It’s difficult to fix any problem, personal or societal, without the direct involvement of those afflicted. While that seems a logical assumption, many of the nation’s activist groups and nonprofit organizations, fighting everything from homelessness to unfairness in the criminal justice system, often fail to involve direct input from those “boots on the ground” men and women directly affected by such problems, threatening the organizations’ effectiveness and relevance.
A thorough perusal of the websites for nonprofit organizations and activist bodies from rescue missions to shelters to legal resource centers reveals multiple entities with extensive staffing for field operations, public outreach, fundraising, etc. However, a precious few feature any staff members who offer stories of overcoming drug addiction, homelessness, or wrongful prosecution. Instead, the agents in the field or the administration are university-educated adults who saw little of inner-city suffering from academia’s ivory towers.
The same websites often list boards of directors that outnumber actual working staff members. The optics raise the questions of how these groups organize and fill internal positions, why so few look to involve people directly affected by the given social problem in focus, and how they’re spending the funds raised or donated in the face of societal challenges.
While researching this story, the Washington Examiner researched the activist organizations, charities, and nonprofit organizations set up to take on homelessness, the abuse of women, and criminal justice reform in multiple cities across the United States. The reporter sought interviews, comments, and insights on multiple occasions from such entities in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Miami, Houston, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Detroit, Denver, Dallas, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.
Three organizations responded, one refusing to participate. The other two, the Center for Justice Innovation in New York and La Defensa in Los Angeles, reached out to say they were open to considering questions, but neither group returned calls to schedule an actual interview.
Compassion vs. corruption
Keeping their shades so drawn and avoiding the direct input of those they claim to serve invites occasional allegations of waste and corruption. Vuk Vukovic is an anti-corruption advocate who began researching the problem during his doctoral research. Rather than merely decry and protest problems in nonprofit or local government operations, he applies scientific methods to deduce what drives corruption, how to uncover it directly, and how it affects economic and political outcomes.
Vukovic reported he rarely finds cases of activist groups seeking out the involvement of people touched by the given problem they look to solve.
“I would say that in more developed countries, these types of organizations will typically feature people from well-off, more educated backgrounds, especially in leadership roles,” Vukovic said. “I’m sure they do include the voices of those affected, but the organization itself will not really live up to what they preach in terms of employment opportunities.”
Vukovic acknowledged that those college-educated employees are probably better equipped in a working environment due to their education and skills, but such loyal staffers are also more likely to hide corruption or practices benefiting the organization more than the homeless, prisoners, or the abused.
“Very often, we see the government and the NGO sector subject to forms of misuse of resources for private gain,” he added. “Bad examples seriously undermine trust in such organizations.”
He suggested that involving people directly from the streets could direct resources more effectively and guard against internal corruption.
If things are worse than ever…
There may be no bigger crucible for nonprofit organizations and their effectiveness against sociopolitical problems than the megapolis of Los Angeles. The city had more than 75,000 homeless people in 2024, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Meanwhile, city officials continue a fight against violent crime and theft.
Nonprofit organizations across the city popped up to advocate for the homeless and battle perceived racial inequities in crime statistics. However, the majority of those groups follow the same elitist tendencies, staffing with the academia crowd over survivors from the streets and padding their ranks with extensive boards of directors.
Sensing the potential for corruption, freelance investigative reporter Daniel Guss keeps his eyes on Los Angeles’s activist nonprofit community. Guss, the author of the award-winning Guss Report, found two clearly delineated categories of local organizations.
“They almost entirely fall into two categories,” he said. “They’re either wealthy, outrageously salaried, and politically connected, or they’re small, diligent, and usually operating with zero overhead.”
When he encountered signs of fund misappropriation, incestuous staffing, or political corruption, they almost always occurred in those bigger, richer charity efforts.
“I found insularity in the larger, politically connected organizations where there is often a comfortable, curiously acquired job waiting for family members of local politicians,” he explained.
