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Social enterprises are for-profit businesses that claim to offer the types of social benefits generally associated with charities, fostering a socially conscious image while making a profit. Familiar examples include TOMS and Warby Parker, but they are not alone: conventional businesses like Amazon and Toyota also strive to project a socially conscious image. Often unnoticed is that the social good coming from such businesses doesn’t necessarily benefit the communities receiving it. Indeed, thanks  to social entrepreneurs’ unfamiliarity with the communities they purport to be helping, the work of social enterprises frequently produces a mix of ineffectual and harmful efforts.

The appealing images fostered by social enterprises obscure information that socially conscious consumers need when trying to make informed purchasing (and social media posting) choices. While business models are based on evidence, rarely are the social aspects of business models closely examined. As a result, the effects of the social aspects of social enterprises are often unquestioned. Businesses seldom evaluate or share whether their donations are usable or even needed by the recipient, culturally appropriate, or worse, contribute to problems in the recipient’s community. Meanwhile, social ratings systems such as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings generally evaluate investment risk, rather than rigorously measured social benefits.

This lack of meaningful information collection and sharing begins with businesses’ planning research. As a business librarian at a university, I work with students who are developing their own business plans and projects. I have clearly seen the frustration of (would-be) social entrepreneurs who lack guidance and structure when conducting in-depth research on businesses’ concrete contributions to society. In response, I developed a research framework for such students. Capable of helping entrepreneurs build truly social businesses, this framework can also help the public— including consumers, journalists, social advocates, entrepreneurs—investigate and evaluate businesses and make evidence-based consumer and media choices.

Competition and the Diminishment of Social Aspects of Social Entrepreneurship

Ethics-based marketing encourages people to buy, brand, post, and flag purchases to signal their beliefs, opening new avenues of neoliberal consumerism enabled by social media. Social enterprises have become lucrative enough that conventional businesses market their products and services as socially responsible. In the past few years, such marketing has become ubiquitous among large corporations. Consumers are now unable to determine which businesses significantly benefit society, while social enterprises are forced to choose between minimizing their social and green initiatives or losing out to large competitors who appear to offer the same benefits with less expense.

ME to WE is an extreme example of a social enterprise, and while it is not representative of all social enterprises, it shows just how far social enterprises can stray from their stated mission. WE Charity and its social enterprise, ME to WE, have been accused of multiple acts of corruption, including corruption involving Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, hiding child labor in their supply chain, and financial backwash (when an organization’s charity arm funds the business/social enterprise arm instead of the other way around). They are also embroiled in cases of intentional falsification of use of donations, including large scale falsification of the number of charitable works completed (such as schools and boreholes built in Kenya).

How do some social enterprises travel so far from their supposed missions? One problem is competition with conventional businesses, which can cause small, community-based, committed social enterprises to either fail or compromise their social mission, mimicking businesses that offer meager Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives instead of working toward transformative, community-focused change. For those that succeed, the next question is: Does the “social good” actually help? Social enterprises often lack essential research that would help answer this question.

The Research Gap of Social Enterprises

There isn’t a recognized process for evaluating the social or environmental benefits that social enterprises offer. As such, while social enterprises build their business models on data, they build their social models on assumptions and empty narratives. Without thorough, ongoing research, they do not have the data to determine if they are providing the benefits they claim or if the benefits are offset by unforeseen negative community impacts, such as economic disruption caused by inappropriate donations or donation targets. This is an issue for people interested in investigating a business operating in their community, and it is a problem for current and aspiring social entrepreneurs who want to develop businesses that produce social benefits.

There are ethical business ratings and measures, but their lack of transparency and their function and aim are at odds with the development or assessment of social enterprises. ESG ratings are assigned by different analytics and financial companies such as Refinitiv, S&P Global, Morningstar, and others. They do not measure a social enterprise’s positive and negative impacts but rather ESG investment risk, focusing on the likelihood of a PR problem related to environmental sustainability, social responsibility, fair management, or labor practices, so that shareholders and other stakeholders can make decisions about their financial involvement with a company.

B Corp certification, for example, is a measurement of a business’s responsibility to the community, environment, workers, and more. The certification process is opaque and difficult to understand from the outside, especially considering that businesses notorious for unethical practices, like ME to WE, continue to be certified and even win awards.

Such ethical business ratings use tools based on data analytics and publicly available information, but social enterprises (as well as conventional businesses) collect and share data that are convenient and impressive. They can easily demonstrate, for example, that they donated one pair of shoes for each pair sold, providing a total number of donated shoes the previous year.

A Social Entrepreneurship Research Framework

The social entrepreneurship research framework that I developed includes seven steps. Though designed for student entrepreneurs, it can also serve social advocates, consumers, and journalists.

1. Assess the initial issue(s)

• What social issue or need is the business trying to solve?
• What is the history of the problem?
• Where are its structural roots? Social enterprises should aim to address structural or root problems rather than providing stop-gap measures.

2. Assess the enterprise

• Is the social enterprise embedded in the community it’s serving? Social enterprises act on problems their founders understand and are committed to fixing because they are part of the affected community.
• Is the social benefit an essential part of the business’ model? If the business could be separated from the social part of the enterprise, this indicates a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative, rather than a social enterprise. Embedded within the business model, social aspects of a social enterprise are indistinguishable from the business itself.

3. Evaluate social enterprise/business models

• What models exist that might help structurally solve the issue(s) at hand? Do the models have community or historical roots or empirical research showing they can help? Social enterprises are designed using models that have historical roots in community or are otherwise evidence-based to predict the effects of the enterprise’s involvement in the community and beyond.
• Find examples of when each model has been used. Have there been unforeseen consequences? Why? Why were they unforeseen? What would you do to prevent these or other unforeseen consequences?

4. Compare solutions

• What solutions have been considered beyond business models? Other types of solutions to community problems could include new or existing advocacy groups, nonprofit organizations, community groups, or other solutions. Failing to consider these possibilities limits the type of community involvement primarily to consumer relationships.

5. Investigate similar situations

• Examine situations that are comparable in relation to the structural issues or problems the enterprise is trying to solve.
• Find examples of models of progress, attempted or completed. Investigate their strengths, weaknesses, and the evidence these determinations are based on.

6. Develop and evaluate ongoing assessment tools

• Assessment tools should be used at regular intervals.
• How do the assessment tools provide feedback to prevent diminishment of the business’ social benefits?

7. Critically examine the company’s research framework

• Examine the research framework as it pertains to this particular enterprise. What is missing?

Using the Social Entrepreneurship Research Framework

While it helps to have access to a university library’s electronic databases to do this research, it’s not necessary. Many public libraries offer access to company databases and to expert librarian knowledge on company and academic research. There are also free resources online, including:

• Investor and CSR pages of company websites (read with a critical eye)
• Open journal collections that include research on specific companies and industries, the problems with common social enterprise business practices (such as Buy One Give One), as well as social issues and solutions/attempted solutions
• NGO and government websites about social issues

While few of us have the time or inclination to complete a seven-step research evaluation before deciding whether or not to purchase a cup of social enterprise coffee, the following are some populations who could use this research framework:

Social Advocates: Social advocates are involved in campaigns and information-sharing about unjust company practices. They could use this framework to systematically evaluate problematic enterprises and share their findings with the public, to demonstrate the benefits of and true social capacity of social enterprises, and to investigate other solutions to social problems outside of existing business models. 

Journalists: Journalists who investigate social issues and/or questionable business practices can use this framework to structure how they approach deep investigative research into social enterprises.

Entrepreneurs and Supporters: Entrepreneurs would ideally use this framework while developing a new business or business idea, but the framework can also be used to assess an existing venture. Supporters, potential investors, and collaborators who are joining entrepreneurs in their early stages can also use this framework to inform themselves about ethical business elements they can support and weaknesses they can manage.

Consumers and Consumer Advocacy Groups: While this framework isn’t designed for consumers to use for every item they buy, it is an approach that could be taken for larger purchasing decisions. A consumer advocacy group, for example, could organize to crowdsource and share research on social enterprises undertaken by individuals, as well as highlight social ventures in need of evaluation.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Click here to download this article as it appears in the magazine, with accompanying artwork.

Editors’ note: This article is from the Spring 2022 issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly, “Going Pro-Black: What Would a Pro-Black Sector Sound, Look, Taste, and Feel Like?”

The story of Black co-ops and alternative economics in the United States is one of violence and persecution—but it is also a story of hope and determination. The history of Black cooperative economics and its leaders has remained largely—and intentionally—hidden from view; but that knowledge has been brought back into mainstream awareness with the 2014 publication of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice, Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard’s gargantuan work of gathering and remembering the histories of Black communities that, despite the ongoing threat of violence, practiced economic cooperation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.¹ Bolstered by this renewed understanding, many BIPOC communities are creating their own paths for liberation and healing by focusing on the solidarity economy in its many forms. And Black co-op leaders across the country are playing a key role in innovating new solutions to address the old systemic challenges. One space in which this is happening—the space of food co-ops—is experiencing something of a renaissance.

Organizing For Sovereignty

I want to know safety and joy more than I know about pain and anxiety. I want wholeness, Black love, held equity based on a membership model, infrastructure that builds an economic base; resources that are not moved into hierarchy but into the streets.

—Erin Dale Byrd, Fertile Ground Food Cooperative, Southeast Raleigh, North Carolina

Wanting to take a closer look at the emergent Black leadership in the food cooperative movement, I spoke with nine colleagues, representing six co-ops from around the country. I posed the question “What does organizing for sovereignty look like?” This led to deep reflections about the underlying nature of the communities they are working to support.

