Nonprofits have a them and us problem
Stories about heroes and victims, White saviours, and ‘good people’ doing ‘good deeds’ to fix ‘unfortunate’ social problems are everywhere in the nonprofit sector.
We have a ‘them and us’ problem.
We separate ‘them’ from ‘us’
'A lot of charities are built on an ‘us versus them’ idea' says anti-racism consultant and activist Jon Cornejo. 'They exist to ‘save’ people that are from another community. But we’re not part of that community. The separation between the two is key to how they operate.'
It’s not just a separation, but a hierarchy.
'Much of the charity sector is still positively Dickensian in its attitudes to the people it works with' says Penny Wilson, CEO of Getting on Board. 'Whatever the language - beneficiary, service user, client - the model of the privileged few deciding on the best way to support the less fortunate masses is alive and well.'
When we think of injustice as ‘unfortunate’, we mystify structural oppression.
Inequality is the product of design. It’s created by systems like colonialism, enslavement and extractive capitalism. It’s maintained through instruments, like our economy and legal system.
“An ‘us and them’ divide suggests that inequality is natural and unavoidable.”
When we think of charity as ‘good deeds’ done by ‘good people’ to fix unfortunate situations, we are burying design.
As Jon says: ‘The overall narrative of charity is about doing the work to try and better society to try to improve things to try and ‘save’ these poor children. But that intentionally buries the history of colonialism. Wealth was extracted from most of the world and centred in the hands of White people.'
Our language makes oppression sound natural
Oppression didn't just happen. It’s not the weather.
Violence against women and girls doesn’t just happen. It’s usually male violence against women and girls. (And calling it an epidemic won’t help, either).
Migrants in the UK are kept marginalised, by policies like asymmetric recognition of qualifications gained outside the UK.
Women are made poor by austerity, sexist welfare provision, structural barriers to paid work and social norms.
These words and phrases add up. They form part of the stories we tell ourselves, about inequality as an accident.
Stories shape our world
“The brain is not a machine for analysing and assessing what’s true. The brain is a machine for telling stories.”
Stories connect us. Stories help us make choices. Stories affect our wellbeing. Stories change how we see our relationships. Stories are how we understand reality.
And narrative is fractal. Each story we tell is a part of a bigger story.
When we absorb a story, it affects how we absorb future stories.
Stories add up to narratives
‘What tiles are to mosaics, stories are to narratives. The relationship is symbiotic; stories bring narratives to life by making them relatable and accessible, while narratives infuse stories with deeper meaning’ - Toward New Gravity
I spoke to narrative strategist Ruth Taylor, author of Transforming Narrative Waters about the relationship between stories and narratives. She told me:
‘Stories have a plot, a setting/settings, characters and they tend to follow a beginning, middle and end structure. Narratives, on the other hand, permeate collections of stories.
‘For example, someone in the UK could open a newspaper today and read a story about a young Black man who has been convicted of gang-related crime. That is one individual story.
‘When you encounter this story again and again, a narrative begins to emerge which depicts Black men as being inherently violent. The individual story may not explicitly convey this narrative, but it is reinforced nonetheless through collections of individual stories about gang-related crime in Britain.
‘Deep narratives are those that are firmly embedded in cultural thinking - their pervasiveness and intractability make narratives and stories ’sticky’. In our example of gang-related crime, the deep narrative would be something like ‘fear of the other’ or racist ideas of White civility.’
Nonprofits understand the power of narrative
The charity sector is talking more and more about framing, values and narratives, thanks to brilliant research by organisations like PIRC, Common Cause Foundation, Equally Ours and Frameworks.
They’ve brought rigour and depth to how we think about issues like climate justice, poverty, immigration, the economy, homelessness, age and ageing.
They’ve helped show how narrative affects the way we see the world. They’ve researched how charities can look outwards, changing how we speak about specific issues. And they’ve also created insightful research about how the sector can look inwards, to think differently about itself.
But their insights haven’t travelled far enough. The nonprofit sector is still not approaching its own identity as a story worth telling.
We need to look in the mirror
'The most powerful stories that define the culture of our sector are not the stories about the issues we work on but rather the stories we tell ourselves about who we are (and aren’t), and how we should (and shouldn’t) act in the world to make change' writes Rashad Robinson.
We create a narrative about 'them' by talking about 'us.' We define who 'they' are when we talk about 'our' values as a sector. They’re mutually reinforcing.
I’m doing it now, when I call it 'our' narrative. I’m assuming you’re like me, that you work in the nonprofit sector. I’m even assuming you’re not a service user, as though there’s a binary distinction between the two.
We can obviously all be staff, trustees, service users, volunteers, and more. We can work with and for and alongside all kinds of movements, around all kinds of causes.
Narrative is more than words
Narrative shows up in structures, systems and spaces.
