The Political Battle Over DSA’s Budget

Opinion: Behind the numbers, DSA’s budget and the debates surrounding it reflect a political battle between a staff-driven approach and a member-driven one.

By Ruy Martinez and Judith Chavarria

A rigorous debate has been raging in DSA about how to solve our organization’s budget crisis. This article from Reform & Revolution authors Ruy Martinez and Judith Chavarria contributes one perspective to the discussion. A different perspective by R&R authors Stephan Kimmerle and Ramy Khalil can be found here.

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Over the past five months, DSA has faced a crisis – a budgetary one. Falling membership numbers manifested into falling dues numbers, and in 2024, we are now forced to reap the costs. DSA’s budget crisis did not arrive out of the blue, but out of a practice of continuous hiring and general overspending. We have over the last two years run roughshod with our finances, buoyed by persistent hiring without clear tasks or roles. While staff report being overworked, most DSA members do not know the staff members they are supposed to be connected to, and hiring decisions have historically been made based on requests by director-level staff rather than the actual utility of each additional hire.

As a result, DSA was forced to implement severe budget cuts in order to maintain solvency. But it would be a mistake to view this issue narrowly through the lens of accounting, of simply adding and subtracting numbers. This situation has forced DSA members of different tendencies to seriously grapple with our expenses and what they mean organizationally and politically.

The way we spend and use our budget must be closely tied to how we build DSA – in our view, this begins with the central role of an empowered membership. 

After a series of initial cuts in January which cut committee expenditures by around 40%, ended most stipends, made the 2024 YDSA Convention virtual, and removed other items like the former National Harassment and Grievance Officer‘s contract, a deficit of around $1.5 million remained outstanding, forcing the NPC to grimly consider staff layoffs. While Bread and Roses (B&R) had initially proposed four voluntary resignations on January 18th, this was lambasted as contrary to the  CBA by the union in a statement released two days later. However, on March 8th, the NPC majority put forward a resolution that would lay off twelve, not four, staff members, as the scale of the impending financial crisis began to sink in. Later, on March 27th, the figure was updated to seven bargaining unit members in the wake of new financial information released on March 14th. There is now a major debate around the number of staff layoffs and their financial necessity. Those wanting to learn more can see this thread on the DSA forums by Jen M. which has collected the relevant statements, resolutions, and other pieces of discussion and debate.

The authors believe that the goal of DSA’s spending must be to facilitate member organizing and the building of a mass, working-class party. Expenditures like dues-share, funds for chapter offices, and other avenues of support for member-run organizing are vital to maintain. We should retain as many staff as we reasonably can, while setting clear expectations to ensure that future hires lead to growth, rather than taking for granted that more staff will necessarily grow DSA. Overspending on staff in sporadic bursts without a political and organizational strategy for retention, development and growth is a short term strategy for an issue which requires a long term solution.

We believe the best way for DSA to achieve long term financial stability is to find ways to sustainably fundraise and increase revenues. This means a campaigning, politicized approach that aims to aggressively grow DSA by convincing people of our ideas and the necessity of our work at every opportunity. The Growth and Development Committee (GDC) has taken tremendous steps forward in their phone banks for Solidarity Dues, which have raised perhaps over $600,000. But clearly more needs to be done. We can and should make financial appeals to members in light of the current budgetary issues to push our dues over the line, along with asking for direct donations, selling more merchandise, and phasing out the annual dues option. But fundraising alone will not resolve the long-term budgetary issues DSA will face.

Just resolving the budgetary crisis in terms of dollars and cents does not resolve the more fundamental political assumptions and expectations which led us to this point. We didn’t get to a dangerous two million dollar deficit by accident. And when deciding what to cut, it’s vital that we analyze what we do not cut – what we believe is most useful for the functioning of the organization.

What is the Point of our Budget?

Our dues are a collective commitment to the organization – paying dues is also a sacrifice for many members. As such, we need to be extremely cognizant of the fact that if an expense is not bearing fruit – if the funds could be better spent elsewhere  – then we must be willing to reexamine it.

The authors believe that dues must be used to expand the capacity of our organization by empowering the membership to engage in mass politics. This is opposed to staff-led organizing, where paid organizers take on the majority of the tasks at the national and even local level. It is also opposed to service-oriented politics like charities or certain service-providing NGOs. Member-run organizing is focused on making our members leaders, taking on as many tasks as they can which orient them to interacting with activists and the broader working class.