Black Americans have always relied on cooperative economics for their survival. Cooperative economics in Black communities has demonstrated the potential not only to provide for individual needs of food and shelter but also to play an important role in the development of political agency within the community. In his book Economic Co-Operation Among Negro Americans, W. E. B. Du Bois described how groups of enslaved people would work together to save enough money to buy individuals out of slavery.² Citing Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, Nembhard writes, “For two centuries they did not earn a regular wage or even own their own bodies, but they often saved what money they could and pooled their savings to help buy their own and one another’s freedom (especially among family members and spouses).” In addition, Nembhard writes:

Du Bois notes that the African American “spirit of revolt” used cooperation in the form of insurrection to establish “widespread organization for the rescue of fugitive slaves.” This in turn developed, in both the North and the South, into “various co-operative efforts toward economic emancipation and land buying,” and those efforts led to cooperative businesses, building-and-loan associations, and trade unions.³

More recently, the Freedom Quilting Bee project offers a beautiful example of how cooperative economics works.⁴ In 1966, a collective of Black women in rural Alabama—under the leadership of Estelle Witherspoon—founded the Bee to support local people who lost their income and/or home after registering to vote.⁵ These quilts, made during the winters, were sold in stores like Bloomingdale’s and Sears and exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute. With the money raised from the sale of the quilts, the collective was able to buy twenty-three acres of land in 1968 to build a sewing factory where it could produce more quilts. The collective sold eight lots to farming families who had been evicted from land they rented from white landowners; it leased part of its building from 1970 to 1996 to a day care center; and it became a member of the Artisans Cooperative. In Syracuse, New York, a group of women opened a store called the Bear Paw specifically to sell the Bee’s quilts and other products the Bee had expanded to making, such as place mats, aprons, and pot holders. Until 2012, when it closed after the passing of the last original board member, Nettie Young, the collective continued to develop products and explore new enterprises.⁶

For over a century, Black people have organized and run food cooperatives, farm cooperatives, cooperative schools, insurance mutual groups, and credit unions.⁷ Why has this history been lost? In an interview with Laura Flanders, Dr. Nembhard offered the following insight:

It was dangerous, especially in the South. Your stuff could get burned, you could get lynched. Why? Because you’re being either too uppity by trying to do something on your own, or because you’re actually challenging the white economic structure. And you weren’t supposed to do that. The white economic structure actually depended on all these Blacks having to buy from the white store, having to rent from the white landowner. So they were going to lose out if you went and did something alternatively.⁸

The Emergence of Black Food Co-ops

Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the sabotage of Black cooperative practices has shape-shifted from acts of overt violence to less visible forms of obstruction. In terms of Black food cooperatives, the latter takes the form of an industry development model that uses data to exclude the communities that are most in need of access to healthy and nutritious food. Meanwhile, food cooperatives and community-supported food systems become ever more necessary. Grocery stores have either pulled up stakes or altogether avoided Black and Brown communities, creating a long-standing issue regarding access to fresh food.

This is not a new phenomenon. As with many other lack-of-access issues—employment, healthcare, transportation, clean water—lack of access to fresh food is a racialized and well-documented problem that has been decades if not centuries in the making. According to a 2014 Johns Hopkins University study, “[at] equal poverty levels, Black neighborhoods have the fewest supermarkets.”⁹ This problem has pushed neighborhoods to address the root causes and create businesses owned by the communities and designed for the benefit of the communities.

Mikaela Randolph, Board Chair of SoLA Food Co-op in South Los Angeles, reflects on this point:

We are the recipients in our community of not having an adequate amount of grocery stores. So, when you’re talking about food access and sovereignty, it’s like freeing ourselves from limitations. Because we are limited in our immediate community of South L.A.—which is actually really large—with respect to having adequate access to, adequate quality of, foods—and we also have high incidence of comorbidities: high blood pressure, diabetes. We see dialysis centers popping up in our communities, and not grocery stores—right?

The standard development model currently used to determine the viability of a food co-op relies heavily on data regarding household income and, inevitably, skews the outcome toward more affluent communities. A common (not publicly shared) calculation included in these market studies is aptly titled the “Natural Foods Propensity Score.” The calculation highlights who is likely to purchase natural foods, and where those people live. Based on census data, this score has reinforced an assumption that for a co-op to be successful, it needs to be situated in middle- to upper- middle-class communities. Why this assumption? The models and business development frameworks for co-ops have largely focused on predominantly white, middle- to upper-middle-class college-educated communities.¹⁰

As recently as five years ago, developers were saying that they didn’t have the data to support development of food co-ops in areas like South L.A.; Dayton, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; and Southwest Raleigh, North Carolina. To this assertion, Black co-op leaders across the country have been responding: “If you don’t have the data, we’ll figure it out ourselves.”

Exploring ways to solve for the specific needs of their communities, Black co-op leaders have asked, “Does the majority of food in a co-op need to be natural—in other words, minimally processed—or can there also be selections of conventional foods that are more processed but less expensive?” Five or six years ago it was a radical notion that a co-op could have a large percentage of conventional or “clean conventional” foods—foods that have been processed using minimal chemicals or perhaps none, but which have not undergone the expensive process of being certified “organic.” The decision to bring in conventional foods alongside natural and organic foods is one way that Black co-op leaders are innovating the co-op model to address the challenges of their communities.

We are seeing a remarkable shift in a short period of time. This past summer, Gem City Market, founded in 2015 in Dayton, Ohio, opened a 12,000 square foot full-service grocery store offering everything from fresh produce to a hot food bar.¹¹ They lean heavily toward local foods but also have a large array of conventional and clean conventional foods.

Reflecting on the increase in the number of food co-ops currently organizing in the United States, Stuart Reid, executive director of the Food Co-op Initiative, says: “We can go back five years, but before that there were relatively few active [Black-led] start-up efforts. We started seeing more inquiries around the time that Renaissance [Community Cooperative] was making news, and it has continued to increase, with a major bump after the combined impact of COVID and George Floyd’s murder.”¹²

Indeed, over the past two years, forces operating within and around us have brought us all to a full stop and opened the space for reevaluation. One thing that’s become clear to many Black co-op organizers in the food cooperative movement is that they are ready for this time, because they have been doing the work all along.

Healing For Sovereignty

Trauma decontextualized in a person looks like personality. Trauma decontextualized in a family looks like family traits. Trauma in a people looks like culture.

—Resmaa Menakem¹³

In 2017, I was the project manager of a start-up food co-op in Boston and responsible for community organizing and business development. One morning, I was standing in line at a local coffee shop, when a Black woman approached me and started yelling, “What are you doing working for a bunch of white people who are just trying to gentrify this community? How dare you even do anything for them?” Everything around us came to a halt.

My first reaction was confusion. I remember thinking, What is she saying? What is happening? My second reaction was curiosity. I thought, I’m just going to listen to her. I knew her anger couldn’t be personal, because she didn’t know me. I took a breath and let her say the things that she needed to say.

When she was done, I said, “Thank you. But I disagree with you. I’m the one who’s managing the project.” I explained that the cooperative was owned and controlled by the community members for the benefit of the community members, and that the rumor of a “white lady” who owned the co-op was untrue. What was true was that there were a few white ladies on the board. However, this was a collective effort emerging from the community that would benefit from it.

Our exchange ended on a note of calm. “I just hope you know what you’re doing,” she said. I told her that I was glad that we got a chance to talk.

In the two and a half years that I worked to organize this food co-op, I was met with curiosity and enthusiasm but also distrust, frustration, and anger. I heard and felt the mistrust about the project, especially around the idea that it was a white, gentrifying project. At community meetings, members expressed anger that nothing ever seemed to change.

I have been hesitant to write about such experiences, because I do not wish to contribute to the narrative that Black folks are broken. I do not believe that. What I do wish to acknowledge is that the terror that lives within us from generations is both in the past and the present. But it is not our only story. To the degree that there is trauma, there are equal amounts of strength, creativity, and love. If this weren’t the case, we would not still be here. If there were only trauma, there would be no hope, no dreaming. I have come to trust that speaking to the trauma that is present is helpful in healing. To acknowledge what is present can be used as a springboard to building a culture that gives people more opportunities to thrive.

In My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, somatic therapist and trauma expert Resmaa Menakem writes about traumatic retention: “Oppressed people often internalize the trauma-based values and strategies of their oppressors. These values and strategies need to be consciously noticed, called out as traumatic retentions and challenged.”¹⁴ Menakem notes: “Another fairly common traumatic retention is a reticence to own a home or a business, or even to be part of a start-up food co-op. It’s not hard to see how people whose ancestors were considered property would not be delighted by the concept of ownership.”¹⁵

While organizing in a community that had been historically disinvested, I found myself straddling the vision of the future and the multiple realities of the past and the present. There were indeed many concrete examples that folks shared with me about promises of adequate economic investments that seemed never to come. Community input about predatory practices that led to loss of homes and businesses also didn’t appear to be valued or was outright ignored. Based on these truths, it was absolutely rational to be reticent to enter into a community business venture like ours. The traumatic and sometimes violent past was not so long ago as to be disconnected from the present.

Completing the Action That Was Thwarted: Moving through Trauma

In therapy a traumatic experience is sometimes described as an attempted action that got thwarted and became stuck in the body. A common first step in the mending of trauma is completing the action that was thwarted. This releases the trauma energy stuck in your body. You can then use this energy to metabolize the trauma.

—Resmaa Menakem¹⁶

Co-op organizing requires action. It requires the coming together of hundreds of people to not only imagine a new future but also move oneself and marshal all resources over a span of many years—in the form of outreach, networking, community meetings, door knocking, political maneuvering, capital raising, and self-governance. Action is key to mending the trauma. As Menakem writes,

In the healing of intergenerational trauma, you may also complete an action that was attempted and thwarted by a traumatized ancestor. The trauma got stuck in their body, and then passed down to you. Even though you may be cognitively unaware of this trauma—or of your ancestor’s experience and incomplete action—your own efforts simultaneously heal your trauma and release future generations from its grip.¹⁷

Leaders in the Black food co-op movement have been speaking to the different manifestations of intergenerational trauma that are undermining Black communities. These leaders understand that healing in communities is not just about economic opportunities and access to nutritious food but also about providing a sense of safety and dignity to the shopper and worker. It’s this experience of sovereignty that leaders in this movement are working to provide.

