Freedom Socialist • Vol. 29, No. 1 • February-March 2008

RADICAL WOMEN

Can NGOs and nonprofits right the world's wrongs?

by Laura Mannen

My post-high school goal was to join the Peace Corps and spend the rest of my life at the service of humanity. Lofty and idealistic, I began my nonprofit career as a summer volunteer at Los Niños, a cross-border social service outfit located outside San Ysidro, Calif., with aid projects in Tijuana, Mexico.

Los Niños catered to liberals playing poor for the summer or the year and had little hope of really changing the conditions of the clientele. It was poorly run and patronizing towards the people with whom we worked. I knew something didn't feel right, and I ended the summer extremely disillusioned.

For the next several years, I meandered through the nonprofit labyrinth, including stints at a homeless shelter, an "underprivileged" youth program, a Latin America solidarity group, and a diversity training program. Each of these experiences brought me into contact with dedicated individuals trying to lessen the poverty and distress caused by U.S. domestic and foreign policies.

However, none of the organizations were capable of providing more than Band-Aids for the raw wounds of homelessness, disintegrating families, racism, or the colonial legacy of underdevelopment. This failure helped change me from a starry-eyed idealist into a 24-year-old cynic.

Why can nonprofit work leave us feeling so bad if we're doing such good?

Dollars and strings. One of capitalism's biggest con jobs is to convince us that humanity is essentially evil, banal and vicious. But the reality is quite different. Human nature compels us to try to improve our conditions and those of our sisters and brothers.

The mass revolts of the 1960s and '70s showed U.S. rulers that they must provide ways to channel urges for justice and fairness into projects that will not disrupt the highly effective (for them) economic pyramid.

The in-the-streets demands of millions of people across the globe spurred big business to funnel millions of dollars into charitable foundations. In addition to tax write-offs and public-image face-lifts, corporate funders could divert rebellious social movements by channeling money into "respectable" relief efforts for the toiling masses.

Enter the modern 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization or nongovernmental organization (NGO), the perfect place for foundations to direct tax-deductible donations toward services that really should be provided by responsible governments. Today's foundations boast assets of $500 billion. They give an estimated $33.6 billion each year to over 800,000 nonprofits operating in the U.S. - up from around 50,000 in 1953.

Foundations are specifically interested in giving money to projects that will not rock the capitalist boat. Funds come with strings attached; they only flow into an agency if the grant applications meet the demands of the people holding the wallet.

The anthology Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice (by Silliman, Gerber Fried, Ross, and Gutiérrez) provides several striking examples of how this works. In one instance, the National Latina Health Organization lost funding for a project that was asserting a militant Latina voice on abortion and other reproductive rights, but gained a grant for an anti-smoking program aimed at teenage girls. This major shift in focus was due to the priorities of funders.

What's a principled activist to do? She got into the (overwhelmingly female) nonprofit workforce in order to make a difference for people in need. Does she play the game, do a few things to make the funders happy, or refuse the strings and the money?

If these quandaries weren't enough to give the average nonprofit worker a case of the ethical blues, add the fact that she has no union and can hardly make the rent. The vast majority of workers in 501(c)(3) agencies are not part of organized labor.

In fact, many agency directors actively discourage union organizing and urge their employees to view the work as a "calling." And don't spout off about being underpaid and overworked because, after all, if you're "doin' it for the cause," money really shouldn't matter. Meanwhile, the most powerful directors, or CEOs as they are often ironically called, pull in six-figure salaries and are disproportionately white and male.

The mission mentality used against the workforce also drives a serious wedge between staff and clients. The corporate model imposed upon nonprofits by their benefactors places the paid professional above the service recipient, creating an unequal relationship. Rather than seeing each other as allies in combating the ills of their shared society, one is receiving a salary to somehow help, serve, or fix the other. This does not exactly create fertile ground for grass-roots organizing by the community itself.

Freedom from foundations: imagine it! A new anthology, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, is an excellent starting point for a dialogue about the insidious role of foundations in determining the nonprofit agenda. Compiled by the group INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the book provides important background on what it dubs the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC). However, the book is short on concrete alternatives. This is not surprising since most of the contributors are linked to NGOs or are academic researchers.

One of the writers, Dylan Rodríguez, asserts that "forms of sustained grassroots social movement that do not rely on the material assets and institutionalized legitimacy of the NPIC have become largely unimaginable within the political culture of the current US Left" (his emphasis).

Perhaps some cannot even dream of it, but people-powered movements outside the nonprofit model actually do exist! It is the reality for my sisters and me in Radical Women. Most of us work at daily-grind jobs, and organize for radical social change among our co-workers and in our "spare" time (after feeding children, managing household finances, commuting, etc.).

While many nonprofit feminist groups have come and gone, and others have seen their original goals transformed by the strings attached to foundation money, we have blossomed into an international organization.

How has Radical Women stayed the course? We are strengthened by the fact that our politics are not compromised by 501(c)(3) status. We engage in self-determined, wide-ranging activities and raise one hundred percent of our operating budget from workingclass members and supporters through small-scale fundraising methods that teach us to be organizers and connect us to the community. Our independence allows us to openly advocate for our ideals as we build towards a new tomorrow, where human generosity and solidarity can flourish.

Decision time. In 2008, the majority of humanity scrapes by under intolerable conditions. The planet is on the verge of a literal meltdown. And imperialism continues to ravage the world.

Activists have come to a fork in the road. Though NGOs supply partial remedies for survival needs, they cannot stop capitalism from generating ever more desperate problems. We have to learn to be self-propelled agents of change and stop hoping the system will hire us to overthrow it.
If we want a better world, then we'd best start organizing, hollering, and pushing like hell to give birth to a revolution. It will certainly be televised - but it won't be funded by the Ford, Soros, or Gates foundations!

Laura Mannen is a mainstay of Radical Women in Portland, Ore., and a bilingual teacher, unionist, and mother of two children.