"It is important that we not collapse these differences even while recognizing a set of shared structural forces and logics. This is especially important as non-profits themselves are vulnerable to these structural forces. For example, non-profit organizations continue to feel impacts of the recession in both the increased demands for basic social services as well as the shrinking of government and foundation funding and individual donations. Many small organizations made up of poor and working-class members have dissolved or folded into larger non-profits. A lack of funding has led such groups to give up vital infrastructure and compensated staff positions, but the work continues through volunteer labor, in members' homes or donated space."
— Incite! Women of Color Against Violence: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, pp. xviii-xix
If non-profits are to serve as a tool for liberation and reconstruction, then they need their own productive forces to call upon for fueling their efforts. Subjugation to capital, be it directly through philanthropic foundations, indirectly through (capitalist) government funding, or even tortuously through individual donors --themselves dependent upon exchanging their labor to capital for the money they donate-- necessarily clips the non-profit's wings. It is always contorting itself upon the whims of capital. Perhaps a partnership between non-profits and co-ops, both worker owned and operated, could serve to foster such a development of productive forces beyond --or at least less hindered by-- the antagonistic ruling capitalist class's reach. In this model, non-profits could serve as a stabilizing foundation upon which less certain co-operative proletarian endeavors could build.
