{"id":320495,"date":"2026-08-13T17:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T17:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/320495\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T17:13:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T17:13:11","slug":"mamdani-defunds-the-funders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/320495\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani Defunds the Funders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani axed<\/a> the advisory board of the Mayor\u2019s Fund to Advance New York City, a nonprofit venture that channels private donations into City Hall priorities. The mini-massacre was a prime showcasing of Mamdanian political ruthlessness, akin to that of Donald Trump<\/a> or Mamdani\u2019s 2025 mayoral rival, Andrew Cuomo<\/a>. But the bigger issue for New York is that socialists\u2014even democratic socialists such as Mamdani\u2014don\u2019t believe in philanthropy, though the city\u2019s civic culture runs on it.<\/p>\n

The Mayor\u2019s Fund for New York City is a handy proxy for the opposite of Mamdani-ism: Bloombergism. Bloomberg\u2019s predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, started the fund, then called New York City Public-Private Initiatives Inc.<\/a>, in 1994. It was small-scale, raising just over $1 million<\/a> annually, and a little slushy: in 1998, for example, one headline venture<\/a> was the publication of a child-scale biography of the mayor himself, funded with $25,000 from Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n

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It wasn\u2019t until 9\/11 and the ensuing Bloomberg administration that the fund became a powerhouse. In 2013, Bloomberg\u2019s final year, it raised $105.9 million, funding meal and shelter relief after Hurricane Sandy in 2012; the \u201cYoung Men\u2019s Initiative\u201d to \u201chelp young black and Latino men break down barriers to their success;\u201d and a \u201cSocial Innovation Fund<\/a>\u201d to reduce poverty and sponsor summer jobs for kids. The fund also helped pay for The Shed<\/a>, the arts facility at Hudson Yards.<\/p>\n

The money, a fraction of the spending in a then-$72.5 billion<\/a> city budget, mattered less than the concept. Bloomberg wanted corporations and wealthy individuals to see themselves as important and valued partners in the city\u2019s future. Through the fund, he made clear that the city cared about what they thought and was grateful for their help.<\/p>\n

After Bloomberg left City Hall, the fund became slushy again. Bill de Blasio named<\/a> his wife to chair it. Donations fell back<\/a> to the low tens of millions until Covid-19, when corporations and foundations donated $77 million<\/a> for relief. Potential donors were wary of Mayor Eric Adams\u2019s reputation for corruption<\/a>, and last year, donations shrank<\/a> to $7.9 million, with the fund disbursing more than it took in. Starting in 2025, with a donation from Airbnb\u2014a highly regulated company in New York\u2014the fund helped build soccer mini-pitches<\/a> for kids ahead of this summer\u2019s World Cup.<\/p>\n

Through it all, the fund\u2019s essential concept remained the same: it was a vehicle for funding worthy, noncontroversial, nonideological projects, which enabled executives and others whose main dealings with city government were paying taxes and grappling with regulations to enjoy a more positive interaction.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s mass firing of unpaid board members might be regarded as unremarkable: a new mayor wanting to flex his power and bring in his own people. As one jettisoned board member told me, \u201cI assumed he would look to replace us with his friends. Whether they can raise or donate money is another matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

But no recent mayor has fired the advisory board en masse. Mamdani\u2019s sweep included Ed Skyler<\/a>, a Citigroup executive and Bloomberg and Giuliani City Hall alum who had served since the de Blasio administration, representing continuity.<\/p>\n

Mamdani didn\u2019t name any new advisory board members, and it\u2019s not clear that he even wants to raise much money through government via voluntary contributions. The mayor\u2019s top spokeswoman told Bloomberg<\/a> that \u201cthe creation of a new advisory board is an important next step in reimaging how philanthropy can augment, but not replace, public dollars and public goods, and we are eager to share more about our new board of advisors later this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ideological dilemma for Mamdani is that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), his power base, views philanthropy not as a complement to government but as a threat. The DSA\u2019s Los Angeles chapter puts it bluntly<\/a> as it castigates what it calls the Nonprofit Industrial Complex: \u201cOur government, as it continues to underinvest in critical social services, turns to nonprofits to provide the services that it should provide. Nonprofits are accountable only to the foundations and philanthropic benefactors and not to the public good.\u201d In Europe (DSA defenders\u2019 tentative model for democratic socialism), charitable donations per capita are a fraction<\/a> of what they are in America, because the corporate and public expectation is that the state is responsible not just for expansive welfare but also for arts and culture funding.<\/p>\n

Before he disbanded its advisory board, Mamdani\u2019s own goal for the Fund to Advance New York City exemplifies this conflict. Earlier this year, referring to \u201cgovernment-led efforts to lower costs,\u201d he said<\/a> that the fund would \u201chelp accelerate progress on core commitments to the movement that brought them to City Hall,\u201d including \u201cthe first municipal grocery stores and a historic expansion of free childcare.\u201d To that end, he wanted to raise $20 million for \u201cchild care action.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mamdani\u2019s foundational philosophy is that the government should fund these things via higher taxes<\/a>. The mayor doesn\u2019t want to ask wealthy corporations and people for more money so much as take it\u2014gleefully\u2014as his recent marketing<\/a> of his pied-\u00e0-terre tax demonstrates. \u201cThe best city in the world deserves the best parks, libraries, and schools in the world,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s only possible when we all pay our fair share.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem with this philosophy is that government money, even in a high-tax, high-spend city, is never infinite. Even in the best of times, and with social-service and education spending reaching record levels<\/a>, the city relies on private donors to help support food banks and libraries and to augment public school spending<\/a>. Private donors have helped create and maintain the city\u2019s world-class hospital<\/a> and university<\/a> systems.<\/p>\n

And New York taxpayers could never fund the city\u2019s full array of arts and culture institutions, from opera to museums to theater and dance troupes. The arts are a key amenity that brings new taxpayers here and keeps some old ones.<\/p>\n

Even high-tax Europe has started to figure this out, as funding becomes scarce for its own marquee arts and culture offerings. Private donors mostly paid for Notre Dame\u2019s reconstruction<\/a> after the 2019 fire. The Louvre, with its own massive capital needs<\/a>, has launched<\/a> something akin to the Met Gala to bring in high-dollar givers.<\/p>\n

Mamdani should not alienate the city\u2019s donor class, because he can\u2019t replace it with city government.<\/p>\n

Donate<\/a><\/p>\n

City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani axed the advisory board of the Mayor\u2019s Fund to Advance New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-320495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}