Raise one hand if you’ve ever heard the role of philanthropy and civil society described as working on the failures of the market and the failures of the state.
Raise your other hand if you’ve heard that civil society needs to be more “corporate” and use the tools/logic/frameworks the market uses. (Occasionally, we are asked to borrow from the state, too, but thankfully, less often!)
If those tools/logic/frameworks contributed to the problem, are they the ones that will help us out of it?
Audre Lorde said it plainly: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
And if that doesn’t land, Buckminster Fuller offered a different entry point: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Does transformation come from perfecting what is? Or does it emerge when we dare to step outside the frame altogether?
Ask not what makes civil society more efficient, strategic, or measurable in market terms, but how can it be made more like society? Messy. Relational. Rooted. Capable of holding contradiction. Designed not to dominate or extract, but to accompany and connect.
To work on society is one thing.
To work like society is another.
Originally written for LinkedIn on 23 June 2025. View original →
Gautam John 
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