For this reason, we believe that the cuts made to YDSA’s budget were a mistake. YDSA has grown substantially over the course of the Biden presidency while most of the organization has lost membership. We believe that an in-person YDSA convention is better for leadership development, building investment in the organization as well as connecting comrades across the country. The decision to cut this, alongside cuts to its general fund and committee chair stipends, not renewing YDSA’s intern program, and ending the search for a second YDSA staffer, are misplaced and misunderstand the relationship between DSA’s budget and its political goals.

Similarly, maintaining dues-share is critical. Dues-share is in many cases a massive chunk of chapter balances, and cutting it would make much of DSA’s work significantly more difficult. When your chapter brings a banner and tables to a protest, or fundraises to send members to Labor Notes, that is being done in large part via dues-share. Most of our external work is at the chapter level. As such, for us it is clear that dues-share cannot be cut unless we are in truly dire straits. The same reasoning applies to the chapter office grants, which serve as a critical organizing hub to store materials, coordinate actions, hold meetings, and so on. We believe that these costs should be maintained and are glad the NPC majority stood strong in supporting them.

This general framework of member-run organizing is why the authors opposed LSC’s initial proposal to cut committees to $10,000 – which would go far past the 50% reduction many committees already faced after an initial review. We also opposed an initial proposal by Megan R. of Red Star and Ashik S. of Groundwork which would condition dues-share on the basis of certain meetings with staff field organizers. It is also why we continue to support restoring leadership stipends for DSA and YDSA. The way we spend and use our budget must be closely tied to how we build DSA – in our view, this begins with the central role of an empowered membership. 

Staff in a Socialist Organization

If we agree that the purpose of our dues and spending is to grow the organization, then a serious question has to be asked about our staff expenses, which lined up at around $2.5 million after the hiring freeze. Over the last four years, we have hired staff persistently, arguing that it would lead to more organizing, more chapters, more members: that hiring staff would help us organize our way to increasing growth. We are certainly sympathetic to that kind of argument – growing an organization means giving it resources – but the reality is that these promises have not played out. This is not because hiring staff is inherently wrong, nor does it mean that we should reverse course and only fund member-run initiatives. 

Staff may be hired as excellent members wishing to do their organizing work full time. They may also be specialists, necessary for specific services that are hard to maintain on a volunteer basis, like website operators, developers, and organizing staff that work 40 hours a week maintaining the organization and its systems. However, we also spend money on managerial positions that may not be necessary due to small teams or with vague roles, and on staff that may not be best positioned to help DSA grow. Staff should play the role of empowering members and growing the organization. Additionally, the blunt fact of the matter is that even if staff are all working extremely hard on very obvious deliverable targets, the nature of social movements is that they face periods of ebb and flow. Thus, while we may be able to hire or maintain a certain amount of staff at one moment, that will not always be possible the next.

After exhausting options and limiting costs as much as we can without withering the organization’s membership and organizing capacity, it is completely reasonable and necessary to soberly consider layoffs. In doing so, the CBA should be followed along with negotiations in good faith with the union, where the NPC majority is able to clearly explain the political decisions that need to be made.

In this debate, the union is holding the organization hostage in an outsized, undemocratic, factional role on the same side as the moderate caucuses in DSA. 

The accusations of ‘union-busting’ lobbed at members of the NPC are a disingenuous political attack based on a mistaken view regarding the purpose of staff in a socialist organization. The point of DSA staff is to serve the movement, not the other way around. That does not mean that DSA’s leadership should treat their workers like some NGOs do, cracking the whip and paying minimum-wage salaries, but it does mean that staffing is a political decision, and it is not illegitimate for the NPC to determine that DSA has higher political priorities than maintaining maximum staffing levels.

Beyond that, we need to have a serious independent analysis of what our staff departments are doing, what targets they are meeting on average, and what effects this is having on the organization. If staff are taking on duties that can be easily done by members, can we set up infrastructure for seasoned DSA leaders to take that on? If they are taking on organizing tasks, what are they, and what impacts do they have? Are they worth the hourly cost? This is not a question of whether the staff work hard – it’s abundantly clear that they do. But being responsible stewards of DSA’s resources requires the NPC to have honest and comprehensible answers to these questions.