The food co-op leaders I spoke with, while deeply entrenched in the day-to-day aspects of organizing and opening a cooperative grocery store, also spoke about love of self, love of others, and healing from trauma. I was struck by the complexity of their vision—one that made space not only for economic thriving but also for the physical and mental well-being of their communities, and which often spoke explicitly, if indirectly, to this neurobiological understanding of how integral stuck, interrupted action is to trauma that doesn’t get healed, even across generations.

For Kenya Baker, director of Unified Power, Co-op Dayton, a key question is what to do with the trauma. “How do we release it?” she asks. “One of the things our community has started doing is healing circles. We come together with other community members. Not to drink, not to smoke, not to party, not to kick, not to gossip—but to deal with our trauma. To process trauma. To release it.”

Unhealed trauma can lead to distrust and resistance when it comes to genuine community development. Baker spoke to the resistance she encountered while building support for their project.

We’re not used to seeing development in our community, so immediately the thought is, it’s not for us. But that’s part of the self-hate. Because we don’t believe we deserve it. We have never done it for ourselves. I had so many naysayers from the community who were Black nationalists, or Black organization leaders. And a lot of them, I’m really proud to say, are now members of the grocery store. But it was a process. I tell people this grocery store is a community-led development. If it is to remain a community-owned and -led development, you must get engaged. Three days after we opened, the president of the NAACP called me and said, “I think I’m ready to get my membership.”

As Janet Howard, board member at the Fertile Ground Co-op, noted, “Our experience in America has led us to all of this distrust, and to easily lash out at our own rather than finding the source—which would amount to being in conversation with political leaders about how they disinvested from our community.”

Given the context in which Black communities are organizing cooperatives, it is not surprising that healing from trauma is not far from the minds of Black co-op leaders—in particular, the practice of visioning the space, and the processes of group learning and striving. Information gathering—the gaining of new knowledge—is also a route toward healing. Common Share Co-op Board President Kinga Walker-McCraven described ways in which to create the space for people’s trust and engagement to emerge. She sees it as a process of growing capacity within individuals and community.

One thing that I’m working on right now is really diving deeply into each person’s personal values, strengths, talents, and natural gifts that we can highlight and affirm, and help them to grow even deeper and find their place. It really does come down to each person being able to really sink into who they are, what they offer, where they’re comfortable. I want to develop that in our board and in our community, so that we have a high-functioning community of people.

Baker adds:

You have to have a level of faith, because it makes dreaming safe. COVID slowed things down a lot. It gave people an opportunity to reimagine—because these structures that create obstacles for people to be able to self-determine were dreamed up and put in place by man. This is our opportunity to reimagine and then cocreate, with our brothers and sisters, what we want our future to look like.

In My Grandmother’s Hands, Menakem writes about “clean” and “dirty” pain:

Experiencing clean pain enables us to engage our integrity and tap into our body’s inherent resilience and coherence, in a way that dirty pain does not. Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance, blame and denial. When people respond from their most wounded parts, become cruel or violent, or physically or emotionally run away, they experience dirty pain.¹⁸

Menakem offers a process in which a traumatized body can move through pain “cleanly.” One step is to “stay present and in your body as you move through the unfolding experience with all its ambiguity and uncertainty, and respond from the best parts of yourself.”¹⁹

Indeed, moving through trauma is not only an emotional and mental journey but also one of activation of the body. In organizing to create a cooperative—in the unknown places where there is no one roadmap—all the community’s wisdom, gifts, and skills are needed. In this coming together, this building of relationship, this learning together and making decisions together, comes the opportunity to heal from our collective trauma—to complete the thwarted actions of our parents, our great-grandparents, and beyond.

Building For Sovereignty

Food co-ops focus on addressing the immediate and long-term needs of their communities. This provides the framework for alternative business practices to those of traditional grocery stores. Co-ops place emphasis on job creation, procuring products from local producers, and having proactive policies to minimize environmental impacts of their operations. These business practices have a multiplier effect that filters through the local economy. Indeed, the data tell the story: “For every $1,000 a shopper spends at their local food co-op, $1,604 dollars [sic] in economic activity is generated in their local economy—$239 more than if they had spent that same $1,000 at a conventional grocer in the same community.”²⁰

Building a community-owned food co-op requires intensive business development—as one might expect with any multimillion-dollar business—but co-ops are unique, in that they have international guiding principles that are of great benefit both to start-up co-op business ventures and those that already have their doors open. “Co-operation Among Co-ops”—the sixth principle of the guide “7 Cooperative Principles,” decrees that co-ops support one another by providing technical assistance and capital through local, regional, national, and (sometimes) international structures.²¹

Further, there is an ecosystem of food co-op development supports, such as the nonprofit Food Co-op Initiative (FCI)22 (whose mission is “to increase the number, success, and sustainability of new food cooperatives delivering access to healthy food in diverse communities across this country”) and the National Co+op Grocers (NCG), which “exists so that member co-ops are successful, and the total cooperative grocery sector grows in size and scope.”²³

Gerardo Espinoza, executive director of the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF),²⁴ a national lender that focuses on cooperative businesses and housing, considers food co-ops to be “the best of both worlds.” Food co-ops have “both the kind of support that a major corporation like Star Market has and have the autonomy and independence and flexibility of an independent grocer.” What he means is that large supermarket chains have corporatewide processes and systems that maximize efficiencies that are out of reach for smaller, independent stores. But for communities starting a food co-op, a whole support system is in place regarding “what point of sales I should buy, what refrigeration equipment [I should] buy, how to do the merchandising, how to do the member campaign, how to negotiate the lease,” notes Espinoza. This support, he affirms, reduces risk, which is extremely important for sustaining small businesses.

In addition to this ecosystem of support, there is the strength of the community ownership itself. The sustained volunteer effort and the matrix of cooperative support systems have helped to provide business stability, making food co-ops a viable option for many communities wanting to address food-access issues and for providing an economic boost to those communities.

Yet, building a cooperative grocery store is a daunting task that requires years of effort and significant capital to make the dream a reality. This effort includes predevelopment costs that support:

• business planning and market research;
• deep learning of governance systems;
• enormous community-organizing efforts;
• cost of real estate;
• hiring of architects and store planners;
• purchasing of equipment;
• hiring of staff;
• and stocking of shelves with

JQ Hannah, assistant director of the Food Co-op Initiative, reports:

To compete in these times, start-up food co-ops must not only do excellent organizing pre-open but also open very professional grocery stores that are excellent shopping experiences. Because of this, the full cost of opening as a start-up generally ranges from $3.5 million to $5.5 million, depending on the size and scope of the store. These costs are not only showing no sign of coming down but are rising rapidly.

So, despite the benefits that communities can derive by owning a food cooperative, there are many obstacles, especially with regard to funding. Randolph highlights this tension, pointing out that our system is economically structured so as to discourage and impede small-business ownership.²⁵ “That can be really disheartening,” she says, especially because “if we were able to go back to a cooperative model” then this would meet “so many different needs” for so many communities—needs that otherwise remain unaddressed. Randolph pointedly asks: “Why aren’t we funding that more? Why isn’t there more federal funding? Why isn’t there more state funding and local funding?”

While co-op members put in a certain amount of equity, there remain sticking points for getting needed capital, especially when it comes to traditional lenders. A food co-op has hundreds of owners, and no one person provides a personal guarantee. In addition, in a situation where a store is having difficulty repaying a loan, in most cases the value of the collateral, such as the refrigeration and shelves, are not worth enough to cover the amount of the loan. This can be a full stop for traditional lenders. Espinoza elaborates:

I think many people are surprised that even the government sometimes is not flexible. For instance, with the SBA [Small Business Administration], I believe that it’s only relatively recently that they have been willing to consider worker co-ops as a small business. But even though it’s a small business, it’s still requiring collateral. So they made progress, but not the progress that is needed. For me, it’s always fascinating how a government organization— which should be the first in line to support this type of initiative because of all the characteristics of wealth distribution, and so on—is not at the table. So, that would be one instance of flexible capital—or, in this case, inflexible capital.

The vision is not just to open a store but also for that store to grow and thrive—to become an economic engine, create dignified jobs, and, of course, provide access to healthy food. To have all of those things become a reality, the store needs to function well in the first few years until the point of being profitable, and then continue to grow— sustainably. Not having enough cash on hand in those early years can be a fatal blow in an industry that runs on between 1 and 2 percent margins. A high debt load with immediate repayment is equally detrimental.

Patience and flexible capital are necessary financial conditions for a food co-op’s success. Those two concepts must be intertwined to be effective. Impatient investors needing quick returns would tend to siphon off very-much-needed cash from the new store. Flexibility may need to look like seeking other ways of measuring risk and/or willingness to restructure a loan if there are challenging financial conditions. Funders such as LEAF, Cooperative Fund of New England, Shared Capital Cooperative, and The Working World understand the unique nature of cooperatives and strive to support them with patient and flexible financial tools.²⁶

Grants are also an important part of the capital equation, particularly in lower-wealth communities. Co-op members in communities already struggling financially may be limited in the amount of equity and loans they can provide.

Grants can fund those hefty predevelopment costs, increasing the chance of a shorter and more successful development process. And, importantly, grants can also be used as part of how capital stacks up to fund the store.

John Guerra, director of retail and store development for National Co+Op Grocers, underscores this point:

It’s important, in terms of starting up, to have capital to actually bring to the table—to say [to banks and other investors], “This is the money [we have] to spend on this thing [the co-op].” That’s important to show, in terms of community support. But also, you have to have 20 to 30 percent just to get banks to come to the table. In terms of equity, I would say grants can often function in that same way.

Grants that support organizations whose mission is to support food cooperatives, such as FCI, are yet another piece of the financial puzzle. They have the line of sight and expertise to assist organizers in the many places across the country where communities have decided to take on this vision of sovereignty by sharing the responsibility, risk, and eventual benefit of a cooperative.

