NPIC Fine Print

[thisheckingblog-blog]

Robert L. Allen’s classic book Black Awakening in Capitalist America was among the first to offer a sustained political analysis of how liberal white philanthropic organizations–including the Rockefeller, Ford, and Mellon foundations–facilitated the violent state repression of radical and revolutionary elements within the Black liberation movements of the late 1960s and early 70s.

Dylan Rodriguez, “The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex” in The Revolution Will Not Be Funded (via justwhitesupremacythings)

[socialjusticequotations]

In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among. They’re what botanists would call an indicator species. It’s almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs.

Arundhati Roy (via socialjusticequotations)

[socialjusticequotations]

The real social cost of charitable giving is the forgotten labor that builds it and the destructive effects that flow from it.

Keith A. Spencer (via socialjusticequotations)

[aberrantalacrity]

there are 6 of these; they’re good!!

[npicfineprint-blog]

What Wasn’t In the Fine Print

During the 2008 election, as an independent journalist I vowed I would never work in a non-profit. This declaration was made after being in numerous meetings, rallies, conferences, conference calls, and pressers and seeing the way non-profits, especially non-profits claiming to rep people of color, played the politics game, often watering down, negotiating down, and downright selling out in order to get funding and/or to have access to those in power/government.

Eight years later I’m the executive director of a non-profit, sitting at the same table with some of the people/orgs I used to criticize.

I would like to think I’m better, that my org does better, but the non-profit industrial complex is real. It is a lot of politics and negotiating while trying to serve with your communities. There are ridiculous hours that violate the very rights/dignity you say you are fighting for. Non-profits can be tools - in every sense of the word.

These are the stories of tears, joys, small victories and big breakdowns.

Hopefully some laughs too