WE TELL MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES TO BUILD ECONOMIC POWER WHILE TAKING AWAY THE VERY RESOURCES REQUIRED FOR THE TASK

Every time a need arises in our community, the default prescription is predictable: start a nonprofit. –Feed people? Nonprofit. –Teach children? Nonprofit. –Preserve our history? Nonprofit. –Create cultural programming? Nonprofit. –Access donated money? Nonprofit.

Then we spend years applying for grants so we can perform work the government is already responsible for ensuring gets done. Government collects our taxes to provide services, then funnels portions of that money to nonprofits to deliver those same services. When communities continue to struggle, when resources remain scarce, and when change is painfully slow, government can point to all the money it “invested” and all the organizations it funded — and then blame the community for its own hardship. Meanwhile, the community still has very little. There is a place for nonprofits — but it is not for building cultural infrastructure. If what you’re creating can be sold as a service, why is the automatic impulse to form a nonprofit instead of a business? A nonprofit should exist because the mission requires a nonprofit structure, not because it feels like the default option. Culture is a perfect example. Festivals, dance classes, historical programming, community engagement, cultural tourism, language services, event production, art, food, music and educational experiences are not “nice things we do for our people.” They are cultural infrastructure. And cultural infrastructure generates money. A festival fills restaurants. Visitors stay in hotels. Vendors sell products. Musicians perform. Security companies get contracts. Cities market our culture to attract tourists. So why are the people who create the culture expected not to build wealth from it? Why does government feel entitled to own our cultural product without first paying for it? Businesses build wealth because owners can earn profits, accumulate assets, employ people, purchase property and reinvest. A nonprofit does not belong to its founder. Its assets are held for its charitable purpose. It becomes another hand in managing government money, not a vehicle for building sustainability for your people.

Nonprofits are the right structure when charity is the mission. They should not automatically be our structure for economic development. Create the business. Choose a legal structure, register it with your state, obtain an EIN, open a business account, establish bookkeeping, secure required licenses and insurance, and price your service to include labor, expenses, overhead and profit. Then document your work; stop walking into government offices asking only, “What grants are available?”

There is an enormous difference between government giving you money to administer its responsibilities and government becoming your customer.

Imagine hundreds of locally owned cultural businesses winning contracts. Hire locally. They buy locally. Businesses grow. Tax revenue grows. More money circulates through the community instead of merely passing through it. And government remains accountable for the services it is responsible for providing. Communities can be partners and vendors without being asked to carry government responsibility under the language of empowerment. Keep saying we want marginalized communities to succeed economically. Then stop teaching people only how to manage programs. Teach them how to own companies, sell what they create, and build wealth from it. When they build cultural infrastructure that government and the larger economy benefit from, pay them for it.