Sorry if this isn’t a correct place to ask this question. I don’t understand how non-profit organization exist in capitalism because how do they sustain themselves? How do they pay their workers if they aren’t generating any profit? Isn’t it just volunteering?
I know some people who run them, and basically most decent non-profits run on (tax deductible) donations, grants, volunteers, and overworked staff. The rest are mostly just tax avoidance or outright malicious. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is mostly just a way for Gates to promote neoliberalism and IP law, while getting function control over the whole pharmaceutical industry (Source: the Qanon Anonymous podcast episode 255). Either way they are by no means anti-capitalist. The best ones just promote capital valorization by providing for people’s needs that are not provided by paychecks. The worst are also tools of the bourgeoisie.
This for sure. I’ve worked for a non-profit, and it was an awful experience. Everyone I know who has worked for one shares a similar experience.
We think it has something to do with the toxic way funding is applied for through the government, and the necessarily low wages/over work.
I have been considering opening a co-op with the purpose of providing stable employment and the tools/ space for workers to be politically active. But it would have to be for-profit given the toxicity and restrictions placed on non-profits.