Mayor Zohran Mamdani has disbanded the entire advisory board of the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, a nonprofit that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars since 1995, including $107 million for 9/11 rescue workers' families, replacing seasoned business leaders with appointees who fit his ideological vision.
Mamdani sent letters to advisory board members thanking them for their service and showing them the door, the New York Post reported. The fund then followed up with an email confirming the full board had been dissolved. It marks the first time in at least three mayoral administrations that every member was removed at once.
Among those dismissed: Richard Born of BD Hotels, Jeffrey Gural, chairman of GFP Real Estate, Alex Katz, a senior managing director at Blackstone Inc., Edward Skyler, Citigroup Inc.'s head of enterprise services and public affairs, and James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. These are not minor figures. They represent the core of New York's private-sector fundraising network, the people whose relationships and reputations helped the fund pull in serious money for city programs.
Mamdani's office offered no apology for the purge. His senior advisor, Dora Pekec, framed the move as a philosophical reset.
"In January, our city entered a new era, one that demands our city government reflect our communities. The building of a new Mayor's Fund, built on the ethos of putting those directly impacted in the rooms where decisions are made, is a continuation of that work."
Translated from the bureaucratic: the mayor believes the business executives who raised the money should not be the ones advising how it gets used. He wants "those directly impacted", a phrase left conveniently undefined, sitting in those seats instead.
The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City has operated since 1995 as a bridge between the private sector and city government. It channels donations from businesses and philanthropists into public initiatives. Its track record speaks in hard numbers.
After the September 11 attacks, the fund raised $107 million to support the families of rescue workers killed or injured at Ground Zero. During the worst stretch of the COVID-19 pandemic, it raised $54.5 million for an emergency relief fund that covered meals and personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. A 2025 tax filing showed the fund held $16.4 million in cash on hand.
That fundraising capacity did not materialize out of thin air. It came from the kind of people Mamdani just fired, executives at major firms with deep donor networks and the credibility to ask other business leaders to write large checks for the city's benefit. The question now is whether their replacements can do the same.
So far, the early signals are not encouraging. After taking office in April, Mamdani appointed a former dockworker and a high school teacher to the fund's board of directors. Those may be perfectly fine citizens. But the Mayor's Fund is not a community advisory panel. It is a fundraising operation that depends on relationships with New York's wealthiest donors and corporations. Swapping out Blackstone and Citigroup executives for appointees with no evident ties to the donor class raises an obvious question about whether the fund can continue to function.
Pekec told the Post that new advisory board members would be announced "later this year." Until then, the board that once connected City Hall to the private sector's checkbooks sits empty.
The advisory board purge does not exist in isolation. Since taking office, Mamdani has made a habit of antagonizing the business community and the taxpayers who keep New York's economy running. His pied-à-terre tax rollout drew backlash from thousands of property owners who saw it as a punitive strike against investment in the city.
The mayor's letter to the dismissed board members was polite on the surface. "I commend you for your dedication and the benefit you have brought to our City as you conclude your tenure on the Mayor's Fund Board of Advisors," Mamdani wrote. But a thank-you note stapled to a pink slip does not change the substance of the act.
Pekec's public statement offered the administration's rationale in slightly different terms, calling the new board "an important next step in reimagining how philanthropy can augment, but not replace, public dollars and public goods." That framing reveals the real priority. The administration views private philanthropy not as a partner but as a subordinate, something to be managed and constrained so it does not overshadow government spending.
For a city that has long depended on private-sector generosity to fill gaps in public services, that is a significant shift. And it comes from a mayor who has already shown a willingness to claim credit for private-sector outcomes he had nothing to do with.
Consider what the Mayor's Fund accomplished under the leadership Mamdani just discarded. When rescue workers died pulling survivors from the rubble of the World Trade Center, the fund raised $107 million for their families. That money came from the business community, from executives, firms, and donors who trusted the fund's leadership and gave accordingly.
When COVID-19 overwhelmed the city's hospitals, the fund raised $54.5 million to feed healthcare workers and supply them with protective equipment. Again, those donations flowed through the relationships that business-connected board members maintained.
Mamdani has now severed those relationships in a single stroke. No transition period. No phased replacement. No evidence that anyone in the administration consulted with the dismissed members about continuity or pending commitments. The fund's email simply announced the board was gone.
The fact that 9/11 families have already petitioned to bar Mamdani from Ground Zero's 25th anniversary ceremony makes the optics even worse. The mayor dismantled the board that helped raise $107 million for those same families, and he did it while already facing organized opposition from the people who lost the most on that day.
Mamdani's two known appointments to the fund's board of directors, a former dockworker and a high school teacher, signal where the administration wants to take the organization. The mayor's office has made clear it wants board members who reflect "those directly impacted" rather than the donor class that funds the programs.
But philanthropy is not a democratic exercise. It runs on access, trust, and personal relationships with people who have money to give. A board stacked with community representatives may check an ideological box, but it does not solve the operational problem of raising tens of millions of dollars from the private sector.
The fund had $16.4 million in cash on hand as of its 2025 tax filing. That is real money, and it exists because previous boards, filled with exactly the kind of business leaders Mamdani just removed, cultivated the donor relationships that kept the pipeline flowing.
High-profile departures from the city are already underway. Charles Kushner recently announced he was leaving New York, citing the Mamdani administration's failures. Moves like the advisory board purge only reinforce the message that business leaders are unwelcome in the mayor's New York.
Pekec's language about "reimagining how philanthropy can augment, but not replace, public dollars" deserves scrutiny. No one on the dismissed board argued that private donations should replace government spending. The fund exists precisely to supplement city programs, to fill gaps that tax revenue alone cannot cover.
By framing the old board as somehow standing in the way of public investment, the administration constructed a justification for a purge that had no obvious operational rationale. The fund was raising money. It had $16.4 million on hand. Its track record included two of the largest emergency fundraising efforts in the city's modern history.
What the old board did not have was ideological alignment with a mayor who has made a series of controversial policy moves since taking office. And in Mamdani's City Hall, that appears to be the only credential that matters.
None of the five named dismissed members, Born, Gural, Katz, Skyler, or Whelan, have commented publicly on their removal. The mayor's office has offered no timeline more specific than "later this year" for naming replacements. In the meantime, a nonprofit with a 30-year track record of mobilizing private money for public emergencies sits without an advisory board.
New York has survived incompetent mayors before. But a city that drives away the people willing to write checks for its rescue workers, its healthcare staff, and its emergency programs is a city betting that ideology will keep the lights on when the next crisis hits. That is not a bet any taxpayer should feel good about.