As communities respond to the growing need for more access to food and for spurring economic development, many are turning to the cooperative model as a viable way to bring goods and services to areas abandoned or ignored by traditional grocery stores. For funders whose missions support fundamental shifts in power, the cooperative movement may align with those aims. Malik Yakini—cofounder and executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and board member of the Detroit People’s Food Co-op—astutely asks:

Are the projects that are funded ones that are trying to make this fundamental shift in power, which will ultimately give more autonomy and sovereignty to people? Or are these groups just trying to reform conditions within a system where the people who are in power are still fundamentally in power, and are still making mega-profits, and we just have a kinder and gentler capitalism? And so [funders must have] some kind of clear analysis themselves that this isn’t just about, you know, minor reforms, but about a fundamental shift in power: the fundamental shift in how resources are distributed. And then [funders must try] to identify those groups that are striving for those fundamental changes, as opposed to those groups that are doing just the kind of window-dressing reformer things.

***

There are many purposes to dreaming, and there are different kinds of dreams. Some dreams hold longing—a vague memory of what once was that can sustain one through hard times. Then there is the kind of dream that leads to action, activated when the conditions are right. Like a seed that sits dormant until the rains finally come.

As food apartheid continues to plague Black and Brown communities, and food cooperatives and community- supported food systems become ever more necessary in communities across the country, Black co-op leaders are engaged in both kinds of dreaming. They are remembering and honoring the dreams of the lineage of organizers upon whose shoulders they stand as they move forward in action by learning together and supporting each other— particularly through the National Black Food & Justice Alliance, which holds regular virtual meetings for members.²⁷

Back when I was working to organize that food co-op in Boston—sitting in community meetings, door knocking, going to City Hall, and talking to economic development people—I had this vision of what we were all working so hard to accomplish together:

It’s a new building, built on the footprint of what had been a business many decades ago. When I walk in, I see a cross-section of the neighborhood, from the folks stocking fresh produce to those ringing up the groceries. The shelves are full. Prices are fair. Bright colors are on the wall, and a large sign greets me: “Everyone Welcome.” I recognize these folks, even if we’ve never met before. They look like me. It’s a grocery store envisioned by community members who asked, “What if we owned it ourselves?”

Developing a Food Co-Op: 7 Principles

The consumer-owned food co-op model requires not just business development but also community development. As with many business ventures, coming up with a solid business plan with strong pro forma (financial forecasting), obtain- ing capital, and assembling a team that can execute the operations are key steps. The development of a food co-op is a process that requires the community to invest its time, energy, and skills for as long as five years to learn about coopera- tives, spread the word, create the governance and business structures, and sell equity shares.

It’s a complex endeavor, and one that requires communities to marshal their resources to reach their goal. The co-op exists way before the physical store is built: to sell equity shares in the business, it must incorporate. Co-ops begin to organize before the incorporation. How else would you know if people want a co-op? So, those conversations—the sharing of ideas, dreams, and possibilities—happen for a long time during the process. The co-op development process itself is a master class in power, relationship building, self-determination, and how to share information. Thank- fully, there is guidance—guardrails on how co-ops should conduct their work.

Seven Internationally Recognized Co-op Principles of the ICA (International Co-operative Alliance)

1.  “Voluntary and Open Membership.

Co-operatives are voluntary organizations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, without gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination.”

WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE: In adhering to this first principle, food co-ops cast a wide net for those who can join and participate. Importantly, the choice remains in the community members’ hands—choice for oneself, as in self-possession: the power to decide one’s involvement, level of risk, and reward.

2.  “Democratic Member Control.

Co-operatives are democratic organizations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. [Individuals] serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary co-operatives members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote).”

WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE: For consumer cooperatives, boards are elected by membership, and any member in good standing can run for the board. Big decisions that will tangibly affect the co-op and by-law changes are voted upon by membership. Can this get messy? Yes. Democracy can be a messy process. However, the board works on behalf of the membership. Members have the power.

3. “Member Economic Participation.

Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative. At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the co-operative. Members usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: developing their co-operative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-operative; and supporting other activities approved by the membership.”

WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE: In a nutshell, the money is put to use for goods, services, and employment that the community needs. But this principle is not meant to function in isolation from the co-op principles and values. Indeed, shared social aspirations and needs are just as important.

4. “Autonomy and Independence.

Co-operatives are autonomous, self-help organizations controlled by their members. If they enter into agreements with other organizations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their co-operative autonomy.”

WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE: The members and the cooperative are the primary beneficiaries of the cooperative enterprise, both in terms of the services that are provided and eventual surpluses. The cooperative is a community asset. The shareholders are in the community—not an outside corporate entity. The co-op members are agents of their own business venture. They determine what they wish it to accomplish and how it will be accomplished. The promise of cooperative business is that a business of scale can be built and run with the community needs at the center. For many Black and Brown communities, this is often not the case, with ownership residing elsewhere and profits siphoned off for the benefit of others.

5. “Education, Training and Information.

Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operative. They inform the general public, particularly young people and opinion leaders, about the nature and benefits of co-operation.”

WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE: Some cooperatives have an open (accounting) book system and extensive training for staff, so there is not only financial transparency but also the opportunity for broader input, business planning, and problem-solving from the team. In all cooperatives, the business is required to give regular financial reporting to the board and to the co-op members. Board members often need financial training to understand financial statements. For start-ups, extensive cooperative training for organizers takes place for years through organizations such as the Food Co-op Initiative, CooperationWorks!, state-run cooperative development offices, and a variety of cooperative associations such as the National Black Food & Justice Alliance.

6. “Cooperation among Co-operatives.

Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional, and international structures.”

WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE: This principle guides the behavior and support within the cooperative sector.

In this way, while a particular food co-op is a highly autonomous business, it fits into an ecosystem where folks from other communities work in support of one another. One organizer from Raleigh will call another organizer in

Detroit to share how they went about acquiring a site for the store or how they capitalized their project. Documents are shared, advice given, ideas copied—so much so, that the sharing has been lovingly referred to as “P6-ing.” This is important. This work is hard, and it is almost impossible to go at it alone. Autonomous, yes; alone, no. For communities healing from years of folks either swooping in with solutions derived from outside the community or from not having access to larger networks with information and resources, Principle 6 is a remarkably different and healing way to do business.

7. “Concern for Community.

Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members.”

WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE: The relationship of the co-op to the community beyond the members of the co-op is important. Relationship building goes beyond the point of organizing to grow membership: It also requires care and thoughtfulness regarding what is important to the neighbor next door who chooses not to become a member or shopper, to the business viability of the farmer and fair treatment and appropriate compensation of farm workers, to those who are fighting to keep housing affordable.

The seven principles as laid out here were adapted from Guidance Notes to the Co-operative Principles, (International Co-operative Alliance, 2015). You can find the full, original guide here: www.ica.coop/sites/default/files/2021-11/ICA%20Guidance%20Notes%20EN.pdf.

Notes

1. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2014).
2. E. B. Du Bois, Economic Co-operation among Negro Americans. Report of a Social Study made by Atlanta University, under the patronage of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., together with the Proceedings of the 12th Conference for the Study of the Negro Problems, held at Atlanta University, on Tuesday, May the 28th, 1907 (Atlanta: The Atlanta University Press, 1907).
3. Nembhard, Collective Courage, 31,
4. “Freedom Quilting Bee,” Rural Development Leadership Network, accessed February 15, 2022, org/FQBhistory.html. See also “Freedom Quilting Bee: History, Activities, Plans,” Rural Development Leadership Network, accessed February 15, 2022, ruraldevelopment.org/FQBhistory.html; and Stella Hendricks, “A Timeline of the Freedom Quilting Bee,” BMA/Stories, Baltimore Museum of Art, March 8, 2021, stories.artbma.org/timeline-the-freedom-quilting-bee/.

5. “Freedom Quilting ”
6. “Freedom Quilting Bee: History, Activities, Plans”; and Hendricks, “A Timeline of the Freedom Quilting ”
7. Nembhard, Collective Courage, 61–77.
8. Laura Flanders, Jessica Gordon Nembhard: Cooperative Economics and Civil Rights, The Laura Flanders Show, April 8, 2014, video, 15:28, be/_TVIghQMkBg.
9. Kelly Bower et al., “The intersection of neighborhood racial segregation, poverty, and urbanicity and its impact on food store availability in the United States,” Preventive Medicine 58 (January 2014): 33–39.
10. It is largely understood that food co-ops in the 1990s and through the 2000s were being built in wealthy, college-educated communities, and focused on natural/organic Like many assumptions of this sort, this is not written down as a business model, per se, that I’m aware of. I have, for instance, images from a presentation by a co-op market study analyst that hints at the implicit principles/assumptions: “Very few preliminary market studies have been conducted for conventional foods co-ops, therefore there is no track record”; and “A person that has the propensity to purchase natural/organic food….. ” (i.e., a person who has higher education and income levels that give them that level of purchasing power).

11. “Now Open!,” Gem City Market (Community Co-op Grocery Store, Dayton, Ohio), accessed February 15, 2022, com/.
12. Unfortunately, the Renaissance Community Cooperative closed its doors in For more on this, see Marnie Thompson, Sohnie Black, and Ed Whitfield, “The Ballad of the RCC, or ‘Nice Try. Now Try Again.’,” Nonprofit Quarterly, December 17, 2019, nonprofitquarterly.org/the-ballad-of-the-rcc-or-nice-try-now-try-again/; and Steve Dubb, “Anatomy of a Failed Co-op: Lessons from Greensboro’s Renaissance Community Cooperative,” January 3, 2020, nonprofitquarterly.org/webinar- anatomy-of-a-failed-co-op-lessons-from-greensboros-renaissance-community-cooperative/.
13. Krista Tippett, “Resmaa Menakem: ‘Notice the Rage, Notice the Silence,’” On Being with Krista Tippett, On Being, June 4, 2020, org/programs/resmaa-menakem-notice-the-rage-notice-the-silence/.
14. Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press, 2017), 79.

