In this groundbreaking account, a political scientist, organizer, and former foundation director unearths the anti-labor history and politics of the nonprofit industrial complex.

Many well-meaning activists have found themselves working at nonprofits for all the right reasons. But in Rebels for the System, Robert Ovetz marshals a combination of historical research and contemporary analysis to argue that foundations and advocacy nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are anything but the “do-gooder” organizations advocating for political change that they claim to be. NPOs and NGOs were explicitly designed by economic elites to channel and deescalate militant political movements into reforms palatable to the status quo.

From the Ford Foundation’s efforts to deradicalize the civil rights movements to the transformation of Black Lives Matter into an NPO focused on tepid policy change, Ovetz traces the way that NPOs and NGOs keep activists with a passion for global systemic change occupied as paid advocates in the service of often toothless moderate campaigns.

Partly in response to this dynamic, advocacy nonprofit workers have begun organizing against bad bosses, grueling working conditions, and poverty wages that allegedly serve “the cause.” The do-gooder myth is breaking down as NPO workers—as well as some union staff members—have begun unionizing and striking in the face of union-busting. This emerging nonprofit labor movement, Ovetz shows, holds the potential for nonprofit workers to democratize their work and positively contribute to mass movements working to transform society and push beyond capitalism.