We’ve been reduced to this reality by a combination of austerity politics and the growing non-profit industrial complex. Underneath their laudable aims and local successes, non-profits are beholden to the methods of funding which allow them to continue their work. It’s nearly impossible to challenge the unequal distribution of power and resources when your initiatives must be made palatable to ruling class philanthropists, whose wealth is a product of exploitation.
Crowd-funding feels like a solid alternative because it changes the class dynamics of traditional philanthropy, but it subjects recipients to the same capricious winds. Whether they’re aging robber barons or techie college freshmen, funders are attracted to shiny new projects with short-term objectives they can watch unfold in a five-minute Kickstarter video. Even a $5 donor wants a straight line between her cash and a positive outcome. That’s not always possible, or desirable.
Audre Lorde famously said that the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house, and the non-profit industry is a textbook example. Their current structure all but eradicates any opportunity to pursue structural change in how resources are allocated, and encourages short-term thinking and zero-sum battles for funding. Long-term political goals, like combatting police violence or ending mass incarceration, are left twisting in the wind.
In their foundational essay collection The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, the Incite! Collective explain how non-profits were established as tax shelters for the richest individuals, which had the happy after-effect of funding their philanthropic projects and improving their public image. We need not interpret the elite’s motives entirely cynically in order to critique the system that by design perpetuates paternalism and prioritizes the interests of capitalists. In the collection, Ruth Gilmore cites Jennifer Wolch’s description of the non-profit industry as a “shadow state,” or network of organizations which privatize state functions like funding medical research or putting books in classrooms.
It bears noting that none of this is the fault of the ALS Association or any other non-profit. Rather, it is the status quo that many direct service and social justice organizations endure unnecessarily. With even a little bit of political will, it wouldn’t be hard to give ALS research enough money that we never have to get wet again. The government could give the National Institutes of Health $30 million every month for a year, and it still wouldn’t touch the $3.2 billion allocated to revamp the president’s helicopter fleet, Marine One — none of which resulted in building a single helicopter.
The issue is not what is available, but what is being prioritized. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has been successful not only because of the gimmicky videos, but because no one could reasonably object to funding ALS research. Why not channel that energy into a public funding system, siphoning higher taxes into these important causes? Why not go further and imagine more radical ways to transform medical research in the interests of ordinary people? We could rest assured that a bedrock of a just society is secure.
