We Can Fix DSA’s Budget (Without Devastating the Organization)
by COLLEEN J. AND RENEE P.
The Situation:
DSA has been facing a budget crisis for the last year: we have been spending down to our reserves, and the 2024 budget has to be balanced or we will literally run out of money.
With this looming crisis, Socialist Majority NPC members feared that caucuses that have ideological opposition to staff or who want DSA to be a much smaller, more inward-facing organization, would use this crisis to gut DSA’s staff, and with it, our organizational capacity. That’s why we brought the "Resolution Regarding DSA Budget Priorities,” to make retaining staff as much as possible our highest budgeting priority, to try and sound the alarm. We were in fact called alarmists, told that layoffs were the furthest thing from anyone’s mind, and that it was a cheap political stunt.
We weren’t surprised, then, when the Red Star and Bread & Roses-led NPC majority submitted their plan to balance the budget: a resolution to lay off nearly 40% of DSA’s staff. (In a detail that seems too on the nose to be real, the proposal was originally titled “Resolution to Lay Off 12 staff positions,” but it was apparently determined that might not land well, and has been retitled, “Resolution to Achieve Fiscal Sustainability through Staff Layoffs and Union Engagement.”)
We have fought this approach to layoffs because it attacks the essential infrastructure that keeps the lights on and is vital to amplifying DSA’s member-led organizing. We are already understaffed as an organization—a repeated theme of this and past NPC terms has been slicing and dicing the work hours of staff into ever finer pieces to attempt to satisfy ever-mounting obligations to priorities passed at convention.
Convention priorities are not and cannot be the only thing staff are responsible for—our recent efforts to organize the unanticipatable national Uncommitted campaign, for instance, have logged a massive amount of unexpected staff hours that volunteers simply could not have put in. Layoffs in some form may be unavoidable, but they cannot be the first choice.
NPC members made one round of cuts to the budget in two meetings in January, in the face of a $1.9 million deficit:
We implemented a hiring freeze for a number of open positions, saving about $425,000 (meaning that the largest cut the NPC has already made is to our staff budget);
We voted to move forward with an alternate NHGO system to effectuate the cancellation of our contract with PB Work Solutions, saving $90,000 (the contract would expire at the end of June regardless; the alternate NHGO system allowed us to terminate in March);
We voted to explore options to reduce our office costs, which eventually resulted in savings of $60,000;
We cut stipends for the elected at-large steering committee members, budgeted at $66,000;
We voted to end stipends to YDSA committee chairs starting in July, saving $15,750;
We adopted a tech audit that was projected to save $140,000, but has only resulted in $11,500 in estimated savings;
And we cut NPC travel, saving $7,754.
Then, the NPC majority added back into the budget two items that the Budget and Finance Committee had recommended against: $5,000 for YDSA committees and $5,000 for HJC grants. That’s a total of $666,004 in cuts, of which two-thirds are cuts to staffing (the hiring freeze).
Faced with a still significant budget deficit, the NPC at its February meeting considered a consensus budget process that Groundwork NPC member Frances tried to negotiate with Red Star. This process was originally designed to lock the NPC into choosing a deficit target and making cuts to reach it, and to include all proposed budget cuts, including any additional cuts to staff.
Red Star moved to amend the process to make it one without a target, and one that didn’t include staffing costs. They passed a resolution that locked the NPC into making layoffs in an amount that would generate savings equivalent to four months’ of DSA operating costs. We attempted to amend that resolution to take out the specific target and require that the NPC meet with the staff union prior to setting a target layoff goal, as we had previously promised the union we would do; these amendments were rejected.
The consensus budget process has now closed; a majority of NPC members voted in favor of only the following cuts:
Cutting co-chair travel and other expenses by 75% ($51,876.25)
Ending the NPC SC officer stipends ($44,000)
Cutting national committee grants by 20% ($28,750)
Reducing the co-chairs’ salary by 14.5% ($16,538)
Cutting NEC phone and textbanks by 15% ($3,000)
Cutting the NLC phonebank budget by 14.8% ($1,504)
(These six votes are one of the rare times this term that SMC, Groundwork, Luisa, Ahmed, and the YDSA representatives have formed a majority.)
Taking Democratic Left online only ($100,955 in savings)
Cutting committee-specific swag by 60% ($7,985.50)
. . . for a total of $254,608.75. So to date, the NPC has cut about $920,613, of which more than 46% ($425,000) are the cuts to staffing costs ascribable to the hiring freeze. Now the NPC is seeking to close the rest of the budget gap entirely through laying off 40% of our remaining staff.
