Some years ago, a disgruntled staff member at the Marguerite Casey Foundation printed out reviews of the foundation from the website Glassdoor and sent them to the grant maker’s board. The reviews, which were posted anonymously by employees, painted a devastating portrait of Luz Vega-Marquis, the foundation’s longtime chief executive and a trailblazer in social-justice philanthropy.
One review described Vega-Marquis as “a tyrant, pitting her employees against each other, lacking in personal emotional control … and patronizing to her grantees.” Another said: “The board should conduct its due diligence by hiring an independent consultant to investigate the reputation of the foundation.” Still another described the workplace as an “extremely toxic environment. Culture of fear, distrust, micromanagement — coming from the top down.” Another: “Autocratic, capricious, punitive management and culture.” Only 26 percent of the reviewers said they would recommend working at Marguerite Casey.
Later, Vega-Marquis convened an all-hands meeting where she was joined by Douglas Patiño, a member of the Marguerite Casey board. Vega-Marquis said she wished that whoever had posted the reviews had come to her first. “I was totally dismayed that people didn’t have the courage to come and talk to me directly,” she says now. “I have an open-door policy.” Patiño took a tougher stance. Whoever did this is disloyal, he said, grabbing his tie with his fist and pulling it up beside his head, as if to make a noose. To those in the room, the message was clear: The board stood behind Vega-Marquis and had no interest in hearing complaints from the staff.
This week, Vega-Marquis announced that she will step down as CEO of the Seattle-based grant maker, which she has led since it was started in 2001. One of the first Latina chief executives of a national foundation, as well as a founder of Hispanics in Philanthropy, Vega-Marquis has forged an impressive legacy. She has won acclaim for her longstanding commitment to provide unrestricted, multi-year funding to grassroots advocacy organizations, most led by women and people of color. An immigrant from Nicaragua, Vega-Marquis focused on the problems of poverty, inequality, and race long before Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter put those issues on the philanthropic agenda.
“I learned to be respectful of people who find themselves in poverty,” Vega-Marquis says. “It’s not a moral flaw.”
At the same time, Vega-Marquis has left a trail of hurt in her wake. Former employees say they felt mistreated, diminished, and even traumatized while working at Marguerite Casey. While Vega-Marquis talks about sharing power and learning by listening, she has done little of either while running Marguerite Casey, these critics say. They complain that she stifled dissent, sowed discord, refused to admit mistakes, and demanded obeisance from staff and from the nonprofits funded by the foundation’s money. Marguerite Casey pays well, but it has been harder for the foundation to hire as word spread about its workplace culture; the position of director of grant making has been open for more than a year.
Mission Over Culture
In that regard, the Marguerite Casey story may resonate with people who work at other foundations and nonprofits whose leaders do not consistently live their values or who allow their dedication to a cause to take a toll on employees who are neglected or worse.
“There has been a tendency to substitute mission for culture,” says Pratichi Shah, a consultant and strategist who focuses on culture and talent in the nonprofit world. But, she says, the nonprofit world has evolved in the last decade so that dysfunctional workplaces, such as those at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, are becoming less common.
Edgar Villanueva, who worked as a program officer at Marguerite Casey from 2013 to 2015, sketched a devastating portrait of Vega-Marquis, without naming her, in his 2018 book Decolonizing Wealth, comparing her to Miranda Priestly, the tyrannical fashion editor in The Devil Wears Prada.
“Most of the grantees had learned the art of flattering my boss in order to keep the checks coming because she had the power to approve all grants — every penny,” Villanueva writes. “Everyone was terrified to tell the empress that she had no clothes, for fear of retaliation that could diminish funding to the grantees.”
It’s unfortunate, Villanueva says, because groups funded by Marguerite Casey are “doing some of the smartest, most innovative work to address the root causes of poverty, inequality, and discrimination.”
In response, Vega-Marquis says: “The same values that inform our work with grantees are the values that inform how we treat one another.” When criticisms of her leadership surfaced, she tried to improve, she said, noting that the foundation has not had a negative review on Glassdoor since 2015; she said she didn’t remember a meeting where board member Douglas Patiño yanked on his tie to make a noose. Told that two employees had provided accounts of the meeting to the Chronicle, Laura Boyle, who is director of communications and human resources at Marguerite Casey, said: “We are dismayed that people are telling untruths. … The [incident] as you described it did not happen nor would it be tolerated here at the foundation.”