15. Ibid., 80.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., 179.
18. Ibid., 28–29.
20. Healthy Foods, Healthy Communities: Measuring the Social and Economic Impact of Food Co-ops (Iowa City, IA: National Cooperative Grocers Association, 2012); and “Cooperative identity, values & principles,” International Co-operative Alliance, accessed February 15, 2022, coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity.
21. Guidance Notes to the Co-operative Principles (Brussels, Belgium: International Co-operative Alliance, 2015).
22. “New Food Co-ops Start Here,” Food Co-op Initiative, accessed February 15, 2022, coop/.
23. “National Co+op Grocers (Carrboro),” National Co+op Grocers, accessed February 15, 2022, coop/partners-find/nc

/national-coop-grocers-carrboro. And see “Harmony Natural Foods Co-op,” National Co+op Grocers, accessed February 15, 2022, ncg.coop/.

24. “Since Its Founding Over 30 Years Ago, LEAF Has Invested and Leveraged Over $122 million, Resulting in the Creation or Retention of More Than 10,300 Jobs,” Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF), leaffund.org/.
25. “Bringing Fresh, Healthy Food to South LA,” SoLA Food Co-op, accessed February 15, 2022, com/.
26. Cooperative Fund of the Northeast, accessed February 15, 2022, org/; “Flipping the script on who has power and who benefits in our economy,” Shared Capital Cooperative, accessed February 15, 2022, sharedcapital.coop/; and “Our system is in crisis.,” The Working World, accessed February 15, 2022, theworkingworld.org/us/.
27. “Collectively Creating a Just Food & Land Revolution,” National Black Food & Justice Alliance, accessed February 15, 2022, org/.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

On March 17th, NPQ’s economic justice desk hosted a virtual roundtable discussion about how to build the culture that is needed to sustain support for a solidarity economy. We have written extensively about the solidarity economy at NPQ because the concept is central to achieving economic democracy and collective flourishing.

This conversation was inspired too by a recognition that without a shift at the level of culture, a society organized around a solidarity economy will not be possible. Culture, as Howard University law professor Harold McDougall has noted, is fundamentally about how people solve problems. The neoliberal order of the past four decades may be fraying, but achieving a just transition requires not just new policies, but a shift in culture—from a dominant hyper-individualistic culture to one that sustains community.

The roundtable conversation began with presentations from three speakers—Dr. Gar Alperovitz, Rev. Ronnie Galvin, and Dr. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard—each of whom addressed what culture-building work must occur to realize a solidarity economy. Alperovitz, in his remarks, asked the critical question: “What are the economic institutions that can nurture community?” Gordon Nembhard followed with the observation that culture change work must be rooted in the notion that “we’re all exalted beings who are trying to make things better for ourselves, our families, our communities—and we’re doing it together.” For his part, Galvin called attention to centering the concept of ubuntu, the notion “that my freedom and my humanity is caught up in your humanity, that my liberation is your liberation, if we can convince more people of that, then we might be able to build a basis or a culture of solidarity.”

Roundtable Responses

For this conversation, NPQ gathered a wide range of solidarity economy leaders and thinkers. Participants included Emily Kawano, a cofounder of the US Solidarity Economy Network and codirector of Wellspring Cooperatives; Nwamaka Agbo, CEO of the Kataly Foundation; A-dae Romero Briones, director of programs of Native American Food Systems at First Nations Development Institute; Mwende Hinojosa, director of communications and strategic storytelling at the Sustainable Economies Law Center; Penn Loh, senior lecturer in urban environmental policy and planning at Tufts University; Lakota Vogel, executive director of Four Bands Community Loan Fund; Elizabeth Castillo, professor of organizational leadership at Arizona State University; and Laura Flanders, host of the Laura Flanders Show, which covers the solidarity economy.

The open discussion ranged across many topics—from the concept of community to labor and its liberation, crisis and apocalypse, participatory democracy, wealth accumulation and redistribution, corporate hegemony, and reparations. What follows are some of the key insights and contributions from roundtable participants, each of whom approached the question of culture from their own unique perspectives and based on their own work in the field.

Culture Shift

“There are a lot of different communities and lots of different kinds of cultures. There are cultures nested inside of cultures nested inside of cultures.” Kawano explained. “But one thing that gets spread so seamlessly and subtly is a culture of capitalism— individualism, consumption, defining worth by work and by property, or that shiny car. I love the idea of culture and community being a choice of survival and liberation instead.”

Briones picked up on this theme, noting that in some ways the crises that capitalism creates generate the seeds of an oppositional culture rooted in solidarity. “One of the most beautiful things about capitalism,” she observed, “is that it only supports a very small portion of our society. So, I don’t think it’s about rebuilding something other than capitalism, because capitalism has done that for us.”

Many groups across the globe have had to find ways to survive in spite of the dominant economic system and have done so successfully, she continued. “I think there are so many communities that are serving capitalism that have had to create their own economies already when you weren’t looking. Indigenous communities have always been here, so it’s not like rebuilding anything—we’re here. Migrant communities, Black communities, all the people that have been left out of capitalism are creating their own economies already. We are creating different ways of operating outside of the accumulation of wealth because capitalism did that for us.”

Confronting White Supremacy

Agbo shared that her approach to the solidarity economy comes from her work as an organizer. “Part of the culture that I am interested in unpacking, with those that I do electoral organizing with, is the understanding that democracy is about voting, that democracy is about the government. We don’t have a culture of democracy being about governance, which is about showing up as an active, daily participant in your community. And that’s because the history of the United States is one of white settler colonialism. So, we have an oppositional force that is our target that we’re organizing against, and we’ve gotten really well practiced at having a shared understanding of the root problem, root causes, of how we got to such deep levels of inequality.”

“One challenge that organizers face is that there isn’t a clear path to isolate root causes and create new solutions. We have yet to have a practice of the root solutions of how we get out of here,” Agbo declared. “We do have an external [target in] white supremacy, the nation-state, all the things that seek to hurt and harm us. But then we also have a target, if we will, that is our own individual capacity and willingness to show up and participate, in not just identifying the solutions but actively building them.”

Hinojosa touched on a similar theme: “The dominant culture that we all share, but is mostly unspoken, is white supremacy culture. That is the air that we breathe, the water that we’re swimming in. For some of us, it’s apparent; for most of us it is not apparent. We’re speaking about capitalism, but the culture behind capitalism is white supremacy culture.”

White supremacy, Hinojosa added, needs to be dismantled for other cultures to take its place. “We need to unlearn this culture and remember our other cultures. Because I personally feel like once [white supremacy] culture is uprooted and removed, we all have our own indigenous, ancestral ways.”

Redefining Wealth

“In the language that we speak,” Vogel, who is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux nation, began, “we don’t really have a definition for what wealth and what racial equity means. Those aren’t words that our community uses to describe itself.” Part of the work of Ford Bands Community Fund, the community development financial institution (CDFI) that she leads, has been to develop a new collective understanding of the term wealth by “talking to our elders and asking, truly, what it means.”

Working against capitalist forms of value is one major struggle that Indigenous lending institutions face, she clarified. “I’m constantly combating the financial industry about equity investments, collateral, and things that are needed to be brought to the table.”

Vogel shared that her tribal nation’s definition of wealth could serve as a central tenet of a solidarity economy: “Our culture has always been about how much you can give back to your community, and that’s what wealth of an individual and a community was judged on, not about how much you could hoard and bring to the table for your individual self.”

Learning Solidarity

As befits a discussion on how to establish the cultural basis for a democratic economy rooted in solidarity, many of the speakers addressed the question of how to build a culture of solidarity directly. For Castillo, one critical aspect of creating a solidarity economy is what she called “humanistic management”—which basically means treating workers like whole people. “How can we put dignity and care at the heart of everything?” she asked.

Part of the difficulty in making this shift, Castillo acknowledged, is that capitalist culture is fundamentally opposed to both dignity and care. “The culture that we’re grounded in right now is a culture of fear. And the genius of the market economy, besides having built itself on physical enslavement and caging of people, gets people, gets us, to build our own cages right now through fear of loss.” We should still, Castillo emphasized, “expand our consciousness so we can imagine… new ways of being, doing, and relating to each other.”

Loh, echoing a point that Briones made, saw both a culture and practices of solidarity emerging out of the struggle for survival. “Those practices have been in place because of the conditions that people have had to live in,” he observed. For Loh, “solidarity in all relations” is a principle that can guide action in the present, even amid the fear and violence of the present. This means that practicing solidarity every day is a key step along the path of the larger project of economic justice and liberation.

Flanders focused her remarks on the practicalities of solidarity in the economics sphere. “I don’t know if we’ve done enough to make sure that we’re figuring out how we procure and purchase from other like-minded operations,” she noted. Citing cooperative models such as Mondragon, a federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain, Flanders observed that the cultural independence of Mondragon and the movement of which it is part fuels the federation’s economic ability to sustain itself—and vice versa.

Flanders pressed participants to do more. She observed that even as she leads an independent media outlet dedicated to promoting the solidarity economy, she still deeply depends on multinational global corporations, such as Google and Facebook. There is a need, she noted, to build “a different set of practices and relationships.” But to achieve that, she cautioned, “a whole bunch of us, myself included, would have to get very real” and act by “jumping ship” from those corporate relationships and consciously starting something different.

Building Cultures of Solidarity: A Few Takeaways

In the conversation, a few key themes stand out. One is that solidarity economy culture building work is taking place in communities today. As Briones reminds us “the people that have been left out of capitalism are creating their own economies already.” A second theme is the importance of radical imagination and education—of learning and unlearning. And education, to be effective, must start when people are young; at one point in the discussion, for instance, Gordon Nembhard mentioned the importance of teaching the values of solidarity to children in kindergarten; don’t wait until the university! A third theme that came through loud and clear throughout was the importance of building and maintaining a vision of liberation.

In short, the discussion was hopeful, even as the barriers posed by white supremacy and capitalist culture were fully acknowledged. Culture building is not easy work, but the good news is that there is a lot to build on. As Loh said at one point in the discussion in “any space we’re in, we can be practicing solidarity. And we should be, [through] a culture of care that values other people and does not otherize people.”