DSA’s staff structure has historically been siloed off from the rest of the organization at the behest of director-level staff who resisted interference or oversight by DSA’s elected leadership, including not allowing the NPC to review alternative candidates for staff positions. The obstacles placed by directors between the NPC and bargaining unit staff serve to partially explain the disconnect between DSA’s membership and staff, but do not excuse the complete lack of awareness among the membership regarding staff structure and duties or the failure to adequately assess the performance of existing staff or the utility of new positions. Ultimately, the source of this failure is the NPC’s lack of political will to confront director-level staff. This has come back to haunt the organization and the current debate around the budget; what’s necessary now is for the NPC majority to take the steps that should have been taken a long time ago to crack open the silo.

As we alluded to above, this budget crisis did not come out of nowhere. DSA ran a 1 million dollar deficit in 2023, and broke even in 2022. The policies headed by Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) and the forces that would later become Groundwork supported consistent hiring on the basis of, in Ashik from Groundwork’s case, growing to “1 staffer per 1,000 members” (NPC Candidate Compendium, p. 156). We are not opposed to spending, even significant spending, when necessary, but these expenditures clearly did not achieve the expected results. We agree with the need to hire staffers to do field organizing work and to produce materials for DSA campaigns, but we need to be much more cognizant of how we go about hiring staffers, and what they do. Most importantly, we need a clear political vision for the role of staff and the growth of the socialist movement as a whole. 

Fundraising and Member Engagement

The aspect of this question that is missing from the left majority on the NPC is that of fundraising. Much has been said about cutting expenses, but it is vitally important we also increase our revenues. Once again, a campaigning approach where staff and membership are mobilized to fundraise, to increase solidarity dues, and to build a strong positive vision for the organization is in our best interests in the short and long term. Our revenues are shockingly low compared to other membership organizations like unions, which average around $400 per year. Of course, DSA’s membership is not the same as that of unions for contractual and demographic reasons. Still, considering DSA demographics skew similarly to the American public, the comparison is not nearly so different as some would argue.

Many of our comrades argued in the initial months of the crisis that fundraising was a gamble and not a reliable method of preventing layoffs. This was a reasonable position based on previous failures to fundraise dramatically, such as the Recommitment Drive’s middling results, but the past few months of Solidarity Dues phonebanks increased our revenue by around $250,000 annually, which has placed the question of the exact number of layoffs under serious deliberation. Accusations from the DSA union and their supporters that the NPC majority is making unjustified layoffs are now being made.

The successful fundraising in recent months is on the back of a clear message: to maintain our organizing capacity and retain our staff members, phonebank for Solidarity Dues! This was wielded cynically by the moderate wing, but members ultimately participated in phonebanking sessions because they thought it could save DSA. That was a powerful message, and one that needs to develop into a broader effort to rouse the organization as a whole through engaging campaigns, bold member engagement and long term political goals. DSA is capable of more than is readily apparent – we should learn from that and believe in our own ability to organize beyond our immediate survival.

It is also no accident that the lion’s share of this fundraising was not from one-off donations or merchandise, but based on an increased commitment to DSA by increasing dues and switching to monthly payments. Many members still have annual dues, which are naturally lower and less reliable, so making appeals for members to switch to any monthly dues will raise revenues, especially as our membership decline has stalled out to an extent. Unfortunately, even this will at some point plateau, but we believe that similar fundraising efforts should be made and paired with a strong political message that can reactivate members in their chapters as well as through their dues. To address the budget crisis without concrete goals for DSA’s long term development is to miss part of what brought us to this crisis in the first place.

The DSA Union’s Campaign

We also have to address the elephant in the room: the campaign of the DSA union to prevent layoffs, often by hyperbolic and dramatic means, how it came about, and what it means.

Initial discussions on the budget were based on decreasing non-staff expenses, which cut close to $500,000 in committees, travel, and other expenses. While the most controversial and explosive struggles began after the unveiling of the proposal to begin layoff procedures for twelve members of the bargaining unit on March 8th, the discussion on layoffs began on January 18th, when B&R proposed to decrease staff expenses by $500,000 by offering voluntary resignations for severance. While supported by Marxist Unity Group (MUG) in a statement, the proposal went nowhere and began a heated debate. SMC came out on the same day to emphasize that their priority was to prevent layoffs, even at the expense of every other item in DSA’s budget.

While the debate around the budget had a political dimension in the role of dues and spending, the question of the role of staff was only initially touched on by B&R’s article, noting the intricacies of movement staff and the fact that the “bosses” of DSA’s staff are convention and the leadership it democratically selects to run the organization. 

