So, as a much belated update, I have started my second week at work, and it’s been quite uneventful. We usually lounge around all day, eat lunch for 1.5hrs, then leave at 5pm. A lot of meeting and chitchatting, very little serving community.
Yesterday, I went to a conference in Sacramento about “revenue generating projects” for domestic violence nonprofits. Our ED apparently has a gazillion years of for-profit experience, which I was not aware, but now after attending that conference, I’m getting a bit worried about what that actually means.
To be honest, I was still hopeful that the conference would present what kinds of necessary capitalistic models different organizations had adopted in order to achieve self empowerment and liberation for their community. I was envisioning a workplace that provides childcare, that has managers informed about triggers and trauma, that sought to give the survivors a sense of what kind of world was possible. I was severely misinformed. Of the three models that were presented, two had nothing to do with the nonprofit’s work on intimate partner violence (IPV).
An organization called Tri-Valley Haven had “inherited” a thrift store from another organization that served youth with substance abuse — in a “filthy state,” they reiterated, multiple times. They also commented on how the vision of the store had initially been more along the lines of giving youth and other communities experience rather than generating revenue, when it was under the other organization. Of course, when Tri-Valley Haven people.came in, all of that had to change. They did not pay their workers a livable wage, did not seek to provide work experience for their IPV survivors, and considered their taking on court-mandated volunteers as a great act of service. Over and over again, the Executive Director (ED) emphasized that the store is only to generate revenue for the non-profit.
And much of the other plans were the same. A childcare agency, whose start-up costs were entirely funded by the ED’s side job as the head of a consulting company. (She even talked about how she had established a foundation specifically for her nonprofit so that she could have the foundation engage in “controversial” ways to fundraise, then her nonprofit would not be affiliated — only receiving the check. Oh, and she noted that the head of her nonprofit’s board of directors was the same person as the head of her foundations, so she was practically controlling how the money was being funneled into her nonprofit. wtf. is that even legal). Instead of using these models to subvert capitalism and recognize the ways in which survivors and other people who’ve experienced trauma have barriers in obtaining marketable skills in this violent capitalist economy, they perpetuate that same violence by often recruiting volunteers from their programs and not paying them anything or only giving them stipends in exchange for work experience. How is this not exploitation?
We even had a legal session, where a lawyer was quite frankly asked how labor laws applied to these revenue generating models of nonprofits — because the workers don’t get paid by the legal standard. She merely said that labor organizations have often turned the other way, and instead coached participants on weighing the different risks involved in such a venture (aka being caught at labor exploitation being one of them). She also gave us examples on organizations that tweaked their mission (which they submit to IRS for tax-exempt status) in order to fit commercial enterprises under their scope of related work — so that it wouldn’t threaten their 503(c)(3) status or have their income taxed.
Sigh. Sorry for the ranting. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the capitalist nature of these nonprofits — and not even random ones, ones that are specifically focused on ANTI-VIOLENCE — are looking to use their OWN community to make money for them in cheap, quick, and often illegal ways. I literally was in shock the entire time. Fuck capitalism. Is the non-profit avenue doomed?
Read. Write. Resist. 