The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, but Double Bottom-line Business Opportunities Will Abound

I have been reading, The Revolution Will Not be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Most who raise money, or work for nonprofits, will say of the book's call for radical social change that is it "too political," in fact offensive in its call for a redistribution of wealth, privilege and political power.

"Too political" certainly. That is what the book makes clear. Real social change is always too political for funders, boards, technocrats, advisors, managers, affirmative action trainers, social workers, and others who act as buffers between those who have much and those who have little. Retaining and refurbishing the status quo is not political. That is just good business, the business of philanthropy, managed by MBAs, run by the numbers, socializing all, including the needy, to the ethos of business as usual.

I am operating on the assumption that our economy may (assess the odds however you wish) come increasingly to resemble those in South America, Iraq, or Russia when treated to free market Shock Therapy, i.e., the combination of corporate capitalism and the iron fist of political repression; the mall built over the secret torture center, with each of us exposed to mortal risk, without appeal, under the watchful eye of a decider's staff who see all, assuming they can find the paperwork. The mall may be be dimmed as the power system fails, but the last to go will the be the security guards.

How a wealthy family can survive and prosper in a time of pillage, plunder, terror, law and order, peak oil, food and water shortages, incipient social unrest and environmental degradation is an interesting topic for advisors to wealthy families, one that they dare not yet consider since it would require the surfacing of what must not yet be discussed openly, a breaking of the horrible polite silence of the philanthropically inclined.

Yet, prudence demands that we plan, whether for life inside a paramilitarized Green Zone patrolled by Blackwater and serviced by Dyncorp and Halliburton, or outside, beyond the pale where the undeserving poor live in a world so flat that they die in the streets as if in Calcutta.

Meanwhile, as a planner, I would stick with lullabies. "Blessed are the sleepy for they shall soon fall off," as Nietzsche's Zarathrustra said. We awaken these sleepwalkers at our own risk. Yet unless some awaken soon and work with the least advantaged to make common cause for the benefit of all, we will find our own choices get increasingly stark. 

Comments

[Jeremy Gregg]

So glad you have found that text, which has been the focus of many conversations at my organization. I've blogged about it several times, as well.

Looking forward to seeing more of your thoughts on it.

Down with the MBAs,

Jeremy Gregg, Editor
The Raiser's Razor
http://theraiser.blogspot.com/

[Phil]

MBAs execute. That is why they are called executives. But vision of a better world? I am not so sure. The always seem inclined to speak of it as if it were an investment, a business, a venture, a balance sheet, a balanced scorecard. As metpahors these are sterile, but not to recognize them as metaphors at all is fatal when the question is whether or not you have vision.