The day after the proposal to lay off twelve staff was posted on the forums, the DSA staff union shot back with a statement and a notorious post where they used the slogan “fuck 12” to attack it. DSA members on the forums rightfully noted how tone-deaf and offensive this could be to those who have experienced police violence. Three days later, hundreds of members flooded an NPC meeting with inflammatory questions and messages in the chat. Regardless of one’s position on this matter, what it crucially demonstrates is that far from being apolitical, the union is waging an aggressive factional campaign, supported by SMC and Groundwork, against a majority of DSA’s elected leadership in order to prevent layoffs at the expense of other items.

A union’s purpose should be to fight for its members’ interests, but in the context of DSA, this is not a campaign of union members against a capitalist boss. In this debate, the union is holding the organization hostage in an outsized, undemocratic, factional role on the same side as the moderate caucuses in DSA. 

The primary arguments the left majority put forward in a March 30th post only mentioned the budget’s political ramifications once (to keep dues-share). The overall argument was primarily financial. To some degree this was necessary to counter the accusations that the majority were arbitrarily laying off staff. However, as fundraising increased from January onwards, the natural response by the union was that the layoffs were no longer economically necessary. In response, the proposed number of layoffs fell to eight. Now the union is fighting for an even lower number: only four bargaining unit members. Considering that no non-staff expenditures are being restored, the final ratio of staff to non-staff expenditure is actually increasing as the NPC makes concessions. The NPC majority are on the defensive in a blatant factional battle while on shoddy ground. Strictly financial arguments were always going to be subject to perpetual reassessment and relitigation, and the left majority’s reticence to speak on political terms with a positive vision for DSA’s future and potential to fundraise has allowed the moderate wing to gain unnecessary ground for the very vision that brought DSA into this crisis.

There’s a false dichotomy in the debate: laying off staff is not an arbitrary decision to “union bust”, nor is it simple arithmetic. It is a political question – how much should we spend on staff and how much should we spend on member-run expenses? We say it clearly: we believe that more funding should be spent on member-run organizing and less on staff. The current debate is a manifestation of staff‘s political and factional role.

Lessons Learned

This budget crisis did not have to happen, at least not in this way. We have been warning about the staff-driven nature of the work in DSA, the membership crisis, and the lack of a clear campaigning approach to grow membership. Furthermore, people like Jen M. and Jenbo on the last NPC warned members about deficit spending beyond our means. These cuts will reduce staff trust and make it harder to hire people, along with generally disrupting the flow of our operations across the country at an important moment. It would behoove us to reflect on what lessons to take away, and what to avoid over-correcting on.

Spending Surpluses and Deficits

The obvious culprit of our current situation is the increase in expenditures, not just staff. In the last few years, we increased spending on grants, travel expenses, and other organizing tools, even when we were in a precarious net-even position. Instead of looking at the concrete outcomes of different uses of our members’ money, critics argued any attacks on their pet projects constituted “austerity.” The way in which committees often were siloed off added to a culture of organizational fiefdoms that are only now being dealt with. Doubtless, there is a danger of an austerity mindset in the organization, and we should not mistake earnest concerns for bad faith criticisms, but concerns over the budget, our inefficient allocation of resources, and our membership decline were simply written off. For our own part, we feel compelled to admit that we did not think comprehensively about what spending we should and shouldn’t prioritize, or how to best incorporate it into a sustainable budget. 

Beyond simple overspending is the issue of spending without a plan. When we spent money on grants or travel expenses, and especially on long-term staff, did we have expectations for what they were meant to accomplish?  Did we seriously ask what work was being done that could not be done by members? Does the membership have a clear grasp of what each staff member does in their work-day, what things they do in each week, what we gain from using our dues to pay for this salary? We can’t just balance the budget this year and the next and then go on our merry way. We need to change the approach used for new expenditures so that we are clear in answering how this helps organize DSA members, what we expect to come out of this, and if it is worth the cost.

DSA is capable of more than is readily apparent – we should learn from that and believe in our own ability to organize beyond our immediate survival.

The other danger is that of timidity. We should feel free to dip into excess reserves for clear organizing purposes. Money spent on, for example, materials to be produced and distributed to chapters for Palestine protests would be money well-spent. Money spent on staff time to train members to take on much of the tasks that our current organizers do would be very well spent. It’s important that we don’t in the future refuse to spend any of our dues on these types of projects. Above all, we must fund members’ efforts to direct and carry out DSA’s political mission.

Open the Books!