Cutting staff capacity so significantly risks DSA becoming an organization where members can’t organize to our full potential. If we lack the basic compliance infrastructure to run electoral campaigns legally, full-time communications staffers who can always respond to a crisis, a data team that can cut lists for chapters, and so on, DSA will turn back into the debate club it was before the Bernie Bump.
As Griffin Mahon wrote (after a talk by David Duhalde on the history of YDSA):
The old-timer diagnosis of this phenomenon is “the doughnut problem”: DSA as a place for activists to network and then go their own ways to work on productive outside projects, never building the center.
If we lose the national body as a genuine, effective organization, our great work risks spinning off into isolated and weaker projects that are unable to support each other. A central organization without the capacity to set up phonebanks, or a convention, or support small chapters with training and resources, or process payments correctly is not one that can be a vehicle for our members to build socialist power.
The thing is, despite our current budget issues and the narrative that the new NPC majority pushed for the past year of DSA “in crisis,” DSA is still a dynamic and vital organization worth protecting. We will have to make some cuts—and it could be necessary to lay off some staff—but compared to other organizations that sprung up in the post-Bernie, post-Trump moment of 2017-2018, we’re doing okay.
Justice Democrats laid off nearly half its staff last year. Our Revolution has suffered from many of the usual problems with lefty nonprofits that aren’t truly member-led: it has largely abandoned its chapter-centered model, seen Sanders distance himself from the group, and now its staff size is a tenth of its peak. Left-wing political donations are down across the board.
The “DSA Difference” has always been an engaged membership, clear eyed about the problems we face, but determined to organize in the here and now for a better world; if we lose the capacity to organize, our membership numbers will continue to drop and we will not have new organizing projects to bring new people in.
Another dimension of DSA that sets us apart is that we are truly member-funded. 86% of our organization’s income comes from member dues. When we are deeply rooted across the organization about the essential work of member recruitment and retention, and asking members to intentionally contribute monthly and solidarity income-based dues, we are also harnessing the full power and potential of our democratic member-led organization. A few more Solidarity Dues phonebanks won’t immediately reverse the budget challenges we face, but SMC members have long recognized the importance of and worked hard to make internal organizing a pillar of our shared organizing culture.
We must address the budget from the perspective of collective responsibility to the organization. DSA members are all united in the premise that DSA, whether they think it’s a nascent mass party, a party surrogate, or a cadre vanguard, is more than the sum of its parts. And despite the challenges we are facing, we have all been rewarded in our belief: over the same post-2020 period, many progressive nonprofits have folded under the pressure of a demotivated political left. The fact that we “only” need to significantly adjust the budget is a sign, believe it or not, that member-funded, member-governed, multi-issue mass organizing has integrity that other organizational forms don’t.
The proposal to lay off nearly 40% of DSA’s staff by a majority of our comrades on the NPC will devastate that organizing. Given the severity of the deficit and the NPC’s unwillingness to substantially change course earlier this year, avoiding any layoffs may no longer be possible. But we must take a cautious approach to the budget that arrives at a holistic solution that best preserves vital organizing capacity. These choices are often framed as “member-led” versus “staff-led”: not only is this a false dichotomy, but staff capacity, somewhat counterintuitively, is essential for a democratic, member-led organization.
Cutting back on staff capacity will increase reliance on volunteer labor; on the national level, this is mostly currently done via relying on members of one’s own caucus—indeed, the first draft of this piece was drafted by our own caucus members. The more national organizing is run on a basis of who you know, the more national resources will get doled out on the same terms. Paying staff to serve the elected leadership means more democratic accountability and transparency, not less.
It is easy to think that if the things we care most about in the organization are healthy, our shared project must be healthy. If your primary concern is your chapter’s work, it is easy to look at your chapter’s victories and think that the struggles of the organization are not so large. If you care about labor, it is easy to see the great work the National Labor Commission (NLC) is doing and think that the struggles over the budget aren’t so important (as long as they don’t touch the great work of the NLC). But the truth is that without the central organ that brings us together, all of our work does not matter nearly as much as it could. And that chapter work and national organizing is undergirded by an apparatus mostly invisible to rank-and-file members—invisible until it’s gone, that is.
So what should we do?
The only way to long-term budget security is growing the organization and ensuring our members contribute monthly, sustaining dues—everyone in DSA agrees on that. The question is then how to shepherd us through this crisis to leave us in the best position to do that.
