Beyond Nonprofit Models

Welcome back to Fast Forum! We pick a hot topic and ask 3 – 6 organizers from across the country to weigh in. Our hope is to draw out new ideas and to encourage new voices to take a stab at the freshest challenges facing our community. This month, Jidan Koon, Senior Fellow at the Movement Strategy Center in Oakland, guest edited this Fast Forum exploring the efforts of different organizations to push the boundaries of the 501c3 nonprofit model.

GROWING WINGS: Evolving Out Of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex

THE SILVER LINING: You know that curse which becomes a blessing in disguise? That’s what faced INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence five years ago when it chose to search for opportunity in what appeared to be a crisis.

Here’s the back story: in February 2004, INCITE! received a letter from the Ford Foundation letting them know that they’d been awarded a $100,000 general support grant. A short time later, however, a Ford Foundation board member decided to conduct some independent research on INCITE! Upon finding a statement supporting the Palestinian Liberation struggle on the organization’s website, the board member challenged Ford’s support of INCITE! and the board voted to pull the grant.

Stunned, INCITE! decided to move forward without Ford’s funding. They embarked on a grassroots fundraising drive and quickly raised the money that they initially were counting on from Ford. Not only did INCITE! completely shift its own perceptions of its dependence on foundation money, it embarked on fundamental questioning of the nonprofit structure and the ways in which it controls and manages radical dissent.

Recognizing the power of the moment, INCITE! invited its colleagues into this conversation, resulting in the first ever The Revolution Will Not Be Funded conference in May 2004. The conference convened hundreds of organizers and activists nationwide to name the Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC) and explore strategies for maintaining the autonomy and integrity of the social justice movement in America.

Last year, a record number of nonprofits have shut their doors. On the average, nonprofits took cuts of one third in government and foundation funding. This year looks just as bleak. The issue of social justice movements’ use of nonprofits as a primary vehicle for organization is more pertinent than ever. In times of economic crisis, when services are needed most and opportunities for fundamental change are the highest, nonprofit structures find themselves strapped by funding cuts and fighting for survival.

THE QUESTION OF FORM: Many of us learned in science class that as temperature increases, water moves through different phases: the solid form of ice, the liquid form of water, and the vapor form of steam. The H₂O molecules do not change in composition internally, rather they change in their relationship to each other as the external environment changes. Similarly, we can see that as the conditions of the world change, so does the form of the social justice movement. Like the water molecules, the essential makeup of what we do and the crux of what we hope for does not change: freedom, love, justice. However, our form and the relationship between our different forms are changing as we speak.

Its clear that the NPIC is not going away any time soon. Although record numbers of nonprofits are in fact shutting down, within current nonprofits people do good work as well as build community, base, and leaders. Rather than expecting a presto-bingo abandonment of the NPIC, what we will undergo in this next period is an evolution out of the NPIC. The first birds started off ground bound reptiles and incrementally grew small stubby wings that first allowed them to flap and glide like chickens, and then eventually gained the physical structure to fly and soar like condors. Our evolution as a movement to forms (old and new) that allow for autonomy and political integrity, and thus a movement capable of real transformation, will be like growing wings–shifting incrementally out of the form we currently have and into forms we intentionally want to move towards.

This Fast Forum seeks to explore further the nuances of the evolving out of the NPIC. Contributors answer the following questions from their own experimentation and experience in work inside and outside of non-profits as well as project current new thinking into the future.

• What kinds of work are most suited to the nonprofit form and what kinds of work are suited to an outside form?
• What should be the relationship of the nonprofit form to outside forms?
• The Revolution Will Not Be Funded highlighted NGOs from abroad, but what models exist domestically as alternatives to nonprofit forms of organization?
• What is the role of radical leadership development?

…AND CHECK OUT THE US SOCIAL FORUM WORKSHOP ON THIS TOPIC:

Anakbayan East Bay, Serve the People, Xicano Moratorium Coalition, and Asian Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership will be sponsoring an interactive youth friendly workshop at the USSF on the NonProfit Industrial Complex and how their organizations connect grassroots (not foundation funded) organizing with existing nonprofits. The workshop is called “Growing Wings: Evolving Out of the NonProfit,” June 23rd, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. at the WSU Student Center, Rm 786.

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PUSHING OUR IMAGINATION, SIN FRONTERAS

Katie Joaquin is the Chair of Anakbayan East Bay and an organizer for Filipino Advocates for Justice and the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON). She organizes Filipino immigrant workers and caregivers to fight for their rights and Filipino youth to join the struggle for National Democracy in the Philippines.

