Creating a Monster: Capitalism in the Community Arts Classroom

Graduate programs in community arts lend much-needed legitimacy to the field in the eyes of the academy — but are these programs unknowingly creating a monster?

Imagine my relief, as an addled 20-something, when I realized “changing the world” was now a career! Oh, those poor militants and activists of the 1960s, who likely had no retirement fund or health insurance. Imagine the awkward conversations over the dinner table as their parents struggled to understand their choices. However romantic such scenes might seem in the movies, I rather prefer my family meals to be convivial. I was going to save the world, but I would do it with a graduate degree in hand at a respectable 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. At last, we activists really can have it all! Or can we? Or at least, that's what I used to think. Now I'm not so sure.

When I complete the AYCD (Arts in Youth and Community Development) graduate studies program at Columbia College Chicago, I will be prepared to compete in an ever more corporate nonprofit world. I will schmooze foundation funders with ease and write the perfect grant with a flick of my wrist. Armed with ratios and equations learned in Finance and Accounting, I will be indestructible. But wait … what happens when my funders don’t like my latest project and want me to change it? What happens when I spend more time fundraising than I do actually serving my community? What happens when I’m not changing the world at all? What happens when … gulp … our nation faces economic crisis?

I won’t soon forget the class period in which we were scheduled to discuss “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” a volume edited by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. This series of essays, drawn mostly from a 2004 conference of the same name, explores the history of nonprofit funding and grassroots social movements, both globally and locally. The authors do not conceal their loathing for today’s nonprofit system. Students’ emotions ran high as we pulled the dreaded paperback from our bags, and our veteran professor looked on with comprehension and a trace of … was that bemusement? Finally, one of us spoke: “What the heck am I supposed to do with this?” It was difficult material to swallow. It conflicted with every tool our school had thus far given us for survival in the nonprofit world. We were taking grant-writing, fundraising and strategic-policy classes. We were all interning with nonprofit organizations that relied on corporate and foundational funding. Now this rogue professor was forcing us to question the methods everyone else was touting! The idea of running a public-benefit enterprise without 501(c)(3) status, endless grant applications and corporate begging was about as familiar to us as a world without the Internet!

Still, we saw truth within the pages. Suddenly, the grassroots movements of my parents’ generation didn’t look so unappealing after all. Community organizer and researcher Eric Tang would likely reassure us that our discomfort is reasonable. “The dominance of the nonprofit model in social justice movements today is the result of a large gap that exists between the autonomous movements of the late-1960s and ‘70s and the activists that came up during the late ‘80s and early 1990s,” he says in an interview with AREA magazine.

There are very few institutional bridges that connect the social movement left of the 1960s and ‘70s to the present. As such, the philanthropic wing of capitalism that stepped into the chasm during the late 1980s and early 1990s, introducing (sic) the new social movement activists to a new vocabulary: civic participation, advocacy, service, public-private partnership. [1]

Social-justice movements of the past seem foreign to us now because today’s movements have taken a sharp turn in a new direction. We live in a different world with different philanthropic structures. And it’s all our generation has ever really known. Purportedly, these structures are better but if that’s the case, why were movements in the ‘60s and ‘70s able to accomplish so much more without relying on foundations?

The more I learn about the history of social movements, the more concerned I am that I am being groomed for a role that I don’t want. I have disparaging thoughts about the capitalist system that is responsible for disenfranchising communities like the ones I may someday work with — and I suspect that I am not alone here. If contemporary activists are harboring doubts about the capitalist system, and are intent upon fighting for equal opportunities, equal resources and equal rights, then why would they want to model the structure of their organization after that very system? History shows that as organizations jumped on board the 501(c)(3) wagon, truly radical and inspired social-change organizations faded into oblivion. Foundations, by providing and regulating funding, effectively co-opt these movements. As devices for the rich to keep their incomes tax-free, foundations divert that money away from the public, which should be receiving the benefits of those taxes. Over the last six decades, these foundations shaped the nonprofit world so that social protest would never go so far as to damage the capitalist system. These organizations supposedly remedy the harm done to minority communities by capitalism; however, they do it in a purposefully controlled manner. Even the “alternatives” we are given in graduate school, like cultivating individual donors, follow the same structures. In a system where money for social reform comes from the rich, and only the rich, the wealthy inevitably become the controllers of social-justice movements. Today our work is inextricably tied to our funders and, whether we like it or not, we cater our programming to them, often instead of our constituents. Most of our work hours are spent wooing donors and applying for grants, and our programs our showing the strain.

When the government released control of social services to the private sector, foundational and corporate funders stepped right in to play the government’s role. Certainly one of the prominent examples of such a controlling presence is the Ford Foundation. From its very inception, it surreptitiously controlled and crushed social movements while pretending to support them. In 1947, the Ford Foundation made grants of several thousand dollars to the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the Urban League; later, they gave funds to MARC (Metropolitan Applied Research Center) for civil-rights fellowships.[2] Although these grants seem innocent and even encouraging, their true value to Ford was the opportunity to control the civil-rights movement from within by funding less extremist (i.e., less likely to overthrow the system) projects and organizations. In “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” the women of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence record their own experiences with the Ford Foundation, revealing that little has changed over the years. In 2004, Ford Foundation withdrew a $200,000 grant because of the organization’s statement of support for the Palestinian liberation struggle. This experience, in addition to similar disappointments, led INCITE! to eventually rely primarily on grassroots fundraising methods.

