Last week I was mentioned in a news story as leading the charge to scrutinize the funding behind politically active “foundation-backed groups, particularly Massachusetts Parents United.” I need to live up to my press clippings because there is more to the story of Massachusetts Parents United.
The mention came in Shira Schoenberg’s excellent Getting a Handle on Beacon Hill Advocates, Coalitions: Mariano Wants to Set Rules, but Others Worry He is Stifling Advocacy. In the story Massachusetts Parents United president Keri Rodrigues asserts that MPU is very transparent about funders. Here’s part of what Ms. Schoenberg reported:
She publishes the identity of donors on the organization’s website, and its tax forms are public. Massachusetts Parents United is funded mainly by foundations, including the Walton Family Foundation and the Boston-based Barr Foundation, both of which also fund other Massachusetts education reform groups.
Ms. Rodrigues also claims that “I’m more transparent than I need to be about who we are, how we’re funded.” Not much. The funders on the web page are from 2017 and don’t reflect amounts. From 2017-2019 MPU took in $2,639,489. The Walton Family Foundation annual reports show that WFF has donated $1.32 million over that period. Records for 2019, the most recent available, show that the Waltons sent $800,000 to MPU and MPU took in $1,641,311 million total. That’s typical; for each year we can access records the Waltons have subsidized half of MPU’s operations. No Waltons, no MPU.
The tax forms are public by law, not because MPU is transparent. All information here is from publicly available Form 990 tax returns unless otherwise noted.
MPU has a related organization, the 501c4 Massachusetts Parent Action. From 2017-2019, MPA took in $695,000 from unknown donors. In 2017 it received a total of $225,000 all from one unknown donor. In 2018 it received a donation of $150,000 and two of $10,000. Ms. Rodrigues is president of MPA as well.
Total grants and contributions to MPU and MPA from 2017-2019 are $3,334,489.
In 2017 MPU paid out $10,250 in salaries. In 2018 MPU paid out $544,407 in salaries and advanced its 501c4 arm Massachusetts Parent Action $43,926 for salaries. In 2019 MPU salaries rose to $730,094. Massachusetts Parent Action paid out $55,550 in salaries in 2017, $39,374 in 2018, and $10,000 in 2019.
In 2017 Ms. Rodrigues’ compensation from Massachusetts Parents United was $6,750, in 2018 it was $172,500 and in 2019 it was $196,022. In 2017 Ms. Rodrigues’ compensation from Massachusetts Parent Action was $25,000, in 2018 it was $0, and in 2019 it was $5,000. In 2019 Massachusetts Parent Action paid Ms. Rodrigues $5,000 for lobbying, and in 2020 it paid her $10,000 for lobbying. Known compensation across 2017-2019 is $420,272. Known compensation for the two full years 2018-2019 is $388,522.
In 2020 Ms. Rodrigues launched another Walton venture with additional donations from Charles Koch and other billionaires, called National Parents Union (see National Parents Union: Not a Union, Not About Parents, Not National). Form 990 returns will not be available for this organization until November 2021 at the earliest. It is evident from following the organization that hundreds of thousands of dollars and perhaps millions have flown into NPU in its year of existence.
Ms. Schoenberg continued:
Rodrigues, of Massachusetts Parents United, was previously the state director of Families for Excellent Schools, a national organization advocating for the 2016 ballot question to expand access to charter schools. Families for Excellent Schools was fined by the Office of Campaign and Political Finance for hiding the identity of donors. Rodrigues said she ran the organization’s 501c3 and was not connected to the 501c4, which was fined.
OCPF found that “FES and FESA are closely related entities.” FESA was the 501c4 and FES (or FESI) was the 501c3. By terms of the Disposition Agreement with OCPF FESA paid a civil forfeiture of $426,000 to the commonwealth: “this amount was the cash on hand for FES and FESA as of August 21, 2017.” FESA was also ordered to disclose the true identity of the donors it had been hiding, a disclosure that revealed that the Question 2 campaign of 2016 was funded by a handful of Massachusetts’ oligarchs. FESA agreed to dissolve as a 501c4.
OCPF did not require the dissolution of the 501c3 FESI (or FES as OCPF termed it). But, “For a period of four years from the date of this Agreement, FES will not engage in fundraising in Massachusetts, soliciting in Massachusetts, or engage in any ballot question or other election-related activity in Massachusetts.”
One of FESA’s largest donors was FESI which contributed over $2.4 million to FESA, and FESI was never required to disclose its true donors. OCPF data for the Great Schools Massachusetts ballot committee shows that entities named either Families for Excellent Schools or Families for Excellent Schools Inc. donated $1.3 million to GSM. That means that FESI was the largest donor to the pro-charters side in 2016 at about $3.7 million, and that remains undisclosed dark money.
Again relying upon tax records we find that several Boston foundations donated from FY 2014-2017 to the 501c3 activities of FESI. In total Strategic Grant Partners, The Boston Foundation, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, and Mifflin Memorial Fund donated $8,562,000 to FESI. Donors to SGP and Mifflin are identifiable on tax returns. The others are all donor advised funds—there is no way to identify the actual check writers.
Several of those Boston foundations have also been writing checks to Massachusetts Parents United. The Boston Foundation has donated $115,000; CJP, $50,500; Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, $120,000. Barr Foundation has given $100,000 (its donor, Amos Hostetter, gave over $2 million in dark money to FESA in 2016). Mifflin has contributed $200,000.
Ms. Schoenberg’s story is about Speaker Mariano’s possibly seeking rules changes identifying groups like MPU, Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, and several union backed entities. Not being conversant on either House rules or lobbying, I have no opinion. I’m identified in the story as a member of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Good! Let’s have more of that—the more identification, the better for citizen consumers of news. (I’m a union member, not an MTA employee. I’m a UMassBoston employee).
Stories like this tend to equate spending on organizations like MPU with the unions. They’re not comparable. Union funding comes from members’ dues. The unions are democratically organized. My local voted out an incumbent last year, as have other teachers’ unions. MTA term limits its president (a good thing, as Barbara Madeloni was far tougher than her surrender-prone predecessor Paul Toner). There is no democracy to MPU. The Waltons are from Arkansas and probably couldn’t find Chicopee or Tewksbury on a map; never mind getting Alice Walton to pronounce Worcester or Gloucester. The Waltons just write checks and measure ROI–return on investment. MTA and Massachusetts Federation of Teachers members live here. Want to hold the Waltons accountable for the vast changes to Massachusetts education policy they seek through MPU? Good luck with that.
If you’ve gotten this far let me say a few words about why I care about this stuff. We simply do not have a functioning democracy when the vast wealth of a few oligarchs sets the policy agenda and gains influence by showering money on upbeat sounding fronts like Families for Excellent Schools and Massachusetts Parents United. Nor do we have a functioning democracy when the true power—the men and women behind the curtain—remain unknown to the public and uncovered by the media. In Dark Money, Jane Mayer talks about “weaponizing philanthropy.” In Just Giving, Rob Reich points out the “plutocratic bias” enjoyed by the foundations. (Hey, did I mention all these public policy altering contributions by oligarchs are a valuable tax deduction to them? Yes, you’re subsidizing them to change your state’s policy. Never give a sucker an even break). Huge investments in policy change and hidden money threaten rule by the people.
And that’s what MPU is—a tax deductible front for oligarchs weaponizing their philanthropy in a campaign to privatize public goods. The Waltons, Koch, and other oligarchs don’t want us to peek behind the curtain. It is our democratic obligation to tear that curtain down.
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
“In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape, have full swing. . . . Publicity is the very soul of justice.”—Jeremy Bentham
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy.]