{"id":25692,"date":"2023-03-29T12:12:40","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T19:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=25692"},"modified":"2023-03-29T12:12:42","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T19:12:42","slug":"stop-the-misguided-attacks-on-nonprofits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/03\/29\/stop-the-misguided-attacks-on-nonprofits\/","title":{"rendered":"STOP THE MISGUIDED ATTACKS ON NONPROFITS!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by\u00a0Randy Shaw<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0March 27, 2023 (BeyondChron.org)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

\"photo<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonprofits offer a helping hand<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wrongly Blaming Nonprofits Helping the Poor<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot of nonprofit bashing going on these days. And most of it is unfair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent criticism of specific nonprofit wrongdoers\u2014such as San Francisco\u2019s TODCO<\/a> and Los Angeles\u2019s AIDS Healthcare Foundation<\/a>\u2014 is clearly justified. But associating specific nonprofit wrongdoing with the entire industry is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was particularly struck by response to a SF Chronicle<\/em> story about the $5.8 billion in San Francisco contracts. That\u2019s over 40% of the city budget going to nonprofits. A housing policy person tweeted, \u201cThat\u2019s how much of San Francisco\u2019s budget is being transferred to contractors instead of directly funding public initiatives. Something is profoundly broken here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where did he get the idea that nonprofit contractors aren\u2019t serving the public?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is \u201cprofoundly broken here\u201d is people\u2019s understanding of why San Francisco contracts out so many services to nonprofits. And how this strategy has brought high quality nonprofit services at a fraction of the alternative price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonprofits Save San Francisco Billions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco\u2019s nonprofit spending exploded in the early 1980\u2019s for two reasons: AIDS and Homelessness. The city\u2019s workforce had no experience dealing with either. There was a political consensus that nonprofit groups had the knowledge, skills and cultural competency to rapidly and effectively provide services in both areas. Nonprofits could also hire and get staff on board a lot faster than under the city\u2019s hiring processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Left unsaid was another key reason for using nonprofit workers: they were massively cheaper. San Francisco was a union town but nobody challenged the city\u2019s massive contracting out of AIDS and homeless services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contracting out of services to nonprofits has saved San Francisco billions of dollars. Billions. Salaries for virtually every nonprofit position are far lower than comparable city jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just lower nonprofit salaries. Unlike city workers, nonprofit staff get no pensions or lifetime health benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the past two decades has seen a rise in unionized nonprofits, these workers are not part of the city\u2019s master labor contracts. City agencies whose workers get pension benefits do not fund pensions for their nonprofit contractors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many do not understand this. Nonprofit workers do not get the same pensions as city workers because city agencies that fund nonprofits refuse to provide funding. It\u2019s part of the city\u2019s larger strategy to save money by contracting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a reason many nonprofit workers leave for city jobs\u2014they seek better salaries and benefits. How many city workers leave for similar positions in nonprofits? Not many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does the City Offer Superior Services?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent attacks on nonprofits come amidst rising criticism in San Francisco over direct city services. Supervisors have called for audits of the SFPD.  DPW went through a corruption scandal.  Public frustration over SFMTA\u2019s MUNI operation has grown, as has criticism over its opposing protected bike lanes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Health Department (DPH) has its own special set of rules. No matter what mistakes it makes it gets off without staff changes or funding cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DPH funded a fulltime employee who was also being paid by a nonprofit. It enabled one of its funded agencies to go bankrupt,<\/a> putting vulnerable residents at risk. DPH also  ran a hotel \u201cstabilization\u201d program in fifteen SRO hotels that the City Attorney sued<\/a> for substandard living conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet no supervisor demands an audit of DPH. No supervisor seems troubled by the $334 per hour<\/a> paid to a consultant to make a one-time walk through the Tenderloin. Or the $500,000 contract allowing this. Nobody seems to know where the $22 million on the Linkage Center was spent, but supervisors looked the other way (some are still pushing to repeat the mammoth failure after Mayor Breed wisely ended it).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet amidst all these problems at city agencies all I hear from supervisors is calls to audit nonprofits. Guess what? That\u2019s already happening. Nonprofit audits have been required for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it sure sounds good for supervisors to call for an audit\u2014which simply adds to the false views among the public that  financial oversight over city contracts is lacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Higher Standard<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bottom line: Nonprofits that contract with San Francisco are held to a much higher standard than city departments. Nonprofit contracts have benchmarks and reporting requirements city agencies lack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When epic city failures occur as with the Linkage Center, nobody in the city loses their job. If a nonprofit failed so dramatically in their provision of services, heads would roll. It would be a front-page story with demands for mayoral and supervisor action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have an idea for an audit that would really help people understand why San Francisco contracts with nonprofits. The Controller should estimate how many people are helped by nonprofits. And then assess the cost differential between what nonprofits charged for this help versus what it would cost the city directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s one audit the entire Board of Supervisors should support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy Shaw<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco\u2019s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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by\u00a0Randy Shaw\u00a0on\u00a0March 27, 2023 (BeyondChron.org) Nonprofits offer a helping hand Wrongly Blaming Nonprofits Helping the Poor There\u2019s a lot of nonprofit bashing going on these days. And most of it is unfair. Recent criticism of specific nonprofit wrongdoers\u2014such as San Francisco\u2019s TODCO and Los Angeles\u2019s AIDS Healthcare Foundation\u2014 is clearly justified. But associating… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[324],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25693,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25692\/revisions\/25693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}