Why We Chose a ‘For-Profit’ Structure

July 28, 2024 - Emily Salja

One of the main misconceptions about Groundfire CCW is that we’re a non-profit that receives government or charitable funding. This is not the case. People are often confused when they find out that we chose a for-profit incorporated business structure, because it doesn’t seem to exactly fit with our ethos. Profit = bad, non-profit = good, right?

When we started looking into business structures at the very beginning, we were looking for three things: flexibility, sustainability, and longevity. We looked at non-profit partnerships, incorporated non-profits, regular limited and unlimited partnerships, charities, community contribution companies, and for-profit corporations.

If we chose a non-profit, we wouldn’t be able to be owners and directors: our dream of a narrative practice and community hub would be in the hands of an external board of directors. With wider-scoped initiatives, this makes sense—you want a board of checks and balances, to ensure that the owners of a business don’t turn into Scrooge McDuck behind the scenes and use government funding to line their own pockets. With a niche initiative that relies heavily on shared values and community experience, however, it didn’t make a lot of sense to us. That being said, we still considered the non-profit structure.

Where the guillotine fell on the non-profit structure idea was tri-fold:

Firstly, our awareness of shifting tides in the political sphere, not just in ‘canada’, but globally. Trans folk are simultaneously the most visible we’ve been in a long while and, in correlation, incredibly at-risk both socially and legally. We are extremely reticent to rely on competing for government funding that can easily dry up (at least one of us worked in non-profits during the Harper years, and it was…bleak).

Secondly, all three founders have had chapters of their careers in non-profit organizations, and while these organizations often do incredibly important work, the non-profit industrial complex is a real and unavoidable environment. If you’re unfamiliar with the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, here’s some places to start:

Thirdly, all three founders are experienced in disability/chronic illness/complex health concerns. A non-profit structure would not give us the option of structuring our own sustainable workflow that keeps us doing our work instead of marching towards the cliff of Burnout (yet again) due to needing to prove that we are ‘maximizing the funding allotted to us’ in order to qualify for further funding.

So, in a strange ‘twilight zone’ experience, we found ourselves leaning further and further towards a ‘for-profit’ incorporated company. ‘For-profit’, because (with the three founders as the only stakeholders) we only have to answer to ourselves and our community—not a funding body. ‘Incorporation’, because we wanted the business to be its own entity—both for liability and leverage purposes.

When we refer to liability, for example, if something terrible happens and bankruptcy is our only option, the bailiffs can only seize the company’s property; this gives us a little bit of a safety net. When we refer to leverage, while we don’t expect to use the ‘master’s tools [to] dismantle the master’s house’, there are only so many ways of “doing business” in late-stage capitalism. The ‘for-profit’ incorporated structure allows us to act in a similarly decisive way as other corporations, prioritize our own agenda without fear of retaliation from funding sources or stakeholders, and ‘put our money where our mouths are’ when it comes to re-investing in community capacity.

One of the main things we learned during this decision making process is that incorporated business structures are incredibly flexible and adaptable. Putting one together was like solving the world’s most bureaucratic Nancy Drew PC game: we kept running into the good old “well, it depends on what you want to do”. On one hand, this level of mystique and adaptability can be and often is used to perpetuate systems of exploitation, greed, and oppression. On another hand, if used creatively, it seems possible that the building blocks can be used to support social justice initiatives (for example, Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium).

As we embark on this wild journey, holding a hunch that there’s more than one way to do meaningful community work without fully throwing ourselves under the bus, we remain committed to financial accountability and transparency. Thank you for coming along with us.

In solidarity,

Emily & the Groundfire Team

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