{"id":3398,"date":"2007-05-22T04:00:30","date_gmt":"2007-05-22T11:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/05\/22\/the-problem-with-nonprofits\/"},"modified":"2007-05-22T04:00:30","modified_gmt":"2007-05-22T11:20:18","slug":"the-problem-with-nonprofits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3398","title":{"rendered":"The problem with nonprofits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From an essay called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lipmagazine.org\/articles\/featdelmoral_nonprofit.htm\">The Revolution Will Not Be Funded<\/a>; a later draft of this essay appears, I believe, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southendpress.org\/2006\/items\/87662\">the book of the same name<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The corporate nonprofit structure encouraged by tax law doesn&#8217;t just promote financial short-sightedness through its focus on grants. This corporate structure is an intrinsic part of existing oppression, so it also inhibits the most radical aspects of our work. Suzanne Pharr, longtime Southern activist working against racism, sexism, homophobia and economic inequality, recites a straightforward list of losses that social justice movements have suffered as a result of common nonprofit fundraising strategies: The nonprofit sector, she asserts, has given us more government and corporate money, less autonomy from those sources of money, less community membership and involvement in organizations, more corporate mimicry, and more professionalization of roles within grassroots movements.<\/p>\n<p>The effects of all this? Organizations are no longer places where money and leadership are controlled by their constituents. Instead, leadership jobs go to those from the outside: people with degrees in social work, accounting and nonprofit management. With fewer people involved in organizations and with money coming from the nation&#8217;s financially powerful, the direction of nonprofit work veers away from the struggles of the people in whose name those organizations often operate. The money covers financial reports, professional grantwriters&#8217; salaries and strategies for meeting funders&#8217;\u2014not organizations&#8217;, let alone movements&#8217;\u2014goals. As a result, organizations that began as radical grassroots associations of individuals become corporations that largely copy the mainstream economy. They are professional, though not educated on the ground about the actual issues; organized, but not effective; compliant with tax laws, but not responsive or accountable to community needs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From an essay called The Revolution Will Not Be Funded; a later draft of this essay appears, I believe, in the book of the same name. The corporate nonprofit structure encouraged by tax law doesn&#8217;t just promote financial short-sightedness through &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3398\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}