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

For decades, nonprofit organizations have played an increasingly central role in social justice campaigns in the United States, providing legal support, advocacy, and public education. Unlike the mid-20^th century movements that once led such work, nonprofits are often the primary drivers of these campaigns today. By the end of the last century, the unions and large civic organizations once central to American civic life were in a steep decline. The student and church-led civil rights movements of the 1950s and 60s had likewise dissipated. Advocacy nonprofits filled the gap.

Meanwhile, income inequality has steadily risen. Frequently cited as a major contributing factor to decreased social mobility, such inequality is also increasingly seen as a threat to representative democracy—core issues of many social justice movements today. But as part of the larger nonprofit sector, left-leaning social justice nonprofits have a complicated if largely hidden relationship to income inequality. Understanding this relationship is crucial to effectively shaping the evolution of the nonprofit sector and the movements we support.

Growing Nonprofit Sector, Rising Inequality

The past three decades have seen an explosion in the nonprofit sector’s size and diversity. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, there are more than 1.6 million registered nonprofit organizations in the US today, up from less than 400,000 in 1967. As nonprofits have proliferated, they have also grown larger in scope, workforce, and budgets. Between 1977 and 1999, the number of Americans employed by nonprofits nearly doubled to 9.7 million; 10 percent of the American workforce is now in the nonprofit sector.

Philanthropy in the US is a powerhouse, with charitable giving now in the mid-hundreds of billions of dollars each year.¹ The effect on nonprofits has been transformational. Budget growth has created new jobs and enabled nonprofits to develop specialized skills. Training and professionalization have produced highly skilled, differentiated workforces that manage increasingly complex organizations and strategies. Wages have risen, and decent benefits have become the norm. Nonprofit employers are competing for an educated, skilled, and in-demand pool of candidates.

Over the same period, income inequality has also risen dramatically. After the “Great Compression” of the 1940s—when the gap between wealth and income distribution to the rich and poor contracted in unprecedented fashion—changes to tax policy and executive compensation, among other factors, began expanding the gap between the wealthy and the rest of society. According to research by Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, income inequality today is at a level not seen since 1928. In 1944, the top one percent of earners took in 11.3 percent of national income, and the bottom 90 percent captured 67.5 percent. This stayed relatively constant until the mid-1970s, after which point the wealthy’s cut of national income began to rise. As Drew DeSilver summarizes, “Saez’s preliminary estimates for 2012…have [the top one percent] receiving nearly 22.5% of all pretax income, while the bottom 90 percent’s share is below 50% for the first time ever (49.6%, to be precise).” While this gap narrowed slightly during the pandemic due to government support, at the same time, billionaires added $2.1 trillion to their personal wealth.

The chart for both trends—nonprofit growth and rising income inequality—rises over roughly the same timespan (nonprofit growth arguably lagging by a decade). For several reasons, this is unlikely a mere coincidence.

With few exceptions, nonprofits run on concentrations of wealth. Foundation grants are made from endowments often valued in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Governments aggregate collective wealth for the common good, including grants and contracts to nonprofits, but the bulk of charitable giving in the US comes from individuals: roughly 85 percent of annual nonprofit revenue comes from individual giving, from small online gifts to multimillion dollar bequests.

Here, too, deep pools yield more than shallow seas. It is a fundraising truism that 80 percent of income comes from 20 percent of an organization’s donors. Indeed, some claim that the ratio is closer to 90:10. Whatever the exact numbers, the overwhelming bulk of nonprofit funding comes from individuals capable of making large gifts.

Looking at these concurrent trends and the role of major gifts in the nonprofit revenue budget, it is no stretch to think that the expansion of the nonprofit sector has been fueled by the rise in wealth inequality. During the Great Compression, mass membership organizations, to which ordinary people paid a small amount to belong, were the norm. This model was well suited when wealth was more equitably distributed but is difficult to sustain as the middle class shrinks.² Today, while many people struggle to make ends meet, concentrated wealth means more disposable income is available to the wealthy, who bestow such income on the nonprofits of their choice. The shift from membership organizations to our professionalized nonprofit sector is logical given how resources are best obtained as the country has changed.

Social justice is not only a matter of economics, but income inequality complicates many of the already complex problems that we deal with. Rising inequality correlates with declining opportunity for the less affluent. Tax policy that favors the wealthy leads to declining infrastructure investment, leaving poor communities more isolated, public schools underfunded, and higher education increasingly unattainable. As economic insecurity spreads, competitiveness and a sense of scarcity undermine opportunities for ordinary people to come together to advance their common interests.

And so, we are caught between two mutually (and perhaps paradoxically) reinforcing realities. Social justice nonprofits work for a more just society even as they are entwined with and dependent on an increasingly unjust economic system.

This in no way means that social justice organizations are beholden to an economic elite. And it is good that the wealthy are taking to philanthropy, choosing to use what they have in support of some of society’s most creative and beneficent sectors. The American nonprofit sector is stronger, more vital, and more diverse than ever, contributing to our economy and cultural and political life. Indeed, American society today would be radically different if not for the vitality of our nonprofit sector.³

But we must understand our world, and our place in it, if we are to change it. In particular, we must grapple with the link between rising income inequality and the nonprofit sector’s vitality to prepare for the egalitarian future we collectively strive for.

Social Justice Philanthropy: Past, Present, and Future

There is little doubt that the contributions of American philanthropists have strengthened the nonprofit sector. Today’s highly professionalized nonprofit organizations have an array of sophisticated tools with which to advocate for social change. Salaried jobs allow activists to dedicate their lives to a cause without needing a “day job.” As the sector has grown, the number of professional activists has increased dramatically, adding to the sheer number of hours dedicated to social justice endeavors. Because many nonprofits attract and rely on volunteers and engage in broader outreach to the public using online tools, they engage with more people than they employ. In sum, a bigger, better resourced, more professionalized sector brings considerable benefits to the causes we champion.

But while such benefits are clear, nonprofit funding models also bind us to economic inequality in ways that we rarely pause to recognize. As the nonprofit sector has grown stronger and taken center stage in social justice struggles in the US, it has winnowed away what was once a more diverse advocacy ecosystem.

Protests against police violence in 2020 brought mass protest movements back to the fore of public consciousness, a reminder of the citizen activism of half a century ago. These informal modes of political association and activism have waned in recent decades. While the causes of this decline are complex, advocacy nonprofits may have outcompeted these other forms of organizing. As nonprofits proliferated, offering job security, clear organizational structure, and enhanced technological and financial resources, they lured justice advocates, many of whom were unsurprisingly drawn to the possibility of making a career out of the causes they were passionate about.

But those older modes of activism that nonprofits potentially displaced—such as student and protest movements, community organizing initiatives, and organized labor coalitions—are often closer to the root causes of social injustice. While nonprofits have stakeholders that they must be responsive to, labor movements and organized protests against police brutality are the stakeholders they represent.

Informal and largely unfunded forms of activism, moreover, are resilient in several respects. Unlike registered nonprofit organizations, they are not embedded in regulatory schemes that can be used to stifle their activism, as is happening in dozens of repressive regimes around the world today. Just as crucially, their relative lack of access to grants and donors means that they are not subject to the shifting sands of philanthropic interests (guided by elite donors and executives), shifts that often profoundly impact what issues get attention and how those issues are addressed.

These changes to the Left’s ecosystem matter: they threaten our attempts to realize a more just and equitable future. But as a sector, we are conflicted: in a world where wealth was shared more equally, much of our sector would be unsustainable. If social justice nonprofits have greater economic equality as a goal, we must prepare for what success will mean for our organizations and stakeholders.

So, what would happen if we were to achieve a new Great Compression? We would see a stable middle class, more investment in education and infrastructure, and clearer pathways out of poverty. Most Americans would benefit from decent wages and the collective security of a stronger middle class. But what about the nonprofit sector?

A more equitable future could well be a death knell for the sector that helped us get there. Given the revenue models in use today, fairer income distribution will require a radical overhaul of how nonprofits seek funding. Disposable philanthropic income will be more diffuse and will be available in smaller chunks. More effort will be required per dollar raised, less money will be available, and fewer organizations will have the infrastructure to compete for this funding.

In the nonprofit field, we sometimes say that our goal is to put ourselves out of business, to wither away, as it were. But this is not realistic. Ensuring that all people enjoy their fundamental rights is a never-ending task, and another Great Compression would not necessarily guarantee just treatment for all Americans (recall that the New Deal excluded African Americans and others from enjoying the full benefits of an affluent society). Rights-based watchdog and advocacy groups will remain necessary regardless of whether wealth is more fairly distributed. New threats and injustices will emerge, requiring new generations of advocates and some form of infrastructure to support their work.

At the same time, changes along the lines of a Great Compression will be slow, and a slow transition poses its own risks. As inequality gradually shrinks, there will likely be an incremental drain on philanthropic resources. Nonprofits will find themselves dipping into a leaky old bucket, even as it drains. Organizations will weaken and fail, and new inequities will emerge in who gets what is left. Cascading financial problems would complicate social justice advocates’ effectiveness, compounding our fiscal troubles with a crisis of legitimacy.

In short, if we envision a more just world, we must begin to create a nonprofit sector that will be sustainable in a more economically equitable society. Such sustainability is likely to be the product of an amalgam of models suited to different contexts and lines of work. Some see a place for hybrid social ventures that generate revenue and turn profits into advocacy. Online fundraising and campaigning have much in common with the old model of nonprofit sustainability. The broad reach and low cost of shifting from direct mail to email may enable more organizations to thrive on small donations. Online campaigns are also a form of mass mobilization, reaching millions of people with specific advocacy goals. And increasingly, we are seeing similarities with the membership-based organizations of a bygone era. The participatory governance of Avaaz, for example, and its subsequent ability to operate solely with individual gifts, demonstrate the power of initiatives that pair direct engagement with financial support.

We might also consider adapting older models to our times, such as broad-based membership organizations that advocate for members’ interests. Supporting activism outside the nonprofit structure has always posed difficulties for philanthropy, in part because of the tax implications and in part because it’s hard to write a check to a diffuse, citizen-led movement. But finding a way to move beyond the nonprofit monoculture to encourage more robust civic engagement is essential to ensuring equal treatment and protecting basic rights in the future we envision.