Guss went to the dogs to cite a prime example of the sort of corruption the Los Angeles nonprofit world abides.
“A blatant example is LA’s Pet Adoption Center, Best Friends,” he explained. “It rakes in more than $50 million a year, according to its tax returns. The group hired the daughter of the Los Angeles Animal Services’s then-general manager — before enjoying free rent, maintenance, security, and privileges not afforded smaller animal charities.”
Best Friends was among the organizations contacted that did not respond to a request for comment.
Suggesting voices off the street might not be willing to hold the company line, Guss admitted he rarely sees those afflicted brought into the activist ranks. He counts that among a collection of political and NGO bad habits and policies that render them ineffective.
“I have been watching the LA community and LA politics for a very long time and have adopted a default setting that politicians and those in the political scenes often keep problems alive for them to stay relevant and needed,” he added. “In the nonprofit scene here, I have heard exceptional things about the Los Angeles Midnight Mission and their openness to helping and involving those in need. But beyond that, ultimately, if things are worse than ever, are we really succeeding?”
Los Angeles Midnight Mission was also among the organizations contacted that did not respond to a request for comment.
Crusader against big-city nonprofit organizations
Across town, longtime radio host John Kobylt maintains a daily war against everything activist, nonprofit, homeless, and criminal from his studio at KFI. He insists the last thing any activist nonprofit group wants is the direct involvement of anyone capable of realizing and relaying how little good they do.
“When I look at nonprofits, I see grifters, fraudsters, and con artists,” Kobylt said before going on the air for this three-hour weekday show. “If you roll a wheelbarrow full of money out into the middle of the street, what’s going to happen? You’re going to have hundreds of people coming to take some of it. When the government has hundreds of millions of dollars available for homeless outreach or prison rehabilitation programs, the cockroaches come out and grab it.”
At the most basic level, Kobylt said he believes the entire concept of the activist nonprofit in Los Angeles as currently conceived doesn’t work, evidenced by billions of dollars spent fighting a homeless problem in a city still facing tens of thousands of people living on the street.
“Clearly, these hundreds of programs and nonprofits are failed frauds,” he added. “There’s no metric for their success. It’s the Wild West, and the system is corrupt down to the most modest local level.”
Kobylt acknowledged the difficulty for someone who truly wants to help and solve problems to gain legitimate access to the scene when so many staffers and directors have the opportunity to “set up one of these nonprofits and pay yourself, your friends, your family six-figure salaries.”
He said he feels for those who overcame homelessness or prison and want to help others facing similar problems as much as he pities young, idealistic people who come into the nonprofit world genuinely looking to help. They face a system more tuned to profit their bosses than change up life on the street.
“I see these activist kids riding around in golf carts looking for homeless people lying around on the beach,” Kobylt said. “They come and ask the guy if he’s OK, if he’s hungry. They give him a little plastic bag with a sandwich in it and offer him help. That’s as much outreach as they can manage, and the nonprofit can then claim hundreds of thousands helped in a scam report.”
Moving beyond the usual solutions
According to Vukovic, the best way to end corruption among nonprofit organizations is to open up the ranks of their staffs while providing full budget transparency.
“Full means every expenditure, every single receipt available to the public online in an easily searchable website,” he said. “For government groups and NGOs alike, this is a very important first step in reducing misuse of resources and ensuring accountability. Then you move on to other things like participatory budgeting that includes more people in the decision-making process. Just these two small things would go a long way.”
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Kobylt said he believes there are no real solutions like those Vukovic proposes because real people who might have good, practical ideas to fight these problems can’t get access in the face of an unforgiving power structure standing in the way.
“I’m sure local city council people and legislators get their cut along the way to allow this system to continue,” he said. “The money churns around underground. A lot of the people running these nonprofits are well connected politically, and the system works — for them.”
John Scott Lewinski, MFA, is a writer based in Milwaukee.
