So, if you haven’t heard, there’s a pretty thriving discussion on tax credits going on in New Jersey. Yesterday, the State Senate held hearings. Here’s a summary by Daniel Munoz at NJBiz. And here’s a link to the full audio of the hearings. I haven’t caught all the way up on the hearings, but I was struck by the progressive coverage of them, and the ways that the deep national progressive skepticism of wealth and corporations (by politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) is echoed by a progressive skepticism of wealth and corporations here in New Jersey. Here’s a few examples, the first critiquing a moment of “giving back” by a corporation receiving subsidies:

Did I just hear that correctly?

"We're teaching kids in Camden soft skills, like how to shake hands with people," – CEO of @americanwater.

That's your defense of corporate subsidies?

— Pass the Millionaires Tax (@L_DiPaolo) September 23, 2019

And the second a link from corporate subsidies to the wider discussion of what Anand Giridharadas calls Elite Philanthropy:

This passage in particular is 👍🏾 https://t.co/A3d8FjB04n pic.twitter.com/rOMxANj6wT

— Brandon J. McKoy (@Brandon_McKoy) September 23, 2019

These critiques are sharp, and, it’s worth noting, have long been made by grassroots women of color in the nonprofit field who note the way that elite institutions often use philanthropy to protect elite interests. 

It’s important to make these critiques — I’m currently working on an academic paper with Dr. Brandi Blessett that highlights similar trends within the nonprofit sector in Camden — but it leaves us with challenging questions. Yes, supporting those who already have wealth and expecting them to change the very systems that resulted in that wealth is problematic. But what does it look like to do it differently? 

There’s a lot of conversations about what it looks like to do corporate subsidies differently. But I wanted to touch a moment on what it looks like to do philanthropy differently. 

On September 10th I went to an info session for the Bread and Roses Community Fund’s Equitable Public Spaces grant. I was blown away by how seriously they took these critiques of the nonprofit sector and how they were willing to fundamentally alter the traditional foundation model to work with grassroots groups. 

A few examples from my notes from that meeting: 

1. The foundation realizes that our measurement requirements mean that system work such as community organizing is hard to fund. The fund specifically focuses on this organizing work, and its reporting reflects how difficult that can be to measure.
2. The organization has representation requirements that ensure that communities are present and represented in the organizations applying — then gives grassroots organizations leeway to define what that means for their community (race, class, gender, sexual orientation) but requires that such representation be reflected in leadership. 
3. The fund intentionally keeps applications and reporting brief to avoid overburdening small organizations with requirements brief. 

And that’s only a start. 

I highlight this because it is a roadmap for how we can start considering the ways processes exclude, whether it be nonprofits, small family businesses, houses, or philanthropy. It’s worth working beyond the critique to the find answers.