Former ACORN head Bertha Lewis, a friend of Mayor de Blasio, is raking in benefits at her new nonprofit — even as she recruits board members with checkered pasts.
Lewis, 63, founded The Black Institute in 2010 months after ACORN fell apart amid scandal.
While Lewis was paid nothing at the institute in 2010, by 2011, she was making $43,750 a year — and the next year her pay shot up to $78,125. Her salary was nearly a quarter of the $341,301 the group brought in that year through donations and its programs, according to its latest tax filings.
That wasn’t the only benefit Lewis received from TBI. The institute loaned her $8,000 for a “hardship emergency” in 2011. She had paid back just $2,475 by the end of 2012, tax documents show.
Charity Navigator, a watchdog group monitoring nonprofits, said it frowns on such loans.
“Obviously, it’s diverting money away from the charity’s charitable mission and their work. It can lead to either a real or perceived conflict of interest,” said Sandra Miniutti, the group’s spokeswoman.
TBI honored de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, Thursday night at a Chelsea gala where sponsorships cost up to $50,000. Lewis worked on the de Blasio campaign and was a member of his transition team.
She formed TBI after the 2010 fall of ACORN, a left-leaning collective of community-based organizations that was rocked by a series of scandals and probes. The group was cleared of wrongdoing.
Now TBI’s board raises eyebrows. The members include former city Finance Commissioner Martha Stark, who resigned in 2009 after The Post exposed an affair with a subordinate who received big pay boosts.
In 2012, Stark reached a settlement agreement with the city Conflicts of Interest Board to pay $22,000 for ethical breaches including using her position to help a real-estate investment firm of which she was a board member.
Another director, James Heyliger, was on the board of the Rockaway Boulevard Local Development Corp., a Queens group funded with Port Authority cash. The organization funneled $452,000 to AMENY, a business run by Heyliger. After The Post revealed in 2010 that the nonprofit did little with its cash other than sweep streets, the PA decided to stop funding it and it closed.
Another TBI board member, political consultant Melvin Lowe, was indicted in October 2013 on federal fraud and tax violations. Lowe was listed as a board member in 2012 but not currently, according to the group’s Web site.
Lewis defended the board members, calling the city’s allegations against Stark “bogus.”
Lewis also said she had paid back the $8,000 loan, claiming she needed the money for her mother’s funeral. She said she did not receive a big surge in salary from 2011 to 2012 because she worked for free for half of 2011.