A trillion-dollar industry, the US non-profit sector is one of the world's largest economies. 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, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the non-profit model. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers essays by radical activists, educators, and non-profit staff from around the globe who critically rethink the long-term consequences of what they call the "non-profit industrial complex." Drawing on their own experiences, the contributors track the history of non-profits and provide strategies to transform and work outside them. Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded presents a biting critique of the quietly devastating role the non-profit industrial complex plays in managing dissent.
Contributors. Christine E. Ahn, Robert L. Allen, Alisa Bierria, Nicole Burrowes, Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA), William Cordery, Morgan Cousins, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Stephanie Guilloud, Adjoa Florência Jones de Almeida, Tiffany Lethabo King, Paul Kivel, Soniya Munshi, Ewuare Osayande, Amara H. Pérez, Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide, Dylan Rodríguez, Paula X. Rojas, Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo, Sisters in Action for Power, Andrea Smith, Eric Tang, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Ije Ude, Craig Willse
What People Are Saying
"A stinging indictment of what the authors call the 'non-profit industrial complex.'" Elisabeth Prügl, Signs
"Fiery" Utne Reader
"Powerfully demonstrate[s] what we too often forget: our attempts at securing safety for ourselves and our communities are subject to much more powerful attempts by the state and society to make itself safe—including to make itself safe from us and our most radical, challenging, revolutionary, feminist ideas." Ruthann Robson, Women's Studies Quarterly
"Although The Revolution Will Not Be Funded presents no easy answers for those of us struggling both to make a living and to create social change, it exhorts us to put the consideration of our movements' missions, and the way we fulfill them, before considerations of organizational and job security—and to regularly revisit within our organizations the question of whether the form and the content of our work are essentially compatible." Christy Thornton, NACLA Report on the Americas
"A crucial intervention into mainstream ways of thinking about political organization and social change." Ryne Clos, Spectrum Culture
"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