The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0896087662 ISBN 13: 9780896087668

Publisher: South End Press, 2009

Synopsis

A $1.3 trillion industry, the US nonprofit sector is the world’s seventh largest economy. From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world, often blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. But even as funding shrinks and government surveillance rises, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the nonprofit model.
 
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the “nonprofit industrial complex” and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model? How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt politi-cal movements? Activists or -careerists? How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden exposé of the “nonprofit industrial complex” and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.

About this title

About the Author

Among the largest feminist organizations in the world, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing.

Review

"The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gives us valuable insight into what these activists call 'the non-profit industrial complex,' an unseen web of money and power that tries to undermine people's struggles for racial, class, economic, gender, and environmental justice. It deserves the closest study." (Mumia Abu-Jamal)

"This collection presents a context for the questions that have been troubling us about non-profit structures. In years to come, we will mark it as the jump-start for our new thinking about ways to make collective social change." (Suzanne Pharr, author of In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation)

"The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is a must-read for all of us who are living in the U.S., the crossroads of empire and global capitalism. Seriously addressing the questions and critiques raised by this collection will help today's U.S.-based justice movements make sense of our responsibilities—and envision creative opportunities—to help map a transformative future for liberation." (Joo-Hyun Kang, member, CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities)

"Are non-profit organizations sufficiently accountable and responsive to the larger aims of popular social movements, or is the 'non-profit industrial complex' thawing the potential for fundamental social change? The Revolution Will Not Be Funded provides a variety of critical perspectives that challenge the conventional foundation model and non-profit system approach to popular organizing in capitalist America. Sure to be a provocative book for activists working for social justice." (Daniel Faber, editor of Foundations for Social Change)

Edition details

• Publisher: South End Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0896087662
• ISBN 13: 9780896087668
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: INCITE! Women Of Color Against Violence