A Track Record on Diversity
The Marguerite Casey Foundation, which is named after the sister of Jim Casey, who founded UPS, shares a common heritage with the bigger and better-known Annie E. Casey Foundation and other Casey philanthropies. Marguerite Casey has assets of about $800 million and made grants of just under $30 million to nearly 200 organizations in 2017, according to its latest federal tax return. The foundation is proud that more than 85 percent of the nonprofits it funds are led by people of color. More than half of the staff and nine of 11 board members are people of color, the foundation says.
Providing multiyear general operating support to grassroots organizations was unusual when Vega-Marquis began doing it at Marguerite Casey, and it remains so today, although the practice has become more widespread. The Ford Foundation, for example, has promised to make $1 billion of what are called Build grants to up to 300 social-justice organizations around the world; it did so after Darren Walker, Ford’s CEO, met with Vega-Marquis and the Marguerite Casey board. Even so, operating-support grant making has remained flat at about 20 percent of U.S. giving.
Marguerite Casey’s commitment to multiyear, unrestricted funding is exemplary, says Aaron Dorfman, chief executive of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. So, he says, is its support for advocacy to drive social change. “They have been hands down one of the best and most important supporters of movements and grassroots organizing in this country,” Dorfman says.
Not surprisingly, organizations funded by Marguerite Casey greatly value its support. “They have a way of working with their grantees that is unique and positive,” says Josina Morita, former executive director of the United Congress of Community and Religious Organizations in Chicago, a broad-based alliance of groups. “They really took a risk on us.”
Dorian Warren, president of Community Change, a national social-justice organization in Washington and a longtime recipient of Marguerite Casey grants, says: “They were one of the first [foundations] to give us general operating support, and that’s just huge.”
Casey was also an early supporter of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network in Chicago, founded and still led by Rami Nashashibi. The network, which runs a health center, supports a farmers market, and organizes an arts festival, is able to use unrestricted funds from Marguerite Casey wherever they are most needed. “Casey was ... a leader in trying to galvanize others in the field,” Nashashibi says. As the network, known as IMAN, became more established, it was able to attract support from bigger foundations, including Ford, Kresge, Robert Wood Johnson, and MacArthur, which made Nashashibi a fellow in 2017. He joined the Marguerite Casey board last year.
‘Mission Is Amazing’
Its pioneering approach drew idealistic people to Marguerite Casey. “The mission is amazing,” said a former program officer, who left several years ago. But many became disillusioned. “To people outside, they are magnanimous. To people inside, they are tyrants,” she said. “You are advocating for other people’s rights, and you are abdicating yours.”
The Chronicle has spoken with 15 people who have worked at Marguerite Casey, including four current employees. (The interviews with current employees were arranged by Boyle, the director of communications and HR and one of the four.) Those four praised the foundation and its culture. “We’re very familial, close knit, very small,” says Joseph Burris, a program officer. “From my standpoint, it has been rewarding place to work.” Of the former employees, Miguel Bustos, who worked at the foundation for a year and left in 2003, is the only one who remains a fan of Vega-Marquis. “She taught me how to be a better human being,” he says.
Nine other former employees were harshly critical, and one offered a mixed review. Of that group, only Villanueva agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared retaliation.
By email, a former manager says that Vega-Marquis is “incapable of being anything less than right in every situation and therefore incapable of making mistakes, no matter how small. When they do occur, she projects those mistakes onto others among the staff. … Given this history, it is understandable that former staff would be deeply concerned that Luz, supported by the board, would use their power and deep pockets … to personally destroy anyone expressing comments critical of Luz’s leadership of the foundation, and by extension that of the board of directors.” These concerns were widely shared.
Others declined interviews because they signed nondisclosure agreements, known as NDAs, to collect severance when they were fired by Vega-Marquis. “What’s the reason for NDAs at a nonprofit organization?” a former staff member asks, before answering her own question. “It’s to keep people quiet about Luz and her erratic behavior.” Boyle, the HR director, says nondisclosure agreements are “common practice” at foundations.
Staff Members Were ‘Grounded’
Criticisms of the workplace at Marguerite Casey are wide-ranging. For years, the communications and program departments competed fiercely. “It wasn’t a rivalry. It was backstabbing,” a former program officer says. A staff writer remembers being scolded by her boss for going to lunch with program officers. “It was very clear that I was not to fraternize with the enemy,” she says. Another says: “It got to the point where we made plans to meet after 5 o’clock somewhere, and leave 10 minutes apart.”
