Almost
twenty years ago, INCITE! held a national
conference with the theme, The
Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The
Non-Profit Industrial Complex. INCITE!
is a
network of radical feminists fighting against
systemic violence against women. It went on to
publish a groundbreaking movement anthology of
the same name. It wasn’t the first time such
prophetic warnings were sounded about the
threat of the NPIC. Nor will it be the last.
Ella Baker, one of my sheroes,
expressed concern in 1963 about “this
‘Foundation Complex,’” observing that “we’re
getting praise from places that worry me.”
More recently, we saw outrage about the $90
million donated by corporations to the Black
Lives Matter Global Foundation with little
accountability and even less transparency.
According to sources who track
the U.S. nonprofit sector, it is a $1.5
trillion industry, reportedly hiring over 18
million people. If it were a country, the
sector would be seventh largest economy in the
world. With over 1.5 million nonprofits
allegedly doing public good, what’s all the
fuss about?
When INCITE! raised its
criticism about the NPIC, it wasn’t talking
about the American Red Cross or The Boys and
Girls Clubs. It was referring to the social
justice organizations which have been sucked
into the vortex of the NPIC, often
compromising their radical vision, lofty
values and political agenda to keep the
greenbacks coming. For social justice groups,
it’s supposed to be more than just doing good
work, they should be about organizing the
masses of our people for political power and
economic justice. We should be advocating for
a democratic system of governance free of
oppression and exploitation.
Neoliberalism and white
supremacy are ideologies that are shaping
world economies, especially the U.S. economy.
This government is destroying traditional
safety nets and pushing that responsibility
onto communities. This puts the burden on
nonprofits to shoulder. This is honorable but
somebody has to be calling out these actions
and organizing the hungry and the unhoused to
understand why they’re in a bad situation in
the first place.
The blatant racism of the GOP
and its allies are making the lives of Black
and Brown people more miserable by the day.
They have made it clear that we are
undeserving of food, shelter, healthcare,
public transportation, education, voting and
other rights afforded to citizens. It’s
understandable that nonprofits will take up
the slack as best they can under these
circumstances.
This is also why the role of
social justice groups and revolutionary
organizations are so important and why they
are needed more than ever. Strong. Bold.
Strategic.
How will we rise to expectation
if our power is blunted and controlled by the
funding we receive? That’s why any concessions
to or co-optation by funders, corporations,
the Democratic Party, zionists or anybody else
is a blow to the transformational work we
believe is imperative. I added the zionists in
there because most people don’t know that
there’s a clause in some funding agreements
that demand you disavow any support for
Palestinian Liberation in order to get the
money.
U.S. social movements are in
more than a quandary in 2024. It is pretty
clear that if we’re committed to fighting the
systems of governmental and capitalist
oppression, those systems are not going to pay
us to bring them down. An environmental
nonprofit whose major funder is ExxonMobil is
not likely to make much headway in the quest
for environmental justice.
The sphere of social justice
organizations is small, and we talk a lot
about the internal dynamics of our political
homes. Horror stories are shared about the
dysfunction of our organizations as they use
the master’s tools to operate under the guise
of progressive leadership or a progressive
agenda or both.
The LRS Study Group is
sponsoring an upcoming webinar so that
organizers can tackle head-on the funding
issues crippling our movements. “The
Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Exploring the
Role of Nonprofits in our Movement” is seeking
to take the discussion to a higher level of
understanding, new levels of organizing and
creative ways of funding.
The NPIC is designed to suppress
our outrage, control our political victories,
redirect our energies, usurp our power, and
snatch our grassroots organizers. This makes
our impact limited. By design.
The specter of authoritarianism
is creeping towards us. Our challenge is to
determine how our movement relates to the
NPIC, how we uphold our revolutionary vision
and radical organizing values. We have to make
the lines of demarcation clear, then hold each
other accountable. The hearts and minds of our
nation cannot be up for sale to the highest
bidder or to the best-funded organization.
To
register for the LRS Study Group webinar, go
to http://bit.ly/NPICnRevolution.