Any discussion about the budget must include the fact that the NPC’s Treasurer, John Lewis of Red Star, was unable to see the actual accounting budget for several months after being elected. It’s only recently that we are able to see expenses and revenues laid out in such a clear and simple manner, rather than hidden behind walls of rumor and basic reports given once a quarter. A major reason we’ve reached this place is a lack of democracy and transparency, and we will fall right back into this mess without a consistent culture of opening the books – and keeping them open. Yet, the books, the budget, CBA, staff salaries and expectations, are only one part of this broader question.

Here we have to give credit to John Lewis for being an extremely transparent and open Treasurer and bringing this issue to light. The first step to navigating our budget shortfalls was to be open, transparent, and clear with members and to democratically mobilize them. We’ve tasked staff with roles that could be conducted by members, left important political decisions in the hands of directors, and preserved inefficient campaign structures, all of which have facilitated the problem. The only way to resolve this is with more democracy. 

It is imperative to investigate the role of staff, what they do, what we spend our money on, and what we get out of it. It is absolutely vital that future staff and expenses are couched in these terms, openly explained and discussed for members to deliberate on. An engaged DSA member interested in the national organization should be able to explain, or find the documents to explain, what our staff does, what kinds of projects they take on, and why. Every long-term solution to the nascent bureaucratization of our organization stems from being able to clearly comprehend the scope of their important work.

Building Our Movement

Movements naturally ebb and flow, with upsurges and periods of stagnation largely beyond our control. But within the wider motion of political conditions, there are still significant things within our power. For the past two years, we have been too quick to write off declining membership as a natural, unavoidable result of conditions which would pass if we waited it out. But losing members has serious implications for our movement – it hurts our stability, strains our chapters, and as we can now see, undermines our finances. 

The difficult conditions for socialists in the last two years were unavoidable – our lackadaisical response was not. R&R has written frequently about a mass campaigning approach, something we are still straining to implement through the TRBA campaign and in our local chapters. This approach is not just an abstract principle we call for as an ideal – it is a vital, elemental component of a healthy organization. In more difficult times, when our movement ebbs, we have to confront the situation honestly, taking a more ambitious approach towards recruitment, a more aggressive approach towards public messaging, and a more critical approach towards our own mistakes.

DSA has not used its resources to effectively build our movement. Now, that must change. To resolve this budget crisis and prevent future ones, we will now need a more diligent internal approach, a more aggressive external approach, a more democratic organizational structure, and the kind of membership mobilization we have scarcely aspired to, let alone achieved. But this crisis has proved that limitations in our movement are not something we can ignore if we hope to maintain a healthy socialist organization. 

If we are able to create a culture of training members to take on tasks like organizing phonebanks, creating presentations, and running events, we would massively increase the long-term capacity of our membership and create a natural, member-run middle layer. In the future, these comrades can train other members in their region, or even return to their chapters with new skills. This would go a long way in transforming DSA into a truly member-run organization, and in time a party.

Summary

Our dues are a contribution made by each member paid to our organization to be used collectively. The authors believe that the point of our dues are to facilitate member organizing and to grow our movement. These two things are at the core of how we analyze the current budget crisis. This crisis did not arrive out of nowhere, but was caused by overspending without a clear political purpose, without transparency, and without an orientation towards growing membership in an offensive strategy.

The first step we have to take is to open the books, investigate what our staff does, what our expenditures were meant to do and what they’ve done. After this, we will fully comprehend the scale of the problem. We also have to mobilize the membership broadly for a rapid fundraising effort and put significant staff and member time towards it. This is part of having a solid positive vision for the organization’s growth going forward, and something which has been missing from the left majority’s approach to this debate.

In order to stay financially solvent, DSA has made substantial cuts. However, given recent improvements in the organization’s financial state, we believe it is also important to begin considering what to fund again. We should prioritize returning funding for YDSA, the DSA SC’s stipends, DSA’s publications, and member-run committees. We also believe that the 2025 DSA and YDSA Conventions should be held in-person, while reducing costs wherever possible.

In the case of the staff cuts, we must follow the CBA and its stipulations and ensure that we do not just end up without any plan – membership has to be empowered and trained to take on these tasks for the sake of the organization, and seek to move organizing duties to members whenever possible.

In the future, we must learn as an organization not just to spend our dues, but to use them: to pinpoint precisely where we are putting our money and why. The best use of our dues is in member-led organizing that places us alongside the working class and active layers in a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist class. We believe in democratically run, open committees that unleash the power and capacity of our rank and file, guided by a strong political vision from elected leadership. This budget crisis has shown that the way our organization is run cannot be dissociated from its political goals; we must move forward with the members without diminishing our horizons.