial complex.