Last semester, I took a class called "Nonprofits in the City" with Professor Hossler that shed light on many issues involving the nonprofit sector specifically concerned with Memphis. The city currently has the highest number of nonprofits per 10,000 people in the country. Out of those, 58% primarily serve low-income or "disadvantaged" populations according to Smart City Memphis. And yet, only 13% of these nonprofits' executive directors are folks of color. All of those statistics seem are rather concerning when thinking about the demographics of the city.
A major problem that Memphis is facing is that nonprofit startups crop up at extremely high rates, but are unsustainable. Typically, these organizations go out of business due to a shortage of resources within only a couple years of its launch. In thinking through this, it is becoming necessary to produce more effective methods for nonprofits to reach marginalized communities, which just so happen to be predominantly black spaces. Furthermore, how many of these nonprofits are committed to actually uplifting the communities in which they are present rather than competing with other nonprofit organizations in the area? A common reality that many marginalized communities are facing is that nonprofit organizations, which are made up of extremely privileged/white employees, are intruding on these communities and asserting notions of paternalism, rather than taking the time to listen to the residents and members of these communities. The fact that folks of color make up only 13% of executive directors of nonprofits in the city is a testament to the disconnect between nonprofits and the communities they are in.
The mentality towards nonprofits should be revisited to encompass ways in which nonprofits can reach the communities they are attempting to “serve” while not competing at large with other nonprofits for business. By this, I mean that the nonprofit network should work to make these organizations more unified in order to work together, and, thus, be more efficient and widespread with who they make their services accessible towards. Currently, Memphis is seeing a number of nonprofits being clustered into one area, creating more selective audiences based on location. An example of this is how CHOICES and Planned Parenthood are both situated in on Poplar in Midtown. While there is a considerable amount of necessity for these services, it would be more beneficial to have access to these services in different communities in the city. I think nonprofits are a great tool to accessing resources, but these resources must be made accessible in the first place.
The whole system of non-profits in Memphis is a study of organizations that are mainly ineffective and seeking to treat poverty's symptoms rather than it's causes. One reason for this, is that these organizations attempt to enter the community in a white paternalist manner by employing members outside of the community that think they know whats best. I would be interested to see how employing members of the community and allowing them input into how this non-profit serves their community would not only impact communities through being more effective but also through an adoption of it as a strength of their community.
ReplyDeleteOne non-profit in particular that I feel doesn't get the right kind of attention is the New Memphis Institute. They're promoting a vision of a "new" Memphis that's prosperous and attractive to potential investors and talent, and they do so by putting out media that uses Memphian voices to talk about how great their city is. I'm all for talking about how Memphis is a cool city and has the capacity to provide a high quality of life for its citizens, but when the strategy for doing so is exclusively recruiting talent from outside the city instead of investing directly into local communities and advocating for local recruitment, I think there's a problem.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Ruth's point that many of the non profit in Memphis do are ineffective in solving the problems that plague this city. As Junior said many of these nonprofits will recruit individuals from outside of Memphis, completely missing out on the awesome talent that the city provides. Nonprofits in the city of Memphis should work together instead of feeling like they have to compete against each other, with collaboration projects doing more to help the city. I had never really though about the example of Choices and Planned Parenthood being in a predominately white area of the city and agree that these nonprofits should also be in other places.
ReplyDeleteI feel as though a lot of nonprofits within the city are operating under the "white savior" complex and by doing this are ignoring the actual needs of a specific community. Non profits need to be community based and community lead in order to bring about the holistic change the community itself would like to see.
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