Such solutions are but the beginning of how we might address the (still distant) potential crisis of our own success. But so long as a more equitable distribution of opportunity and income is a broad social justice goal, we must move forward with our eyes open and a clear sense of how we can and want to exist in the future.

Notes

1. According to Giving USA, charitable giving in 2020 was $471 billion, nearly 300 times the amount in 1960 (Burke, p. 177).
2. Cf. Skocpol Theda. Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
3. According to US Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the nonprofit sector is also more economically resilient: during the 2007-09 recession, the nonprofit sector showed steady job growth compared to the much more volatile private sector. This resilience that is attributable to a significant degree to philanthropy’s continued support of nonprofits despite lower investment returns. (see http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/nonprofits-in-america.htm.)

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Click here to download this article as it appears in the magazine, with accompanying artwork.

Editors’ note: This article is from the Spring 2022 issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly, “Going Pro-Black: What Would a Pro-Black Sector Sound, Look, Taste, and Feel Like?”

In this conversation between Cyndi Suarez, the Nonprofit Quarterly’s president and editor in chief, and Isabelle Moses, Faith in Action’s chief of staff, the two leaders discuss what pro-Blackness means for individuals and communities, and what a pro-Black organization looks like.

Cyndi Suarez: I’m excited to talk to you about Faith in Action. I know you’ve been working on the organization’s transition for a while now, and I’d like to ask you some questions about that. But the aim of this conversation is to dig into pro-Blackness more generally. I want to put a finer point on what pro-Blackness means for people at different levels. So I’d like to start by asking you what pro-Black means to you in general, beyond organizations in the sector.

Isabelle Moses: This is such a big and important question. I’ll answer in the context of Faith in Action—since it’s where I’ve had the opportunity to experience the question in a workplace setting—and also in the context of where I live.

I live in Detroit, Michigan. I’ve been here for about four and a half years. And one of the reasons I moved here was to be grounded more in Black culture. I grew up in a supersocialized, white context in San Francisco, going to private schools. Then I lived in Washington, D.C., for a long time. And I wanted to have a more rooted experience in Black communities. And Detroit, I felt, was a place where I could have that experience of being somewhere that really values and centers Black culture as just everyday life. I felt like I hadn’t had that experience before. I’m Black, I grew up in a Black family and in a majority-Black neighborhood, but I was shipped out of my neighborhood to go to school, shipped out to schools across the country. So, that sense of rootedness in Black community is something that I have been longing for. Unfortunately, the pandemic has set that back for me in some ways—because I learned that I don’t actually have deep roots in Detroit, either, after two and a half years. You know, that takes time.

All this is to say, the reason I’m starting with Detroit is that it’s the beginning of my personal grounding in Black identity and recognizing that “Black” is not one thing. I was a bit socialized around the notion that there’s one way to be Black, particularly in majority-white spaces. Otherwise, you’re going to be stereotyped as “one of those Black people,” you know? It took my moving to Detroit to recognize the nuances of Black identity in a more powerful way and to internalize that I can be Black however I want to be Black.

CS: So, pro-Black means being rooted in that identity and community.

IM: Well, for me as an individual, yes. And it means connecting my identity, my lived experience, in a way that feels grounded. I’ve learned that it takes more than just having Black skin. What I’ve learned, at least for myself, is that because of the era that I grew up in—the colorblind era, the eighties and early nineties, when folks were embracing this kind of assimilation mantra—I needed to reclaim my identity as a Black person. Because the frame that you’re asked to assimilate into is obviously a white normative frame. Reclaiming my identity as a Black person who was taught to assimilate into a white context has been a body of work for me. So, the bottom line for me is that I have to start with being pro-Black and embracing the mantra Black is beautiful, which wasn’t always normalized, growing up.

CS: It’s interesting hearing you describe this. It reminds me of my daughter, because she grew up here, obviously in a Black family and a Black neighborhood, but she also went to very elite schools, and she’s had to navigate that. So, with all that said, what does a pro-Black organization look like? What does it mean to you? I know you’ve tried to build one, so I imagine you have a lot to say about this.

IM: Well, I think it starts with making sure you’ve got Black leadership. We operate at Faith in Action under the belief that if you take care of Black people, specifically Black women, everyone in the organization will be taken care of—because the needs of Black women in particular are often so overlooked. And Black women are expected to be the providers, the caretakers, the folks who do things without actually ever being asked, and a lot of that labor goes unseen, unrecognized, unappreciated. And if you start to pay attention to all of the things that Black women do to make an organization successful, and then you provide resources and support for that work to be compensated, to be appreciated, to be recognized, then you learn how much more people actually need in order to thrive in organizations.

And when you meet those needs—when you create space for people to take care of their families during the workday; when you create space for people to take meaningful vacations so that they get actual rest; when you create the conditions for really strong benefits and policies, so people’s healthcare needs are provided for (and they’re not worried about whether they can make their doctor’s appointments on time, because they know that they have the time off to do that); when you create an environment where people aren’t going to be pressured to deliver things at the last minute, because you build in time and space for thoughtful planning, so it doesn’t end up on somebody’s plate (often a Black woman’s)—then you can create an organization where Black women can thrive. And if Black women are thriving, everybody is thriving. That’s our fundamental belief.

CS: It’s interesting that you said it has to start with Black leadership. So, an organization that doesn’t have Black leadership wouldn’t necessarily be pro-Black, even if they have Black staff?

IM: I have a hard time seeing how folks who aren’t Black can understand what Black folks need in an organization. Truly. And how they would be able to resource it at the level that’s required. That doesn’t necessarily mean the top people all need to be Black; it just means you have to have meaningful representation of Black folks in leadership, in order for that ethos to get rooted all the way through the organization. I’ve worked in organizations where there were Black staff, but we didn’t have enough power for things to change.

CS: Right. And I want to get into this more, because I know that you’ve been doing this work at Faith in Action, which is actually a network. What are the biggest differences that you’ve seen since you started making this kind of transformation? What are the changes that you’re seeing that are the most meaningful in terms of the difference between before and after?

IM: I think one of the main things is how we relate to each other just on a day-to-day basis. When I started with Faith in Action four and a half years ago, it was a culture that had become toxic, for lack of a better word. I hesitate to put it like that.

CS: That’s what they are sometimes. It’s the truth.

IM: And I think it was because caretaking how relationships were evolving was not something that people were always paying attention to. And I think when you start to really pay attention to how people are actually feeling and how people are experiencing the culture—and you create space for conversations around that—you learn things that you might not have been seeing, because you were more focused on the work or something.

CS: Like what? Can you give an example?

IM: Well, I was hired at Faith in Action in large part because there was a lot of turnover of Black women staff both nationally and networkwide. And people started to ask the question, “What is going on?” And I do think it stems from this movement that organizations go through on the spectrum. You start with diversity—“We want more representation; we want more people who look like the people we work with every day in our organization.” So, you hire folks, but you don’t necessarily create the conditions for those folks to be successful. And so that’s where you’re moving toward inclusion—“Okay, I have a seat at the table, I can say what I want to say, and I feel included”—and equity—“My needs, which might be different from your needs, are being met.” And I think when you’re in the earlier stage of this evolution, organizations experience a lot of churn, because they haven’t created the conditions for the folks that they’ve hired to succeed. When Faith in Action was in that place of hiring folks who were not set up for success, and we experienced the churn, we had to stop and ask, “What is going on? What needs to change for folks to feel supported and well-resourced in order to do their best work and, ultimately, stick around?” Because if you’re in the business of movement and societal change, and you’re constantly churning people, you don’t make any progress. You’re barely treading water. You’re possibly drowning. And you can’t win on the things that you care about with that type of churn. We were feeling like we couldn’t move the needle on the issues we care about unless we paused and figured out how to take care of our people and resource folks in order to be able to stay in the work for the long term. And we’re starting to see some early signs of results of that shift, whereby some pretty- long-tenured staff who’ve been able to ride this wave have been given the power to hire the teams that they want and to figure out what strategies we need—and they are excited. And for the folks who are tired, we’re figuring out how to send them on sabbatical so that they can come back refreshed. We don’t have to burn people out. That does not have to be the mode.

CS: That’s really interesting. I like that you highlight the churn as an indicator of where you are. Of course, we see that, but I’ve never heard it articulated that way. And I’m also hearing you say that you’re really flexible in terms of your organizational policies, and are aiming toward giving people sabbaticals. These are things that are considered to be very exclusive. Usually only senior people get sabbaticals, and very infrequently. I think I’ve only worked at one place that had sabbaticals. Can you say more about that? How do you decide to do these little things that can actually make a big difference, and that are not common?

IM: At Faith in Action, you have to be on staff for at least ten years before you’re eligible for sabbatical. We have enough long-tenured staff that that’s quite a lot of people. Over the last few years, we’ve had about one person a year taking a sabbatical, just so as to minimize the impact on the organization as a whole. But now we have a backlog of people who are eligible, so we need to create a sabbatical schedule so that everyone who’s eligible gets their turn in a way that can still minimize disruption overall.

CS: And how much time do they get?

IM: Depending on what they need, anywhere from three to five months. And they can put together a plan for the time. Our colleague Denise Collazo used her time to write a book, Thriving in the Fight. Denise has been organizing for twenty- five years and is now our chief of external affairs. And she talks a lot about how that sabbatical was one of the ways in which she got the space that she needed to do the reflection for that book. So, she was able to use that time off to get clear about how it was that she was able to stay in the work.

Denise was an innovator of our Family–Work Integration program, where we strive to reduce meetings on Fridays and limit email. It’s not a day off, but it is a day that you can use to meet whatever needs you have—to catch up on any work from the week that didn’t get done, or sleep in a little and go to a gym class, or take your mom to a doctor’s appointment, or take care of that errand that you’ve been meaning to do—so that you don’t end up feeling like there’s no time for those activities that are really important for one’s well-being. If you center well-being, then you create more opportunity to do better work.