'Urban planning and the built environment are actually embodiments of societal narratives and how we value certain things and may not value other things as much' says Jee Kim, former Director of the Narrative Initiative, in an episode of The Other Story podcast.
In nonprofits, governance is one of the most visible ways our narratives show up.
Governance tells a story
'60% of charities say that their boards don't reflect the communities they serve' says Penny Wilson. 'As a sector, our trustees are two thirds male, two thirds over 50, 92% White and 75% of trustees are from households above the national median for household income. How could we hope to know what is best for the people using our services if we're not giving people who've had those experiences a full seat at our board table?'
If your office isn’t accessible to someone who uses a wheelchair, what story does that tell about who you want in the room?
If your trustee meetings are held during the workday, what story does that tell about who belongs there?
If your board packs are dense written reports, what story are you telling about the skills you value?
To understand how we got here, let’s look at the history of charity.
How the charity sector evolved
The first nonprofits in the UK were schools. Then came orphanages, workhouses and institutions for ‘poor relief.’ Sometimes these were part of local government, sometimes they were what we would now think of as charities.
You’ve probably heard that wealthy industrialists left their money to charity because they were shocked by visible inequality and suffering, or motivated by Christian values like ‘stewardship of the poor’ and perhaps because it was fashionable.
That story is true but incomplete. I turned to Roots of Social Enterprise : Entrepreneurial Philanthropy, England 1600-1908 by Carole Howorth and Matthew MacDonald to learn more.
According to Howorth and MacDonald, many charities were set up in the 17th and 18th centuries to:
Keep workers healthy
People living in poverty were often malnourished. The property-owning classes wanted healthy people to work in their factories or on their land (we can compare this to how the Boer war led to improvements in welfare, because so many British soldiers were too malnourished to fight).
‘Such provision might be classified as charitable’ say Howorth and MacDonanald, ‘[but] it was motivated by their business needs.’
Keep workers local
Supporting workers ‘in slack times’ was a way to make sure they stayed in the area, so they were around ‘when demand for their labour was high.’
Cement social status
Giving to charity was a way to boost social standing. It could also buy political influence, as it does today.
Establish moral order
In the 16th and 17th centuries, ‘the poor were bifurcated into those deserving and undeserving of support.’
Concepts of the ‘deserving and undeserving poor’ dominate ‘both the discourse and practice of welfare provision through to the modern day’ write Howorth and MacDonald.
Spread ideology
Charity helped to instil an ethos of self-help. ‘It didn’t show how Victorian economics created a vast underclass of people living in desperate poverty. It encouraged them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.’
Or as Richard Brown writes, ‘poverty was seen by few as a function of the economic and social system. The majority assumed that it stemmed from some personal failing. Charity was a way of initiating a moral reformation, of breeding in the individual the self-help mentality that would free him from the thraldom of poverty.’
Silence dissent
Stephen Bubb shares this memorable description of philanthropy: ‘the rich giving money to the middle classes to keep the poor quiet.’
Avoid revolution
Social upheavals, like the French Revolution, led to ‘a growing fear of insurrection by the urban poor.’ Many property owners were worried about losing their land and assets, which would likely be seized in a revolution.
This should remind us of another story about rebellions that we tend not to talk about: Haiti’s successful revolution.
As Akala showed in Natives, mainstream British discussions about the partial end of the slave trend tend to focus on a few people. White abolitionists, like William Wilberforce and Josiah Wedgwood, sit centre stage. Many of us grow up thinking enslavement was ended by a few people doing a few good deeds.
That’s not right. After Haiti, fear of revolutions and rebellions spreading across the Caribbean had an enormous influence on the partial abolition of slavery.
Those stories echo through our deeper narratives about what kind of change is possible, and who’s allowed to drive it.
Charity is still shaped by these narratives
So what’s changed since 1600?
Back then, ‘social enterprise activities were instigated by more powerful wealthy individuals’ write Howorth and MacDonald. They ‘had access to resources through their networks of wealthy friends and family.’ And they were ‘significantly better educated than the beneficiaries of their efforts.’
Today, nonprofits are staffed, managed and run by people from the most over-represented communities. They tend to serve people from the most marginalised communities. And those groups rarely overlap.
Early charity was built on the idea that people living in poverty should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s not a big leap to go from rhetoric about the deserving and undeserving poor to the 2010s’ rhetoric of strivers and skivers.
It’s time to change the narrative
We can tell new stories that play into new narratives.
“Every day I see charities that are pushing for bold, inclusive new ways of working” says Penny Wilson. “They're building trustee boards that represent their communities, they're breaking down the distinction between 'service user' and 'staff', and they're showing that our sector doesn't have to be limited by its history.”
Want to rewrite the ‘them and us’ narrative? In part two of this article, we’ll look at practical ways to take action.