The question lingering on the lips of my fellow arts management students is: “How can we overcome the dominant power structure of corporate-controlled foundations?” We need look no further than our peers here in Chicago. Historically, it is often young people who refresh and invigorate social movements. With the corporatization of the nonprofit industry, future leaders are trained to maintain the system rather than innovate. However, there are some gleaming examples of young people creating unique opportunities. Unfortunately, one of those bright lights was recently extinguished; School of the Art Institute graduate Ben Schaasfsma, who recently died in a vehicle accident at age 25, could have been a true game changer. Among many innovative programs established in the Chicago community by Shaafsma was his organization InCUBATE’s Sunday Soup.[3] Volunteers prepare and serve delicious soup and brunch to patrons who in turn make donations of varying degrees. Artists can apply for grants (typically ranging from $125 to $250) and diners vote amongst selected finalists to determine who receives the grant. Similar programs exist across the nation, such as New York City’s FEAST (Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics), which similarly funds democratically chosen new and emerging art makers.[4] InCUBATE has boldly chosen to forego nonprofit status. Everything about the organization is innovative, from their funding methods to their online blog and video channel. They describe themselves as “investigating current practices in public/private sponsorship for arts organizations, debating the pros and cons of incorporations as a nonprofit alternative means for financing ‘under the radar’ arts projects, and hosting exhibitions and symposiums to spark public discussions.”

And nonprofits need not carry the burden alone, because funders are also exploring new ways to support pioneering projects. The Fire This Time Fund is made up of independent artists, educators and activists working in Chicago’s social-justice community.[5] Co-founder Kristen Cox explains: “I thought it would be an interesting experiment to invite peers in my larger social network, whose activist work — in antiprison, education, media, LBGTQ health and community arts circles — I admired and respected, to join me in devising a process that would fund informal, creative social change projects.”[6] What Cox innovated was a giving circle that provides funds to “off the grid” artists and organizations. They do not need to be 501(c)(3)s but should be affiliated with a fiscal sponsor; unlike other funders, Fire This Time is willing to offer assistance in this area. Cox admits that it is difficult to fund informal organizations and that these groups will find it hard to even open a bank account in this post-911 era. Fire This Time partners with the Crossroads Funds and members of the group may contribute different amounts of money but all have an equal say in the collaborative decision-making process.

Although the dollar value is small, ideas like InCUBATE’s are throwbacks to infant social-change movements in the 1950s and ‘60s, where movements were funded from the bottom up and not from the top down. There is no reason we cannot be inspired to create similar programs in our communities. We should not be stopped by the fear of making mistakes; one of the problems created by foundational funding is the idea that nothing we do can ever be a mistake. After all, are we really going to report back to our funders that the project they funded was a huge disaster and we should really go back to the drawing board? Of course not. In this way, we risk making the same mistakes over and over again because we are afraid of innovating new ideas. In this nonflexible, rigid environment, our organizations will fail to help the individuals who need us most. While my generation must move forward with the accepted knowledge that is reinforced by graduate programs like mine, we must also be ready and able to discard it all if we find it necessary to do so. Perhaps academic programs might also follow suit by including coursework that encourages students to think outside the corporate box; it may be the only way we’ll ever make it in the new economy. In the current economic climate, we have very little to lose and much to gain by rediscovering the efficacy of grassroots fundraising.

This essay is part of the Community Arts Convening & Research Project, 2009-10, funded by a Nathan Cummings Foundation grant to the Maryland Institute College of Art.  The essay was reviewed and selected by the project's Editorial Board: Stephani Woodson, Arizona State University; Amalia Mesa-Bains, California State University Monterey Bay; Paul Teruel, Columbia College Chicago; Marina Gutierrez, Cooper Union; Jan Cohen-Cruz, Imagining America; Ken Krafchek, Maryland Institute College of Art; Lori Hager, University of Oregon; and Sonia BasSheva Mañjon, Wesleyan University.

Brandi Rose is a graduate student in Columbia College Chicago's AYCD (Arts in Youth and Community Development) arts management program.

[1] Daniel Tucker, Autonomous Grassroots and Non-Profit Organizations: An Interview with Eric Tang (AREA Chicago: Dec 6, 2008) http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/6808/autonomous-grassroots-and-non-profit-organizations/

[2] Robert L. Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America . Africa World Press, 1990.

[3] http://www.incubate-chicago.org/index.php

[4] http://www.feastinbklyn.org/

[5] http://www.crossroadsfund.org/fire_this_time_fund.htm

[6] Kristen Cox, Introducing Fire This Time: Lessons Learned in Year One (AREA Chicago) http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/how-we-learn/introducing-fire-this-time-fund/

Original CAN/API publication: September 2009