“Making demands too big for any CEO to meet”*

In October 2008, 130 grassroots organizations from 23 countries assembled in Manila, Philippines at the 1^st International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) to oppose the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), a state-led initiative advancing neoliberal policies. Rejecting the GFMD’s framework of commodifying migrants, the International Migrants Alliance organized the IAMR as an alternative to demand governments address the root causes of migration by nationalizing economies and ending US-led global War on Terror.

In contrast, many US nonprofits participated in parallel activities, demanding human rights and migrant voices be at the center of GFMD talks. These reform efforts operate within the forum’s framework while exposing its contradictions. Both nonprofit and grassroots (not foundation funded) approaches to challenge the GFMD are necessary, but only when we combine efforts do we get a demand too big for any CEO to meet.

Nonprofit organizations have developed working class immigrant leadership to wage reform battles and build collective power. However, our most advanced leaders need to elevate their leadership. Grassroots organizations fill this need; their political direction is determined only by the concrete, ever changing conditions and needs of members–not funding streams.

A GRASSROOTS MODEL FOR ORGANIZING SIN FRONTERAS

Anakbayan (AB) East Bay is a mass-based group that organizes Filipino youth around the collective interests of working class peoples and immigrants, while linking our local struggles with the Philippine movement for national democracy. AB is a member of International League of People’s Struggle, the mother organization of the aforementioned International Migrants Alliance, and of BAYAN-USA, an alliance of 14 grassroots organizations across the US fighting for national democracy in the Philippines. BAYAN-USA is an overseas chapter of BAYAN Philippines. We are not a solidarity organization, but part of the same movement addressing the root causes behind the problems of Filipinos internationally: US imperialism, landlessness, and corrupt puppet governments. We believe our freedom in the US is dependent on achieving genuine national democracy in the Philippines and all over the world.

One of our main goals is to develop and defend radical working class leadership. Redbaiting is rising as US imperialists desperately defend their failing system. Melissa Roxas, a member of a BAYAN-USA affiliate in Los Angeles, was abducted by the Philippine military while on a medical mission, accused of being New Peoples Army, and tortured for 6 days. At every turn we must expose the targeting of member-leaders who are fighting for the interest and needs of the people.

GREATER THAN THE SUM OF OUR PARTS

An example of nonprofit and grassroots group collaboration is AB’s leadership in the API Movement Building Pipeline. Grassroots and nonprofit organizations are sustaining our members’ leadership by identifying stepping stones to transition to different organizations based on their social and political development needs. Instead of competing for funding or credit, we have a powerful relationship based on political unities and commitment to dismantling US imperialism.

Anti-imperialist organizations that want to participate in efforts to address root cause issues internationally should join the 3^rd International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico November 7–8, 2010.

* Adapted from line of “Movement Poem” by Maria Poblet

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COMMON FIRE & THE NONPROFIT STRUCTURE: A BRIDGE TO TOMORROW

Kavitha Rao is the co-founder of Common Fire which helps to create accessible and sustainable intentional communities as a means of cultural transformation. She is a mother, a yoga teacher, a facilitator, and an organizer. She has worked with grassroots organizations around the world and is humbled by the immense commitment and vision she has witnessed from people unwilling to accept that the violence, injustice, and poverty that may surround them is the only way things have to be. Her work and the work of Common Fire are explorations for how we can live the just and sustainable futures we all deserve now and in solidarity with all peoples on the planet.

NeEddra James is a writer and graphic designer working towards ecological transformation, social justice, and holistic healing through the development of sustainable and economically cooperative communities. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Common Fire Foundation and Planting Justice, a food justice nonprofit in Oakland, CA.

 Common Fire is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. It supports the creation of intentional communities created by and for a true diversity of people that are geared toward the transformation of society, from the inside out, and from the ground up. We seek to build a world that is more loving, joyful, just and sustainable, one community at a time.

Like many of our colleagues working toward a more just and sustainable world, we too recognize, not only the shortcomings of the nonprofit structure as a long-term solution to the troubles of our time, but we also believe that the current social, environmental and cultural crises we now face cannot be remedied at the same level of thought that produced said crises. Given this, we are committed to personal transformation, communication that breaks personal and collective silences to forge healthy relationships across lines of difference, and cooperative communities organized around resource sharing and consensus based decision-making. These features are the cornerstone of our work in the area of intentional community building; features that we envision will eventually supplant the “individual” of (neo)liberalism and its attendant “rights,” as well as capitalist notions of individual property ownership over land, food, and other vital resources.

