COFAR blog

Tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds are distributed each year to nonprofit legal aid organizations in Massachusetts.

Yet, family members and guardians involved in disputes with the Department of Developmental Services (DDS) over issues such as the removal of their guardianships have frequently expressed frustration to us that they could not get help from those legal aid agencies.

In two recent instances, legal aid agencies told us they didn’t have the resources to represent a woman with an intellectual disability who was involuntarily placed under the guardianship of an organization funded by DDS. The woman wants a long-time friend and former care giver to be her guardian.

Yet, both agencies provide representation to persons with disabilities, according to their mission statements or online descriptions of them.

In a third case, a legal aid organization executive initially expressed interest in representing the woman, but later backed away for unclear reasons.

Despite that, all three of those agencies receive millions of dollars a year, indirectly passed through to them from taxpayers, and all appeared to be in strong financial condition, according to their IRS tax filings. Their executives receive comfortable salaries and got raises in the past year.

In a fourth case, as we reported, a legal aid organization – the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission — was unable even to respond, due to a lack of “authority and expertise,” to our questions about the rules for advocating in court for DDS families, according to its director.

That organization actually has no budget, according to an official with the Supreme Judicial Court, which oversees it. Yet the organization advertises its mission as “providing and improving access to justice for those unable to afford counsel.”

Following the money to legal aid agencies

We examined IRS tax filings known as Form 990s for the three nonprofit legal aid organizations that declined to help the woman in the guardianship dispute. Those tax forms are publicly available on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer web site.

The tax forms we reviewed were for the Disability Law Center (DLC), South Coastal Counties Legal Services (SCCLS), and the Center for Public Representation (CPR).

We also examined the tax filings of the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation (MLAC), which appears to be a pass-through organization of taxpayer funding to other nonprofits that advertise themselves as providing free legal assistance to people who are unable to afford expensive legal representation. We found, in fact, that the MLAC provides millions of dollars annually to the DLC, SCCLS, and the CPR.

The MLAC bills itself on its website as “the largest funding source for civil legal aid organizations in Massachusetts.” In fact, as we found, it is actually the state that is the largest source of that funding.

Pass-through agency

In Fiscal 2024, the MLAC passed through more than $70 million in funding to legal aid organizations in the state, a 23% increase from the year before. Those organizations, as noted, included the DLC, SCCLS, and the CPR, which received a total of $11.8 million from the MLAC that year.

In addition, the MLAC pays the salary of the director of the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission, the organization mentioned above that has no separate budget.

So where does the MLAC’s funding actually come from?

According to its Fiscal Year 2024 Form 990, the MLAC received $81 million in total revenues that year, a 25% increase over the $65 million in revenues it received in Fiscal Year 2023.

Of that $81 million, the MLAC was appropriated $49 million under the Fiscal 2024 state budget “to provide legal representation for indigent or otherwise disadvantaged residents of the commonwealth.” So state taxpayers appear to have provided more than 60% of the MLAC’s funding that year.

The MLAC also receives revenue generated by the IOLTA program, which requires lawyers and law firms to establish interest-bearing accounts for client deposits.

As noted, we found that millions of dollars in state funding was passed through by the MLAC to the legal aid organizations we had contacted.

The Disability Law Center (DLC)

In Fiscal 2024, the DLC received $1.3 million from the MLAC, an amount roughly 30% of the DLC’s total revenues that year. The DLC’s mission, as stated in its 2024 tax filing, is:

To provide legal advocacy on disability issues that promote the fundamental rights of all people with disabilities to participate fully and equally in the social and economic life of Massachusetts.

In November, however, the DLC stated that it doesn’t handle guardianship cases due to its “very limited resources.” We had asked for the organization’s help in representing the woman who was fighting an unwanted guardianship. 

The DLC’s Form 990 for the year ending September 30, 2024, showed the organization had net assets totaling $2.4 million, meaning their assets exceeded their liabilities by that amount. Moreover, their net assets increased by $154,000 that year, meaning they enjoyed a surplus of revenues over expenses of that amount.

Those are signs of strong financial health for the DLC, although that information alone doesn’t indicate whether the organization is capable of representing more clients. But the DLC was able to give its top four executives 5.8% raises in Fiscal 2024, bringing their average compensation to roughly $230,000.

The Center for Public Representation

The CPR received $3.3 million in revenues in Fiscal 2024, which was up 200% from its revenues in the prior year, according to its Fiscal 2024 Form 990.

The organization stated on its tax form that its mission was to provide “legal assistance, counsel, and representation to institutionalized, low-income individuals with mental illness or other disabilities at no charge.” But, as noted, the CPR did not ultimately agree to represent the woman who was seeking to end an involuntary guardianship.

Of the CPR’s $3.3 million in revenues in Fiscal 2024, some $734,000 came from the MLAC that year.

That year, the CPR’s net assets were a positive $14.3 million, a figure that was up $600,000 from the prior year. The organization’s top four executives received an average of $235,000 in compensation In Fiscal 2024, up an average of 16% from the prior fiscal year.

South Coastal Counties Legal Services

Out of its $13.8 million in total revenues in in Fiscal 2023, the SCCLS received $9.8 million from the MLAC, according to the tax forms of both organizations. Thus, over 70% of the SCCLS’s total revenues came from the MLAC that year.

The SCCLS’s tax form for the year ending December 31, 2023, shows that the organization’s net assets that year were $15.4 million, up 31% from the year before. That amounted to an increase of $3.7 million, which equates to a surplus in revenues to expenses that year of that same amount.

The SCCLS stated in its tax form that its mission was “to achieve equal justice for the poor and disadvantaged through community-based legal advocacy.”

Yet, when we asked the SCCLS about providing legal representation for the woman fighting her unwanted guardianship, an intake paralegal informed us that, “Unfortunately, at this time we are unable to provide assistance with guardianship matters due to capacity issues.”

The top four executives with SCCLS received 10% increases in compensation over the previous year, bringing their average compensation to $161,000. This number may actually be low because the SCCLS tax form for the year ending December 31, 2023, states that the executive director worked only two months that year and yet received $167,600 in compensation.

There seems to be a pattern here. Each of these organizations has a noble-sounding mission that would appear to promise legal help to desperate family members and guardians of people in the DDS system. Yet, none of the organizations would deliver on that promise to the woman we inquired about. 

The lack-of-resources excuse seems to ring a bit hollow given those organizations each receive millions of dollars in state funding and appear to have enough money to pay handsome salaries to their executives and to maintain strong financial viability.

Money doesn’t seem to be an issue with legal aid organizations in Massachusetts. We would hope they would dedicate themselves to their stated missions rather than just saying the right things.