Quarterly Compost (Fall '24)

In this episode, thought partner and podcast producer Nayantara Premakumar joins hosts Carolina and Vidhya to reflect and update listeners on our retreat and recent milestones. We share our struggles resisting racial/gendered capitalism through cooperative, decentralized, and transparent governance and ownership structures. This includes a discussion of fiscal sponsorship and technocratic tools for decision-making. We also highlight upcoming changes to the podcast, including efforts to tie together our personal, professional, and political analyses; to acknowledge the lands we’ve inhabited; and to explicitly prompt reflection and action.

⁠⁠Episode 1.5 TRANSCRIPT⁠

Notes

01:30: It was a post on NPOCunicorns | People of Color Nonprofit Professionals, not a Facebook ad

17:21: Is Fiscal Sponsorship Right for You? gets at some of our hesitation. See more on The May 13 Group PODCAST webpage.

21:03: While Caro took the lead on this effort, the list referred to here was actually compiled by the New Economy Coalition’s Solidarity Economy Funding Library, which we think we became aware of through the Open Collective. Open Collective allows groups to raise and distribute money in a transparent, decentralized way. See more on the PODCAST webpage.

29:12: “Society at large” is meant to suggest everyday members of society who may not directly participate in the funded and evaluated programs—for example, will they benefit from reduced crime, etc. It is meant to drive a wedge between them and the underclass who do directly participate in funded and evaluated programs. See more on the webpage.

30:24: This understanding does not reflect the most recent research, such as The origins of SWOT analysis | ScienceDirect, which suggests that SWOT was developed by industries that profit by serving the U.S. military’s imperial interests and the business model of never-ending war, but it was not necessarily developed by military institutions. It was, however, uncritically adopted by nonprofit organizations despite the nature and ostensible purpose of their work being entirely different. Of course, military responses do have their place (e.g., Black Panthers, Zapatista).

39:09: The expansion is not exactly exponential in that it does not reflect the change between 3 to the 4th power and 3 to the 3rd power. But the expansion is not linear because the increment of growth is not static or consistent—it continually increases.

References

• ChainLink Studios
• SORA Podcast
• Learn about Vu Le and Community-Centric Fundraising
• Nonprofit Industrial Complex 101: A primer on how it upholds inequity and flattens resistance
• Exploitation | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}