Nonprofits Won’t Stop This Crisis – We Need An Alternative
Anonymous
Nonprofits aren't coming to save you.
I work at a small advocacy nonprofit in a major urban area. My background is in public health, and I've done everything I can to warn my boss about what's coming for the community we serve. At the beginning of the crisis I asked her to leverage our organizing sway to push for the relief our clients need. We're local leaders with a mailing list of thousands and the ear of city politicians; if we tried, we could make a noise they'd hear.
Instead, my boss has instructed me to prioritize projects that only benefit our nonprofit: fundraising; advertising events that the community no longer needs; ticking off boxes for grants even when they serve no practical purpose. We pay lip service to fighting racism and including immigrants, but we've refused to take a stand on releasing prisoners and other detainees at a time when thousands could die, trapped behind bars in a hell we allow to exist. We talk a big game about housing justice, but we've refused to demand the abolition of rent and mortgage payments. We benefit from our collaborations with disability justice groups, but we're not using our platform to denounce the discrimination and the double standard of refusing to allow workers to work from home when there isn't a pandemic.
We're positioning ourselves as a beacon for community members to flock to for help, but all we do is regurgitate the words better institutions have written for us. We're parasites and hypocrites, feeding off the work of others instead of truly serving our community.
I feel sick every time I respond to a client's call for help. I do everything I can for them under the restrictions I've been given, but it's not enough. I'm not even allowed to point them toward other organizing efforts.
(But we've always been hypocrites. We refuse to sign on to calls for rights for exempt workers because we couldn't function without exploiting their labor.)
Some nonprofits are doing good, necessary work during the crisis. Look to your food banks, who are staying open in a time of record need, or the clinics who are still operating without enough protective equipment; we just aren't one of them. I'd expect that wherever you are, you have some near you who are also failing their stated mission because it's what we're incentivized to do. Nonprofits are run like corporations, and because we need money to stay afloat (and have to please our Boards), the ones that stay in business aren't often the ones who push for structural change.
If you want to fight, it's up to you to organize. Nonprofits aren't coming to save you.
