The New York office was able to survive because of its unique mission, dedicated staff and strong foundation support, said Andrew White, who chaired the steering committee that helped IPA New York become autonomous. An IPA founder, White is director of the Center for New York City Affairs at New School University and a previous executive director of City Limits.
“The New York City office of what was IPA is healthy because the staff is strong and a lot of people in the press – small and large, and ethnic and mainstream – recognize the great value of the work,” White said. “Voices That Must Be Heard is an excellent source for stories and provides a view into wildly different perspectives on events.”
The IPA national office came from humble beginnings when a handful of social justice journalists got a $5,000 grant to promote small magazines. Within a few years the association had hundreds of members and was receiving millions of dollars in foundation support. The association attracted high profile members including Mother Jones, Utne Reader and The Nation.
Around the same time IPA founded its New York office, the nonprofit bought a magazine distribution brokerage company and renamed it Indy Press Newsstand Services. In a way, it was the answer to IPA members’ prayers – it allowed the association to be directly involved in helping their publications make it onto newsstands. And for several years the association’s entrepreneurial venture was successful, even helping small magazines land on the racks in Barnes & Noble.
But before long, according to White and IPA-NY founding director Abby Scher, the nonprofit was up to its eyeballs in debt, much of it owed to IPA members who signed up to have the distribution broker hawk their magazines. A year ago, Indy Press owed more than $500,000 to independent magazine publishers. In the world of independent magazines, the publisher does all the work and incurs all the expenses up front – but they’re at the end of the line for payment. The money flows from consumers, who buy magazines from retailers, who pay distributors, who pay brokers, who in turn pay publishers. Indy Press Newsstand Services got behind in its payments to publishers. When it couldn’t get ahead again, Indy Press folded, and so did the nonprofit that owned it.
The story of IPA’s downfall leads some to ask whether nonprofits are cut from the right cloth to survive in business environments built for private corporations. White says that’s not the issue.
“There are plenty of nonprofits that are successful with entrepreneurial ventures, and branching out has become part of the core of running a nonprofit,” he said. “The problem with the IPA national organization was that it became too reliant on the entrepreneurial venture for funding. That can be a disaster for a nonprofit.”
IPA leaders reached various conclusions about what led to the downfall of IPA’s national operation. Scher and former IPA interim executive director Jeremy Adam Smith blame executive director Richard Landry for killing the organization through poor management and leadership. Landry, reached on his cell phone last week, declined to comment.
This story has been corrected.
