The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Neoliberalism and the non-profit industrial complex

It's difficult to keep up with everything going on in the world of social innovation and it wasn't until yesterday that I became awere of the book by this name which was reviewed in Yes magazine  It called for re-thinking the nonprofit model to go beyond the nonprofit industrial complex.

Do U.S. social movements depend too much on foundation funding? For readers inclined to wrestle with such questions, this collection makes a provocative read. It offers thoughtful ideas on how alternative strategies could be constructed and reminds us that political work is sometimes most effective when it is organized—and funded—from the bottom up.

 

 

Really Betraying a Revolution was the title of an article posted in 2005, on the neoliberal aspirations of US government and economic hit men in Ukraine..  

Ar this time, we'd gone head to head with the NGO/foundation driven culture with the story of Death Camps, For Children in Ukraine, where my late colleagiue spoke out about profiteering and neglect in childcare institutions.  

 Opening up the reality of that situation resulted in threats against me and anyone else interfering with that system.  I came under direct assault by tax police, government’s primary enforcement arm if anyone steps out of line.  This is not a research activity where many, if any, other people dared to participate.  UNICEF was willfully blind to the matter because it was just too dangerous to bother to intercede  Powerful interests remained entrenched with enforcers to make it dangerous.  Jurists were correct, in my view.  It was more a mafia operation than anything else, aimed at misappropriation and laundering of large money.  That was perfectly congruent with how Ukraine operated before the revolution.  USAID wanted nothing to do with it, nor would they fund any organizations or activists who might try.  Some things could be done and some things could not be done.  Helping these children was something that could not be done.  So, I exposed it and made it the central focus and metric of Ukraine’s microeconomic development blueprint.  In that context, it was far more difficult to ignore, dismiss, or argue about.  For about six months, I really did not expect to survive.  Nevertheless, Ukraine’s government finally conceded the point and announced the opening of more than four hundred new treatment centers for children who were theretofore invisible under tight and deadly enforcement.

The blueprint to which he referred was a 'Marshall Plan' strategy designed to stimulate economic development at the microeconomic level, It said this about the bottom-up approach:which was published online in August 2007.:

'This is a long-term permanently sustainable program, the basis for "people-centered" economic development. Core focus is always on people and their needs, with neediest people having first priority – as contrasted with the eternal chase for financial profit and numbers where people, social benefit, and human well-being are often and routinely overlooked or ignored altogether. This is in keeping with the fundamental objectives of Marshall Plan: policy aimed at hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. This is a bottom-up approach, starting with Ukraine's poorest and most desperate citizens, rather than a "top-down" approach that might not ever benefit them. They cannot wait, particularly children. Impedance by anyone or any group of people constitutes precisely what the original Marshall Plan was dedicated to opposing. Those who suffer most, and those in greatest need, must be helped first -- not secondarily, along the way or by the way.

it was a decade earlier that the concept of an autonomous model of social innovation was pitched to President Clinton by a memeber of the steering group for his re-election committee. it made this point about the benefit of a business which operates for social purpose:

The P-CED concept is to create new businesses that do things differently from their inception, and perhaps modify existing businesses that want to do it. This business model entails doing exactly the same things by which any business is set up and conducted in the free-market system of economics. The only difference is this: that at least fifty percent of profits go to stimulate a given local economy, instead of going to private hands. In effect, the business would operate in much the same manner as a charitable, non-profit organization whose proceeds go to local, national, and international charities. Non-profits, however, are typically very restricted in the type of business they can conduct. In the United States, all non-profits must constantly pay heed that they are not violating those restrictions, lest they suffer the wrath of the Internal Revenue Service. For-profits, on the other hand, have a relatively free hand when it comes to doing business. The only restrictions are the normal terms and conditions of free-enterprise. If a corporation wants to donate to its local community, it can do so, be it one percent, five percent, fifty or even seventy percent. There is no one to protest or dictate otherwise, except a board of directors and stockholders. This is not a small consideration, since most boards and stockholders would object.  But, if an a priori arrangement has been made with said stockholders and directors such that this direction of profits is entirely the point, then no objection can emerge. Indeed, the corporate charter can require that these monies be directed into community development funds, such as a permanent, irrevocable trust fund. The trust fund, in turn, would be under the oversight of a board of directors made up of corporate employees and community leaders.

Though the first deployment had been to source a microenterprise development initiative in Russia, this was the autonomous model in action. it was clearly a threat to vested economic interests..

We'd arrived in Ukraine in the fall of 2004 on the eve of the Orange Revolution working alongside lcoal civic activists who themselves had little in the way of funding. The Black Pora group for example had come about because there were insufficient funds to publishe their literature in the intended yellow and blue colours of Ukraine's flag.    

There was of course no funding for us either, as I've related before USAID solicited applications for community development funding and we applied for funds to build the first rehab centres described in the 'Marshall Plan'. By the time it was published in 2007, Ukraine's government had agreed to create 400+ of these facilities for handicapped children, as had been published:

The most urgent component of the project below is relief and modern medical treatment for tens of thousands of Ukraine's children diagnosed as psychoneurologically handicapped. Many have died in state care, in primitive and inhumane conditions. Many are misdiagnosed, and end up in atrocious conditions. Following intense publicity and public discussion of the issue during final preparation of this project, Ukraine's government agreed on 5 March, 2007 to open more than 400 new treatment facilities for these children all over Ukraine. That commitment from Ukraine’s government was a major step forward, clearly demonstrating Ukraine’s willingness and ability to take initiative in childcare reform first and foremost.

In 2008, having escalated this issue and the urgency of the situation to USAID and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, USAID finally responded to inform us that their "limited budget" could not afford to support this group of "handicapped and mentally retarded children"

So, this revolution was not funded and the payback was a civic uprising which is now an international conflict and the loss of many lives,  , reflecting what had been argued repeatedly since 1996, particularly in Crimea 11 years ago:

By leaving people in poverty, at risk of their lives due to lack of basic living essentials, we have stepped across the boundary of civilization. We have conceded that these people do not matter, are not important. Allowing them to starve to death, freeze to death, die from deprivation, or simply shooting them, is in the end exactly the same thing. Inflicting or allowing poverty on a group of people or an entire country is a formula for disaster.

These points were made to the President of the United States near the end of 1996. They were heard, appreciated and acted upon, but unfortunately, were not able to be addressed fully and quickly due primarily to political inertia. By way of September 11, 2001 attacks on the US out of Afghanistan – on which the US and the former Soviet Union both inflicted havoc, destruction, and certainly poverty – I rest my case. The tragedy was proof of all I warned about, but, was no more tragedy than that left behind to a people in an far corner of the world whom we thought did not matter and whom we thought were less important than ourselves.

We were wrong.

In the UK where we introduced this autonomous approach in 2004, government had already embraced a foundation funded approach to social enterprise with an endowment of £100 million. We made a warning about inequality.

While the vast majority of people in poverty suffer quietly and with little protest, it is not safe to assume that everyone will react the same way. When in defence of family and friends, it is completely predictable that it should be only a matter of time until uprisings become sufficient to imperil an entire nation or region of the world. People with nothing have nothing to lose. Poverty was therefore deemed not only a moral catastrophe but also a time bomb waiting to explode.

Right now we only have to look at the crisis in Ferguson to realise that today its a reality in the United States rather than people in another part of the world.who we thought didn't matter.