We have laid out a series of fixes that get us close to budget neutrality below. We took two values to heart in coming up with this list. The first is that the most important thing to protect is the organization’s ability to reproduce itself and grow; the second is that distributing smaller cuts across the board, focusing on preserving funding for the priorities that serve the greatest number of members, damages our work least.
Our plan:
Here is what we voted for during the March budgeting process:
Total Cuts: ($772,332.33)
Changes to operations: ($220,301)
Moving Democratic Left Online: ($100,955)
Cutting Ops Department Postage: ($71,500) - 50% of total
This is mostly prepaid postage envelopes for return mail.
Consolidating National Body Merchandising/Swag: ($39,846)
Centralizing swag (i.e. things we give out for free) and merchandise from the national committees can save almost $40k.
Cutting NEC Phone/Text Banks: ($5,000) - 25% of total
Cutting NLC Phone/Text Banks: ($3,000) - 37.5% of total
We believe this would not drastically impact the work of either committee. The approximate costs of sending 100,000 text messages is $2,800 and 100,000 phone calls is $3,500.
Changes to committee grants and chapter dues share: ($214,456)
Dues Share Reduction: ($143,206) - 20% of total
Dues shares is an important institution. However, we believe that a 20% cut is a good balance between making sure that chapters can continue to receive their share of dues and the necessity to make cuts. Whether we like it or not, we’re in a situation where all cuts must be considered to ensure our organization survives. Dues share is one of our largest expenses, and must be considered as part of our path to solvency. Indeed, in February we had to use our savings to pay out the quarterly dues share to chapters.
Cutting the second round of Matching Funds Grants: ($42,500)
These funds were raised 2 years ago during the 2022 Recommitment Drive, and it has proven to be a time and resource-consuming process. The first two chapters to receive their grants were just awarded this year. In a time when we are forced to downsize our national chapter office, it is difficult to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars continuing to expand local chapter offices. We believe in the spirit of the project, which is why we support seeing through the first round of funding which is just starting to be disbursed now. None of the chapters currently guaranteed matching funds for offices would be impacted by this, but this would pause moving forward with identifying chapters to be awarded in the future until our finances improve.
Cutting Committee Grants to Chapters: ($28,750) - 20% of total
The current budget currently proposes nearly $200,000 for various committees in the form of chapter grants. This is an important resource for chapters to use, and so we’re proposing an across the board cut to all national bodies that have requested and approved chapter funds totalling $1,000 or more.
Changes to Stipends: ($337,575.33)
Cutting Co-Chair Salary and Travel: ($183,225.33)
Cutting YDSA NCC Stipends: ($81,000)
Cutting NPC SC Stipends: ($44,000)
Cutting YDSA SC Stipend: ($22,000)
Cutting YDSA Priority Committee Stipends: ($7,350)
Since this budgeting process began, we have been clear that leadership should demonstrate leadership in bearing some of the burden. That’s why we tried to pass a resolution back in September that would eliminate NPC SC stipends. This proposal failed because a majority of the NPC voted it down. We have always been clear about all leadership stipends getting cut, and we stand by this principle still.
The additional cuts that we voted for would close a substantial portion of our budget deficit. None of these cuts are easy—many of them are worthy expenditures that we would want to restore as soon as we can stabilize the budget situation. But we do have options. The proposal to address our budget crisis with a mass layoff of our comrades is a political choice, not a foregone conclusion.
It is undeniable that our organization faces a major challenge with this deficit, and any cuts we make will be painful. We believe in our organization and we want DSA to make it through this—and there is a very real risk that we will not. We must fulfill the historic responsibility we have to steward this organization through this moment and into future decades of power building—we have built so much and we cannot allow our organization to regress.
We have heard many of our fellow members on the NPC express regret that we have arrived at this point, as if we have no other choice but to lay off nearly 40% of staff. We reject this notion wholeheartedly. As we have shown here, we have repeatedly had and made choices to get to this point, and it can be otherwise. We urge our fellow NPC members to approve a budget that makes holistic cuts across the organization. We believe laying off even a quarter of staff would be a violation of the NPC’s duty to take care of the organization, one that could potentially devastate DSA.
As just two of seventeen votes on the NPC, we work diligently to advocate for our political perspectives and improve resolutions passed by the body, but we are in a minority position, even with our comrades in Groundwork, and our power is limited. But the real power is with our membership. You can contact the NPC at npc@dsacommittees.org any time to make your position known. Or use the DSA Union’s tool.