About Us
Building a world beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex
What is the NPIC?
An industrial complex describes a system that is designed to generate profits and preserve its own financial interests, often at the cost of the individuals or communities it claims to benefit. Those benefiting from an industrial complex generate profits by sustaining problems and writing themselves as the solution to the problems they create and/or uphold.
Charity and aid have been used as tools of oppression by creating industries that promote cycles of dependency on aid while allowing certain actors to profit off of that dependency, thus creating the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC)
But... isn't In-Sight Collaborative a nonprofit?
In-Sight Collaborative is adamantly opposed to the oppressive systems and structures that create the current humanitarian, development, and nonprofit sectors. These sectors as we know them are plagued with supremacy mentalities, colonial violence, and capitalist motives that perpetuate harm and thwart the pursuit of collective liberation.
Although we are dedicated to abolishing these systems of harm both within the humanitarian and nonprofit sectors and beyond, we recognize that we are deeply embedded within them. In order to operate safely in a global climate that is hostile towards collective liberation and anticolonial movements, concessions must be made by organizations and movements like ours.
As a small organization that relies heavily on volunteers and donated resources, we do our best to be conscious of what platforms and tools we use, how we use them, and of the ways that big tech contributes to global human rights violations and climate terrorism. However, we also acknowledge that our resources are limited and we must utilize certain platforms in order to operate. We remain committed to consistently exploring ways we can do better within our own limitations.
We position ourselves within the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC) to act as a consistent crack in the wall of the system by taking inspiration from accompaniment models, abolitionist movements, empathetic system design, and healing justice framework. Our modus operandi centers collective liberation and aims to progress our journey towards a more equitable and just world. We remain deeply committed to exploring emergent strategies that sustain our work and our team while challenging oppressive, capitalist systems. We hope you join us in this process of re-imagining a better world.
What We Do
In-Sight Collaborative is a facilitator to those in the humanitarian, nonprofit, and development sectors who recognize that cultivating an equitable aid system starts with oneself. Moving from its direct aid model, In-Sight Collaborative now works to embody liberatory models like accompaniment, mutual aid, and healing justice. We educate humanitarians, donors, activists, and laypeople to cultivate a more equitable system by providing educational tools, programs, and platforms to learn, unlearn, and co-learn so we can move away from harmful policies and practices and towards collective liberation.
How We Do It
In-Sight Collaborative's Theory of Change: Our programs are addressing these trends in different ways. In-Sight Collaborative’s programmatic theory of change seeks to articulate strategic ways in which humanitarian aid professionals can collaborate, problem-solve, and advocate for a more equitable system.
Our theory of change advances three objectives that collectively realize our Mission and Vision:
(1) If meaningful opportunities for co-learning, mutual aid, and organizing are accessible to aspiring and seasoned humanitarian practitioners to create a more equitable aid system; (2) and donors and aid-giving organizations adopt norms and culture of aid delivery that respects the dignity and agency of the affected population along the migratory pathway; (3) and values of humanitarianism and accompaniment are mainstreamed and implemented beyond the aid sector; then our interactions with migration and aid systems will move beyond upholding the status quo and can instead pursue collective liberation for all.
The History of In-Sight Collaborative
In-Sight Collaborative was founded in 2016 by a group of friends volunteering in refugee camps in Northern Greece. In an acute humanitarian crisis spanning acres and acres of farm fields, train tracks, and spreading to gas station parking lots and abandoned hotels, our founding members recognized that the current lens we had grown up viewing the world through was dangerously misleading. We saw a need for more collaboration, for more inclusion of the affected populations calling these camps home; for more platforms where the experiences of the displaced could be magnified rather than told on their behalf.
Originally an online storytelling platform sharing authentic stories from frontline humanitarians and those experiencing forced displacement and crisis, In-Sight Collaborative has evolved into a global education platform, reaching hundreds of current and aspiring humanitarians.
In-Sight Collaborative’s mission is to cultivate future humanitarian leaders to promote adaptive and intentional humanitarian work, promoting a model of accompaniment along the migratory pathway. Our mission is rooted in the idea that anyone can be a humanitarian with the right resources and platform. In-Sight Collaborative positions itself as a facilitator and contributor to those in the humanitarian sector who are recognizing that aid work starts with oneself – recognizing the relationship that humanitarians have with themselves, their community, and their work, which translates to larger systemic issues we are seeing.
Thanks to our Partners
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