I don't think there ever is an individual who knows the right answers to everything when it comes to SEO. We're all exploring ideas, learning and sharing knowledge of our own findings and research.
Let's step outside the SEO world, throw away our knowledge and look at the website. Would you say, it is a website your client should be on? If your client is indeed an internet company made in NYC, shouldn't they be mentioned in NY Tech Meetup? From this perspective, I would say yes.
My gut feeling is that, Google won't penalise a website who is an internet company made in NYC and listed on a non-profit organization website with a nofollow link. It seems like a natural fit.
Second, I'm looking at opensiteexplorer, the page has a page authority of 78/100 and 174 root domains including some big power houses like the guardian, bloomberg, forbes. (didn't see any nofollow) I definitely think these are helping.I remember working on a client's webpage once, we optimised the page with rich content, clear call to actions and it was ranking on page 2, got 2 hyperlinks from the BBC and another high authority website and two weeks later, "boom", we were ranking on page 1, position 4.
Now let's explore the "black hat" technique. The core one would be the requesting of reciprocal links with the anchor text "Made in NYC" hyperlinked
You are right, that is "black hat" if I saw someone else do it, but in this scenario, I would go "that's fine". It all depends on the situation.
- A non-profit organisation focused on supporting new york technology community
- The webpage is specific to one and one thing only, listing internet companies made in NYC
- Their selection criteria focuses on active sites with 10k+ visits and ones solely made in NYC
You see, if I were to move this whole concept to a real world scenario, where nytm was a shop and they had a book listing other shops built in NYC, would you penalize them? "you sir, should not list such shops nor should other shops say you have a list of NYC build shops!"
In all honest, I don't see what they are doing as a big no no. I think things should be looked at as a case by case scenario, not to cluster everyone as a single group.
You mentioned why can't you create a .org page similar to this.. I say why not? Note their directory page isn't the core of what they are. This is just a single page of their entire entity and I think that plays a lot in their strength in reaffirming their presence in the web.
I realize you are frustrated, and all of us have our own thoughts. My thinking has always been to compare things to a real life scenario and focus more on creating great content that others will link to, rather than chase it myself. Sure, they might all use nofollow but they clicked through wanting to see my page and I'll let my rich content, site design and clear call to action turn them to a returnee.
Don't fret my friend. In a weird way, this is the perfect board to vent out and hear everyones thoughts and ideas. I hope my thoughts haven't put you off