the nonprofit enshittification trap

The American Dialect Society named "enshittification" its word of the year in 2023. If you aren't familiar with the term, you might feel like they chose it a couple years too early. Enshittification came alive the year before when writer Cory Doctorow coined it. He was trying to describe how the tech industry makes products that get worse over time. Companies like google, meta, and amazon have poisoned their services in similar ways. Enshittification, he wrote in the aforementioned Financial Times, "is a three-stage process:"

First, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, there is a fourth stage: they die.

It could've been the word of the year this year, too, is what I'm saying. It feels like even outside of tech, things have been enshittifying over time. How long has "planned obsolescence" been in our cultural vernacular? Our last TV seemed to die within weeks after its 1-year warranty expired. I found this sad but prescient post by Christian Sarkar about the enshittification of government. It left me wondering, what might enshittification look like in the nonprofit world?

#notallnonprofits

The disclaimer isn't here to protect my own business. These characteristics, this process, doesn't happen in every nonprofit. I've met and worked with a lot of nonprofits! But I have seen these dynamics play out or begin to play out. Some folks think of these as hazards of doing business, but they don't have to be. I write this less as a callout post and more of a humor-tinged thought exercise.

How might Doctorow's timeline appear at a nonprofit? How do some nonprofits risk enshittification?

1. Solve a problem that everyone supports. Most nonprofits start out by filling a gap that people recognize exists. This generates broad support for what is likely an easy sell. "We give trash bags to people who need trash bags."
2. Dominate the market. As the nonprofit starts doing good work, the natural impulse is to do more good work. This means more funding, then more fundraising, to stay in the black. Taken even further, this could feed a desire to dominate a particular industry. Going for scarce funding means being the best at what they do. "The state's largest distributor of trash bags to the bag-insecure, since 2025."
3. Grow too big. The expectation is that donors will continue to flock to us forever. Foundations will break through our wall Kool-Aid Man style to shower us with cash. But those donors and foundations often want to support what's new, not what we've already done. Nonprofits add services, enter new markets, and often scale up staffing last. The added stress on workers can lead to churn as people escape low pay. "95% of what we spend goes towards trash bags, not salaries."
4. Cut services. It's hard to fund everything! When funding plateaus, programming and staffing slow down to meet it. Or entire programs close down. Staff lose their jobs or face restructuring. The people who rely on those services lose access. With funds and trust dwindling, the nonprofit may try a pivot, shed staff, or even shut down. "We need to be really clear about who deserves a trash bag and who doesn't."

avoidification

How could we avoid this trap? According to Doctorow, there is are four cures for tech companies who want to break free. I'll apply his recommendations to a nonprofit that finds themselves in this swirl.

Competition. In tech, competition can prevent businesses from taking advantage of their customers. What if nonprofits are healthier in an ecosystem of organizations like them?

Regulation. Legislation has kept companies from tacking on bogus fees or cheating us out of money. What if we required a nonprofit to refer a person who'd lose services before they could cut them off? Or what if fair competition practices kept one nonprofit from dominating their market?

Self-help. Doctorow writes how a for-profit behemoth could prevent its own enshittification before it starts. It needs leaders within it to say, "no, we're not going to do that to our customers." Nonprofits could try a similar values-based decision-making model. If cuts are inevitable, it's a decision for all parties to make, not just one boardroom.

Workers. When a nonprofit's working conditions get tough, good people leave. Not enough workplaces have unions. Not enough invite input from every level when they face a big decision. If the people at the top want to enshittify their organization, someone at the bottom should be able to stop it.

engreatification

The best thing about cycles is that we can break the negative ones. We don't have to follow the curve or play the game. Who do we matter to? What do they need? What do we need to feel good about the work we do?