At the same time, we are quite clear that community building at this scale–multi-acre affordable sustainable housing with organic farmland, retreat/learning centers and other buildings–requires considerable amounts of funding and still occurs within the existing legal, economic, and political cultures we seek to transform. So we use the nonprofit structure to negotiate the dominant culture. For us, the nonprofit is a tool we harness toward an end for which it was not originally intended: radical social change. Our board is comprised of people who embody the vision and mission of Common Fire. Thus, unlike traditional boards, which tend to be comprised of big donors, lawyers, and the like, our board is full of innovative change-makers.

In our hands, the nonprofit structure enables us to support grassroots groups as they organize themselves into shared housing and cooperative economic communities that put the transformative values above into practice. Through the non-profit structure, we are able to provide community groups with training opportunities in areas like nonviolent communication, grassroots fundraising, sustainable building practices, and permaculture. The nonprofit entity also enables us to provide concrete support like bank accounts and legal resources to the communities with which we partner. Most importantly, the non-profit helps us secure financing for land acquisition, which is a feat that would be fairly difficult for the groups we are currently partnered with in New York and California, where their individual economic realities keep them rooted in their current class position. In community people are able to experience relief from the economic burdens of living as solitary families and single people.

Our ultimate goal is to shift the underlying culture by creating communities that model what future societies can look like. At Common Fire the nonprofit structure is our bridge to tomorrow.

Check out Common Fire’s workshop at the US Social Forum.

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SERVE THE PEOPLE: THREE LESSONS LEARNED

Jidan Koon is currently a Senior Fellow at the Movement Strategy Center with over 15 years of community organizing and youth development experience.  She is a founding member of Serve the People, an artist, and an involved Oakland community member.

Mike Tran loves Richmond, Oakland, youth, tacos, bikes, using e. honda, the art of roasting but cries like a baby, Serving The People!

Serve the People (STP) was birthed in Winter of 2006 as a grassroots (not 501c3) organization that builds radical leadership of mostly South East Asian adults and young people in the East Bay, CA. Our relationships with nonprofits have been critical and intentional.

Lesson 1: Start with Who You Know, Go Slow

The STP founding core members had long standing relationships with each other and years of youth organizing experience through non-profit work. Even with this background, our official pace for growth is slow and deliberate. Tired of the restrictions of our 501c3 work, we began with a 3–5 year commitment amongst the core members to build a grassroots organization. Although there was a high level of trust from the start, we needed to know each other deeply to make it over the long haul. We nurtured our core over months of meetings with home cooked food, games, and visioning. By the time we figured out what we wanted to do, our alignment in purpose allowed us to adopt a decentralized leadership structure. We also pay close attention to capacity since all the work is volunteer; we even cut back on frequency of general membership meetings when they got too large for our infrastructure to handle.

Lesson 2: Movement Building = No Organizational Borders

Grassroots groups can cross many of the organizational boundaries that the nonprofit system maintains. From the start, we used our paid positions in youth-serving nonprofits to recruit youth to STP and intentionally built relationship with nonprofits with South East Asian members. At first, some felt that STP was duplicative or competing for membership. We had to be clear about our intention to partner and create a division of labor between grassroots groups and nonprofits. We build partnership into our structure by encouraging all members to participate in other organizations and make it a requirement for our leaders. Adults also thirst for a method of connecting culturally and politically outside of non-profits. We are building out an adult membership structure to address the increasing requests from adults. The cross-organization relationship building within STP has led to cross-pollination and increased collaboration amongst all groups involved.  For example, STP joined with eight other (grassroots and nonprofit) groups to form the API Movement Building Pipeline to support local, working class Asian and Pacific Islander youth and young adults through life transitions in order to maintain a lifelong commitment to movement building.

Lesson 3: Division of Labor

A mutually-supportive division of labor has emerged. From our vantage point, nonprofits meet people’s current needs for employment and services as well as organizing to resist and reform the institutions that impact our communities. Grassroots organizations have flexibility to acts in ways fundamentally counter to the current system through either taking really confrontational stances (not reform, but dismantling) and/or to build the alternative to the current system. When nonprofits and grassroots groups partner, our communities can work within the framework of the current system as well build our vision of a radical alternative future.