Program officers could be “grounded” if they displeased the CEO. “You couldn’t visit your grantee organizations. You couldn’t do your work,” says one. Another was told at the last minute to call off a long-planned series of site visits: “Out of the blue, all my trips were cancelled. I don’t want to know how many thousands of dollars were lost.”
People also say they never knew where they stood with Vega-Marquis. “The only thing that’s predictable about Luz is that she’s unpredictable, emotionally unpredictable,” says one. Another says: “It felt like being berated by a parent as opposed to a professional work environment.”
Importantly, debate about the foundation’s goals and tactics was discouraged. “People are afraid to say anything, for fear they’ll say the wrong thing in Luz’s mind,” a former senior manager says.
A case in point: More than a decade ago, Marguerite Casey launched its own nonprofit called Equal Voice Action, which aims to build a movement enabling poor people to exercise political power. It’s a 5o1(c)(4) organization, which allows for lobbying and advocacy. The foundation has poured many millions of dollars into Equal Voice Action — more than $1.1 million in 2017 — and says its regional networks have helped drive important changes.
“Hundreds of thousands of low-income families have mobilized as part of networks within a national Equal Voice movement to win better wages, improvements in criminal-justice systems, changes in health care, LGBT rights, better schools, and immigration reforms,” the foundation says.
Some former staff members remain skeptical. “A private foundation trying to run a people’s campaign? That’s not a good idea,” says one. “The grantees did not want this.” Others were enthusiastic. “The [Equal Voice] network is a fantastic idea,” says another. But an unfettered debate about Equal Voice Action never happened inside the foundation because everyone knew that it was a priority for Vega-Marquis.
The Board’s Role
Of course, it’s ultimately the job of the board to set the strategy for the foundation — as well as to oversee its CEO and listen to concerns expressed by staff. Workplace culture should be a board responsibility, experts say, although it’s difficult for even a conscientious board to provide oversight without meddling in operations, which are the purview of the CEO.
Without referring to any particular organization, Anne Wallestad, CEO of BoardSource, an organization that advises nonprofits on governance standards, says: “The board has a very important role in providing leadership and oversight of the entire organization, including protecting one of its most important resources — its people. That is a serious responsibility.”
Freeman Hrabowski, a Maryland college president who has been board chair since 2006, attributes the workplace discontent to differences of opinion among bright, passionate people. When troubles surfaced, the board hired Boyle as the foundation’s first full-time human-resources director in 2015. “She has built a culture that is better now, healthier now than ever before,” Hrabowski says. But Marguerite Casey has never conducted a formal survey of its employees, so the board cannot know whether they are engaged or satisfied.
Board members themselves are well compensated. They are paid $40,000 a year if they attend all meetings, with $26,667 paid in cash and $13,333 paid into a tax-advantaged deferred-compensation plan. Marguerite Casey’s 2017 federal tax return reports higher payments due to investment earnings on the deferred compensation: $47,910 for Hrabowski;, $47,852 for vice chair Pat Schroeder, the former congresswoman; $43,992 for treasurer David Villa; and $47,866 for secretary Douglas Patiño. The deferred compensation adds up over time. When William Foege, a prominent epidemiologist and former director of the Centers for Disease Control, left the board after 16 years in 2017, he collected $265,412 in deferred payments. Marguerite Casey board members also get an annual discretionary grant budget of $60,000, as well as matching grants when they donate their own money.
For comparison purposes, the Chronicle looked at 10 private foundations of similar asset size and found that just one, the Meyer Memorial Trust, paid its trustees more. The Meyer trustees work 10 hours a week and are active in making decisions on grants, a spokeswoman says.
Vega-Marquis retains the full support of the Marguerite Casey board. “I’ve never seen a leader who cares more deeply,” says Hrabowski, who has been on the board since the beginning. “The board believes in Luz Vega-Marquis. We really do.”
Carmen Rojas, a board member and the founder of an Oakland, Calif., nonprofit called the Workers Lab, is the leading candidate to replace Vega-Marquis, insiders tell the Chronicle. Tessie Guillermo, a board member leading the CEO search, says: “The process has not been completed.” There’s evidently no hurry to name a successor. The foundation says Vega-Marquis will stay on through 2020.
