a better world will not have foundational funding

mutual aid > nonprofit industrial complex

Jun 17, 2025

Dear Beloved,

I’ve worked in the nonprofit industrial complex for 10 years, almost half of which have been in fundraising. My work history includes Native-led health organizations, mental health networks, and community health programs. I’ve chipped in on massive statewide campaigns, federal appropriations requests, and small-scale email campaigns. With that experience, I will always tell you:

Give your money to mutual aid instead.

For one, your $100 stretches further at a grocery store and fills a neighbor’s pantry. Meanwhile, $25,000 doesn’t make a dent in most nonprofits’ operations budget. For another, nonprofits exploit workers for The Mission™. By design, underfunded programs rely on underpaid labor to resource communities. Meanwhile, non-profit leadership often takes home comfortable six-figure salaries and uses your contributions to fund “work” retreats in Hawai’i with their families (a story for another time).

Thirdly, nonprofits are often corporations’ most eager collaborators as the two share a perverse symbiotic relationship in capitalism. Through nonprofits, corporations control the financial flow of social change and have cost-effective PR. It is through donations that weapons manufacturers maintain chokeholds on public universities, building out recruitment pipelines in engineering departments and influencing leadership’s decisions to silence student voices of dissent. Meanwhile, nonprofits are by design inadequately funded to solve the problems capitalism creates and perpetuates; this makes nonprofits reliant on corporate sponsorships and connections to maintain cash-strapped programs.

“Elbit America’s mission is to create innovative solutions that protect and save lives,” claims Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer after donating items to a Virginia magnet school’s STEM program.

Fourth, and this is the most critical piece, nonprofit organizations are accountable to major donors, foundations, and fickle government before community. This is not a bug in the system; it is how nonprofits were designed by the oligarchy. The Mission™ demands funding, and the wealthy have financial and political interests in controlling the nonprofit industrial complex.

“This system of charitable giving increased exponentially during the early 1900s when the first multimillionaire robber barons, such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Russell Sage, created new institutions that would exist in perpetuity and support charitable giving in order to shield their earnings from taxation.” - The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

After years of gradual decay on our limited democracy, the US has nosedived into authoritarianism.

Before the regime even reentered office, the state threatened nonprofits’ tax status for speaking against the US-Israel genocide against Palestinians. Just as Democrats align with fascists politically, nonprofits comply in advance to stay under the radar or shift to follow the political power and the money. Nonprofits will choose the survival of their tax exemptions over the communities to which they pledged service.

alek.sander.aleksander

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Where words are banned, so too are people.

Already the regime has blacklisted 197 words - quietly removing them from government websites and threatening federal funding if “woke” words are detected in grant applications.

Accessible. BIPOC. Black. Culturally responsive. Disability. Female. Gender-based. Immigrants. Inclusivity. Multicultural. LGBTQ. Native American. Pollution. Confirmation bias. Biases. Women. Transgender. They/them. Sexuality. Pregnant person. Intersectionality. Gulf of Mexico. Health disparity. Exclusion. Vulnerable populations. Immigrants.

In banning these words, the regime shapes a culture where the people themselves are banned - shut off from social services and, by extension, society. Censorship is what ties word to action - and what we’re witnessing with mass deportations and skyrocketing poverty is state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.

In the pendulum of American politics, we can never rely on the state to tax the oligarchy or adequately fund social programs. The slim programming available hangs on shoestring budgets unless it harnesses its operations on the whims of wealthy donors. Through this dependence, they control nonprofit organizations and through them, the increasing number of people reliant on nonprofit social programs to barely survive in this oligarchy-designed system.

Since the inception of the nonprofit industrial complex, BIPOC-led nonprofit organizations have received less philanthropic support than white-led peers. Only in the last 10 years has there been a fractional rise in foundational giving to BIPOC nonprofits. Now, foundations are (predictably) quietly rolling back DEI initiatives.

In the very near future, we will see:

Less funding available in an already competitive nonprofit market
Less funding allocated to BIPOC-led nonprofit organizations which will force unplanned sunsetting
Fewer services for marginalized communities
Institutions pulling support from nonprofits targeted by the regime, furthering authoritarian political goals
Thousands more nonprofit workers will be laid off to compensate for decreased funding
Organizations pulling away from government funding, which in turn frees up tax dollars to the bloated military budget and incentivizes more tax breaks for billionaires
Available funding funneled to organizations that explicitly further white supremacy, Christofascism, and capitalistic ideals

A new world will not be built by executive directors or boards of directors. A better world will not have foundational funding. We must instead give our time, money, and labor to each other through mutual aid. We must build alternatives to limited government programs and reduce our dependency on nonprofit organizations.

We must build our future in the decaying of empire so there is a shelter for us in the inevitable collapse. To do so, we must divest from the nonprofit industrial complex and give directly to community members.

superfamilia_kc

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Call for Mutual Aid

Jose, his wife, and two young children are asylum seekers from Venezuela. They now live in North Seattle and are struggling to find regular work. They have been in this country for over a year and plan to go back to Venezuela soon to avoid deportation and family separation.

They are seeking any help towards paying their rent of $2000 this month.

Any amount towards their goal makes a difference and will help their family make it through the next few months!

You can send funds to:

Venmo: @ sienarg
PayPal: sienagallo2@gmail.com
CashApp: $EllaShahn

Seeds for Change

Read The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
Learn how nonprofits co-opt mutual aid work
Mutual Aid 101: Introduction to Mutual Aid with Dean Spade
Listen to recordings from the 2004 Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC) Conference, which includes panels discussing NPIC history, defining NPIC, and alternatives to NPIC,
Stop Elbit Systems
Mapping Our Care Webs: Strategies for Imperfect Survival Presented -
Tuesday, Tues, June 17, 6 ET

Care is a need and a right, for everyone but especially those of us who are disabled. However, care is also complicated- it's not always been safe or accessible for many of us to give, ask for and receive the care we need, and we often face conditions of scarcity. This webinar will be a chance to map some of your current care needs and boundaries and create a care map to work towards getting care needs met.
“Your Kuffiya Scares Me”: Weaponizing Safety as Zionist Smear Tactic - Friday, June 20, 2 PM PST
Since October 2023, Zionist smear campaigns have appropriated and weaponized the already fraught discourse about campus safety with renewed vigor, and in increasingly dangerous ways that include kidnapping by ICE agents, threats of deportation, expulsions, and firing.
Register for this webinar to learn more about how Zionists weaponize safety to target the movement for Palestine’s liberation and consequently make college campuses unsafe for the most vulnerable, especially Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, undocumented, and immigrant students, faculty, and staff.
Learn how to write effective op eds and letters to the editor in Persuading the Public at Defend Public Health.
Find your local mask bloc
Read Asking and Telling by Parker Molloy, where she reflects on her choice to make herself highly visible as a trans person through her writing and the uncertain future in today’s distressing political climate for trans people.
The Power of Online Spaces in Our Movements - Thursday, July 17, 9 AM PST (Sliding Scale)

A 2-hour hands-on workshop designed for facilitators to improve their facilitation of online meetings and gatherings with impactful, generative, and energizing tools. Participants will gain fundamental design and facilitation skills using principles of popular education - so you can lead online community meetings that deepen connections and move your work forward.
Read Organization Means Commitment by Grace Lee Boggs

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