In December 2012, right after Superstorm Sandy crippled coastal communities in the Northeast, a star-studded concert put on by JPMorgan Chase raised millions of dollars in donations toward relief efforts. The Robin Hood Foundation, an influential philanthropic organization founded by hedge-fund heavy Paul Tudor Jones, was tasked with distributing that money to organizations for relief work. Robin Hood, whose ads on subway cars and in taxis encourage people to “give like a New Yorker,” has a board of trustees stocked with financial types. In 2007, around the same time Wall Street was helping usher in the financial crisis, the charity came under congressional scrutiny. Now Robin Hood was wedging itself into disaster recovery work.

Aside from longstanding questions over how disaster aid is allocated and spent — public funds being difficult to track — the management of privately managed donations raises a new set of questions. As bureaucratic and inefficient as a public response can be, placing money into private, philanthropist hands assures even less oversight and accountability. Robin Hood preaches what Forbes.com calls “venture philanthropy, or charity that embraces free-market forces, to combat poverty.” Is it any wonder that a free-market-based approach to disaster recovery would gravitate toward aid money with scant, if any, oversight?



In the Rockaway neighborhood of Queens in New York City, local groups quickly criticized Robin Hood for shutting them out of the aid money. The Action Center, a longtime community organization based in the housing projects of Far Rockaway, near where I lived, was a hub for residents and volunteers during relief efforts. Its application for a grant was rejected by Robin Hood. Rockaway Youth Task Force, a local youth group consisting mostly of young people of color, whose impromptu disaster response became a national story, was similarly passed over for the funds raised in its community’s name.



Both groups pointed out that of Robin Hood funds distributed for relief work in the Rockaways, most of it overlooked local groups in favor of an array of organizations from outside the peninsula (one as far away as San Diego). These outside groups had little to no connection to the community. The education nonprofit Harlem Children’s Zone, for instance, received $25,000 from Robin Hood. Geoff Canada, Harlem Children’s Zone’s founder and CEO, sits on the board of Robin Hood. Notably, of the handful of local groups that received Robin Hood grants, most were based in the more affluent western side of the Rockaways.



I could point to a number of other longtime community groups short on funding that were vital to the community and the recovery. Culinary Kids Initiatives, a local group that promoted sustainable urban agriculture years before it became popular, provided food during the crisis. You Are Never Alone, a worker center, served as a base for medical relief. Many other groups were left out in the cold.

Meanwhile, Friends of Rockaway (FOR), an organization formed by club maven and former Rockaway resident Michael Sinensky popped up on the west side of the peninsula after the storm. The new group received nearly $850,000 from Robin Hood, more than $720,000 from the Red Cross and another $750,000 from something called the NYC Home Repair Consortium (described as a combination of the mayor’s office, the Red Cross and Robin Hood funds). Its first director previously worked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during its notoriously ineffective Hurricane Katrina relief effort as well as for the World Bank. Now an affiliate of the St. Bernard Project, a national nonprofit disaster organization that was involved in racial controversies in New Orleans after Katrina, FOR counts among its staff Scarlett Johansson’s twin brother, Hunter — although the extent of his recovery expertise isn’t clear.