Resourcing Organization As A Vocation

Earlier this month we hosted our third brown bag briefing for funders. This time we talked about a topic near in and dear to my heart, Organizing As A Vocation. [Sign Up For The Next Brown Bag On Movement Defense Here]

Organizations are often faced with a double bind of either investing in professional best practices of the mainstream economy (along with all the bias, discrimination, and inflexibility that they entail) or stepping into more liberated structures (along with all the emergent, ever-changing, messiness that they entail). While mainstream professionals can be effective it can also feel inhumane, relying on existing problematic hierarchies of worth, and out of touch with the communities it seeks to work in. Liberating structures on the other hand ask people to show up as their whole selves which can mean traumatized, with long unmet needs and desires that no current structure can satisfy. Mainstream structures tie us to mainstream dysfunction, but liberated structures can internalize systemic dysfunction that no organization can tackle on its own. 

Many organizations tried to offer places for emotional conversation, trauma informed processes or other more humane practices only to open more emotion and depth of tension than they had the ability to hold. If an organization didn’t succumb to internal conflict, it risked losing its mission and becoming a self-help circle for staff. Yet rather than see this as a reason to remain in the inhumane devil we know, we should see this reason to movements to invest in organization structures and social infrastructure that can actually hold our whole selves. 

Rather than think of organizations as building blocks of movements we should understand the role they play in modern political economies as more akin to private governments. They are the vehicles through which many public goods are consumed (like utilities and social trust) and accessed (health care, workforce development, social insurance). Our employers can determine what we can and can’t do or say for hundreds of hours of our waking lives. With the destruction of third places, they also tend to be our main sites for socialization. 

In the same way that capitalism is not the only way to organize our political economy, firm is not the only organizational form that production and collaboration can take. By splitting our financial security and benefits from our day to day activities we can free up organizers, activist and spiritualists to self-organize in new organizational forms. There is reason that most vibrant and impactful work comes from unfunded affinity groups on the ground. People who come together for a shared purpose always do more innovative work than people who come together for a paycheck. 

Unfunded affinity groups do not have to worry about organizational longevity, legacy, or legitimacy to funders. They don’t have to worry about wasting resources they don’t have.  When they get into conflict, they also don’t have the added stress of putting people’s livelihoods on the line. Yet unfunded organizations full of unfunded people have a whole host of other problems. They tend to form deep trauma bonds with their comrades as people use the work of affinity group as either a vehicle to meet unmet needs subconsciously or balm for unmet needs. 

What is needed is new mode of social reproduction for movements that allow for people to meet their needs without automatically burdening them with organizational needs. This can be through having community supported change agents. That is to say, by developing vehicles by which communities can donate to individuals who have a track record of working for them. Their donations are not tied to a specific body of work but rather to specific organizers who are entrusted to go where community needs and their own sense of meaning take them. 

By organizing these community supported change agents into affinity groups there can be peer accountability along with community accountability while not requires people to build “movement firms.” Your accountability group would make the people making sure you are working in alignment with shared values. Each organizes would be free to work in different emergent formations or as solo community practitioners free of philanthropic market or the mainstream market concerns. 

We call this structure for community supported change agents The Votary.

The Votary is a self-governing community of veteran organizers, activists and healers that are supported by the organization. It is comprised of aspirants, avowed members, and cadre members. Aspirants are newer folks who want to be mentored into becoming more effective change agents or mystics. Votaries are more experienced folks who vow to make change work their lifelong vocation and want to be held in support and accountant by similarly committed people. The Cadre are veteran folks who have a consistent track record of innovative work aligned with Wildseed’s vision and principles of generative action for receive life long basic income support.

Cadre members are financially, emotionally, and spiritually supported by the ecosystem to be community supported change agents. They are able to pursue labor at the intersection of their individual purpose, their Trust’s mission and the Philosophy of WildSeed. They can launch new programs, propose new staff to hire to further their projects (with the approval of general circle) and support the ecosystem through their labor.

You Can Read More About The Idea In Our White Paper On The Subject