The Problem with Charity: Rethinking Giving for True Social Change By Zahabiya Husain
Zahabiya has spent the last decade working in Britain and Sri Lanka on social justice issues as varied and deep as SDG policy development, post-conflict human rights, refugee resettlement, anti-oppression and environmental litigation. Zahabiya is passionate about community-centred solutions, insights from failure and movements that offer what she calls 'justice-by-design'. Find her on LinkedIn and get in touch. She’s been waiting to meet you.
The Uncharitable Paper on ‘How Austerity Exposes the Racial Injustice of the Charity Sector’ ended by asking changemakers who are committed to greater racial justice to create a road for themselves and their organisations that subverts the white supremacist norm or just plain ignore it. This idea caused intrigue - for some time now, I have been thinking about what it would be like if we simply stopped referring to our organisations as charities. This was born from a more radical idea (what if every charity in this country closed tomorrow?). Still, a more manageable question is: How might we register as other kinds of organisations and then build up a language for what we want to achieve and a blueprint for how it divorces us entirely from the status quo?
‘Charity’ and what it isn’t
‘Charity’ takes its meaning from old English, Christianity and Latin, from notions like benevolence for the poor, Christian love in its highest manifestation and affection towards something dear and valued. Inherent in these meanings is the individual person activating a feeling, usually towards those worse off than them. That's a power imbalance built into the very foundations of charity. However, other approaches open the door to what the action of love can be, disassociated from this.
We all know about Ubuntu, but the concept is transcontinental and has variations in many African languages and cultures - each espousing the notion that we exist only in a shared human state and mobilising in ways often not involving money. In Japanese culture, philanthropy takes on the language of duty and obligation - explaining why the Western idea of benevolence and charity faces challenges in translation and why much of this philanthropy was and is formalised and strategic, not individual. Misunderstanding this in the Western charitable tradition is a classic case of separating good governance from social justice. When philanthropy is embedded within the backbone of societal organising, whether governments, communities or corporations, the belief that there must be a separate channel of good-doing or giving back for the middle classes becomes less necessary.
This isn’t just about using another language to profess a greater ideal - we can use English to precisely convey what freedom we are espousing with our organisations, our collectives. Think ‘Mutual Aid’, a concept of organising that means coming together, taking action, and being just - everyone has something to offer. If you seek to bring people together, mobilise, support, and advocate for them, ask: is your space best served by being referred to as a charity?
Real work, the right money
It’s also important to consider operations - because, at least in the UK, they follow the notion of charity given above. First, Sistren Collective’s guide on legal structures for social justice can help you understand how to incorporate and access funds more authentically for your mission. There is also nowhere better to understand how to access funds in ways that dismantle the status quo, or at least feel more aligned with anti-oppression work, than at Uncharitable. But understanding how to invest funds in more honest and vulnerable ways is tricky because it requires constant vigilance against the voice that says, “This isn’t legit”.
What in your spaces needs attention that traditional charity funding would never understand - is it bringing racialised employees into nature, for the sake of it and because you know our people don’t have enough access to the basic human right that is walking through a forest and feeling better? Is it education on food sovereignty for your beneficiaries as part of educating them about housing conditions and access? The business of living well is as much about knowing what tomorrow will require as knowing what you’re entitled to today.
What other ways of supporting your people do you need to formalise that a charitable purpose would not stretch to? And how do you communicate this so that it presents new operational and impact paradigms for this industry? This is about understanding how these methods speak to our organisations' many more profound and multi-faceted works, which the current 'charity' format betrays.
We need you and your ethics
I’ve alluded to this above, but to be explicit, being rooted in community organising, advocating, and connecting resources are some real human truths. This work can have a more profound meaning and unlock healing and potential in ways that capitalism and charity, when the latter acts as an agent of the former, cannot conceive of.
In Islam, ‘charity’ has direct and formidable connections with salvation and is an act of worship named after truthfulness and intent. This speaks to its root in anonymity and behaviour, not just in giving - how have you committed who you are, what you are, in service of others today? With what intention and how habitual is it? What's true? Another important case is of Native American and Alaskan peoples giving; it’s cyclical - it is about the honour of giving and receiving and, as a result, the obligation to provide more in the next instance. Everyone contributes and is responsible for securing the community's future through balance and removing hierarchies. This is misunderstood in Westernised American cultures and has meant that the politics of giving became yet another way in which oppressive American institutions chose to force Native American assimilation.
The ethics we embrace when we organise with particular communities and missions are necessarily going to be anti-establishment in many cases. There is value in understanding how to formalise in ways that separate us from traditional, established charitable ethics, defined by hierarchies, potentiality and convenience.
Our work is not always convenient. It is not always about where there is potential to receive. It is usually about swimming against the tide and nearly always breaking down hierarchies to improve access to human connection and achieve liberation. Communicating the actual value and intention behind your work, its greater purpose and where it sits in the chain of liberation that links us so far back and will bring us much farther forward is a privilege and a duty. It is exposing but necessary to create a language of change-making, giving and hopefulness that is not charity.
Which is the bigger risk?
Speaking of exposure, though - could removing our work and organisations from the non-profit industrial complex mean our systemic impact is more likely to be ideological than practical? If we seem unidentifiable to funders, are we less likely to be funded, and as a result, are we likely to see that our efforts for our missions suffer? In tandem, we might know that we can live in the example of the liberation we want to establish, but is that impact enough? What is the strain we place on our leaders and advocates to obtain funding, explain our position, and identify ourselves if we organise outside of this status quo? There are real risks to functioning outside of a recognised template of “change-making”.
Even if that is the only pathway to real change. However, thankfully, we live in a time when it is easier to source, connect with and co-produce resources, find people doing this work and find new success measures. Shifting the narrative away from expected successes and finding ways to tell the story of what your mission is seeking to achieve and how the organisation, culture and model that you have created and named is doing that has never been easier. We take into our own hands the activation of our ethics and, with it, a new, authentic and sustainable era of change-making.
We must rehearse our freedom by insisting on not referring to our spaces with the identities that others recognise. There are realistic alternatives to compromising liberation so we can align ourselves with an idea of 'giving back' that is so hollow and unpromising. Invite yourselves to form and create your own ideas, open yourself to the opportunity to delve deeper into simultaneous building and breaking in the sector, and share your process, the hard and the soft parts.