CS: I love that. It’s interesting, because people often think that you won’t get good work if you do that. But you’re saying that you’re seeing more good work from having these policies.

IM: Absolutely. And people are happier. We have a much happier culture. Some evidence, for me, is that a consultant we recently hired to project manage a big event that we’re organizing, said to me, “I see how hard you are all working to practice different kinds of cultural norms than what you would typically see in an organization [your size].   I can feel it.” We’re trying really hard to center people as human beings—not as, like, widgets. She needed to take her son to an appointment, and I said, “Oh, yeah, no problem, we’ll just reschedule.” And she said, “Really?” Or, you know, you can be late to an appointment because of a thing you need to do. No problem. If there’s good communication, then do what you need to do. And you don’t have to pretend you’re doing something else. We can hold space for each other’s humanity.

CS: Is there anything that you want to do that you haven’t gotten to do yet at the organizational level?

IM: Well, we want to make sure that our teams are resourced. With the gift that we got last year from MacKenzie Scott, we now have the resources to make sure that people can work reasonable hours. If there’s a gap in the organization, we can create a job description and recruit for it. We don’t have to operate out of scarcity; we can operate out of abundance. And that’s so exciting. I think our organization is going to grow, and that we’ll have more opportunity for impact. We have an aspiration to be the global spiritual and political home for people who are seeking communities of belonging and want to create the conditions for our democracies to actually work for all of us—which we know is not true right now. And, you know, as people of faith who don’t necessarily go to church every Sunday. I identify as a person of faith who doesn’t go to church every Sunday—I feel like I get a lot of my spiritual needs met at work, which is super awesome for me. And I feel like I don’t have to go to church if I get my spiritual needs met at work.

CS: Ah, that’s interesting. How do you get that? How do you get them met at work?

IM: We have these beautiful rituals. For example, that project manager I mentioned who’s come into our culture has been amazing. She’s totally figured out that one of the ways we build community is through check-in questions. We recently had an hour-long meeting with twenty-five people, and we spent twenty-five minutes of the meeting with everyone calling in the ancestor that they wanted to bring into the space, and then we spent thirty-five minutes getting all the business done that we needed to do. And when you spend twenty-five minutes hearing each other’s personal stories, that’s a way of centering Blackness, centering Black culture, and centering the fact that we are more than the people in this room. We are all the people who came before us. We are all of the wishes and aspirations that our ancestors had for us, and often have exceeded those. And it was really beautiful. It was emotional, how much people were sharing about how proud we are to have potentially exceeded our grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ expectations—for the work that we’re doing, the way we are living in the world, the opportunities we have that they never had but for which they created those stepping-stones so that we could step into these opportunities. And when you really create space for that conversation it builds community, it builds deeper trust, it builds deeper relationship, and it allows for better conditions for the work. And then you can spend thirty-five minutes doing the work, instead of spending an hour potentially griping about the work and not actually getting the work done. Because you have started by creating conditions for a powerful conversation.

CS: You know, it’s funny, I experience that as well. And I think of it as a people-of-color way of being. You don’t do anything until you talk about the family and how things are—there’s the whole personal aspect. I remember years ago when I was doing organizing, and it was when I was starting, and I was in a Latinx neighborhood. And I remember it took so long, because everywhere I went, I had to come in and sit down to eat or something. I couldn’t get them to just give me the information I wanted. And it’s very different, when you go to a meeting and there isn’t that kind of tradition. If you go to Puerto Rico, where my family’s from, it’s the same. The relationship to time is very different. It’s more fluid, it’s more qualitative. It’s not as quantitative—you know, you have to start at this time, and you have this much time. I never thought about that until now—how the way that we use time and hold meetings is very culturally based.

My last question to you is about the field, in terms of the sector. What does a pro-Black sector sound, look, taste, feel like?

IM: That’s a hard-to-answer question. I’m going to take a detour here. You wouldn’t be hearing about Donald Trump talking about white men feeling like they’re the victims of racism. It’s not that.

CS: You wouldn’t be hearing that?

IM: You wouldn’t be hearing that. Pro-Blackness isn’t a zero-sum game. It shouldn’t be seen as anti anything else. I think right now there’s this kind of binary orientation. But I think we need to understand pro-Blackness as a way of saying pro- everybody—and by that I don’t mean the equivalent of “all lives matter”! What I do mean is that if you’re pro-Black, you are actually pro-everybody, because you can’t be pro-everybody if you’re not pro-Black. So, if everyone felt comfortable saying, “I’m pro-Black” (because that’s the only way to know that I’m actually pro-everybody), and if everyone’s organization lived that, you could hold different kinds of cultural value systems in harmony with one another, not in competition with one another—where people feel free to run meetings the way they want to, because they’re doing it out of their authentic expression of their own identity, versus, “This is the way I was taught at business school, and that’s the only way to do it.” I think you can create space for lots of different ways to be. And, ultimately, Black identity has historically been the most marginalized—so, if you don’t hold space for that identity to be centered, then you do create these kinds of false binaries.

CS: I was talking to a big funder a few weeks ago, and they wanted to talk to me about power, because it’s one of the things that they’re centering. I think it’s a mostly white organization, whose mission is to support grassroots movements, but they don’t really talk to grassroots people. And they’re very concerned about having to give up power. So, when you say that being pro-Black doesn’t mean you’re anti something else, that it doesn’t take anything away from others, it brings that conversation I had to mind. Also, I was doing an interview earlier today with someone who said, “You have to figure out what you are willing to give up.” So, I keep hearing this as almost a wedge—it doesn’t mean you have to give up anything, but some people think that you do have to give up something. Can you say more about this?

IM: I guess it depends on what people value, what they perceive as giving up versus not giving up. So, if people value having the top job, and if that’s a zero-sum thing—where the only way you can express leadership or power is by being the top of whatever the food chain is, or the apex predator, so to speak—then yeah, you might feel like you’re giving up something. But if you can reframe what it means to be powerful, then I think we have a chance. So, if we can reframe the conversation around power—where it’s just as powerful to give away money as it is to be the CEO of something, or it’s just as powerful to think about, Okay, how do I take all my privilege and apply it? I mean, I know I hold a certain amount of privilege as a fairly well-educated Black person with an upper-middle income doing grassroots community-organizing work in an infrastructure-type role, and I’ve decided to apply my privilege to creating conditions for our organization to thrive. I thought to myself, I can apply my skill set to creating more conditions for more profit-centered organizations to make more profit—which I used to do—or I could explore how I actually really think about organizations. Because I love organizations—I think organizations are dynamic, interesting, living beings. And if I apply my privilege toward that, I’m giving up on maximizing my profit potential as an individual. I could go make a ton more money in the corporate sector. I’m choosing to give that up, because I believe that I will get so much more back through this contribution in this way.

So, it just depends on how people think about what the trade-offs are. And I think if we can collectively reframe the trade- offs, then we get closer to creating more conditions for more people to thrive—which, in my opinion, is way more rewarding than having the most money that I could possibly have for myself.

CS: I’m intrigued by what people say about this, because it is a point of tension. Another question I have is around this concept that the Black community is the most marginalized. Because when we started to develop this edition on building pro-Black organizations, we heard from Native people who were like, “Why? Why Black people?”

IM: That’s a fair point.

CS: I remember being at a conference a few years ago, and there was a sheet that was given out that had this gradient of how marginal people were, and that was the point of contention: whether Native or Black needed to flip or not. It was a big thing. So I’m wondering how you would answer that. The way I responded to these questions regarding this edition was, “We are inviting you to support pro-Black, just as we invite Black people to support pro-Indigenous.” And that was enough, but it was a very interesting challenge. I’m wondering if you see that tension, and what you think about it.

IM: I think it’s a totally fair question. And in our organization, while we believe very much in being pro-Black, we don’t necessarily start with that language. We really believe in building a multiracial coalition of the willing, so to speak. And we very much see Native American communities as part of that—and to your point, there are contexts in which anyone can win the oppression Olympics, right? There are contexts when not just Native folks, not just Black folks, but Latinx folks have been really, really marginalized in our society. So, I guess I’m less interested in the oppression Olympics aspects of it and more interested in how we actually take the original sin of America—which is a combination of genocide and slavery—and together think about how to create conditions for people to thrive. We don’t have as many Native folks in our community of the coalition of the willing as we would like. We would like to create a bigger tent and for more people to see themselves as part of it, as part of this movement we’re building. And when we talk about Indigenous communities, we’re not just talking about U.S. Indigenous communities; we’re talking about Indigenous communities all over the world.

CS: Is Faith in Action global now?

IM: We have activities in El Salvador, Rwanda, and Haiti. And we have opportunities for expansion in other parts of the world, too. So, yeah, ultimately, we do have a vision for being even more of a global organization than we are today.

CS: That’s great. Is there anything else you want to say about pro-Blackness?

IM: Yes. There’s pro-Black, and then I think what we at Faith in Action tend to say more is, there’s centering Blackness in the context of a multiracial vision for society. So, I think we try to find the nuance there, so that pro-Black is seen as part of a bigger constellation of folks who are part of it. At Faith in Action, we’re trying to find ways to talk about it so that Latinx folks and white folks and everybody can see themselves as contributing to this vision that we have for the world that isn’t just about pro-Blackness but about recognizing that the Black experience is a particular experience that we need to pay attention to.

CS: Yeah, I’ve heard from Latinx people who’ve written for us saying that we’re covering a lot of pro-Black stuff and not enough Latinx stuff—and I’m thinking, Well, those are not mutually exclusive, but okay.

IM: Yeah, we’re trying to thread the needle. A big part of our work is immigrant justice and pathways to citizenship—which is not just a Latinx experience, obviously. But we see that as an important pillar of democracy building—making sure that everyone who lives here contributes to our society, has a right to say how our society’s major decisions get made. And so we want to make sure that we’re thoughtful about that.

CS: Thank you so much, Isabelle. I wanted to dig into these particular levels of pro-Blackness and start to define them a little bit more—so, I appreciate this conversation.

IM: Thank you, Cyndi. It’s great to connect. Take care.

CS: You too.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.