Why We’re Not Building a Grant-Dependent Organization

This isn’t a new conclusion for us.

In 2011, I wrote a thesis examining nonprofit systems—their structure, incentives, and outcomes. Even then, the patterns were clear: well-intentioned missions constrained by bureaucracy, delayed by process, and often disconnected from the people they claimed to serve.

More than a decade later, after firsthand experience inside those systems, the conclusions have only hardened.

What the Theory Got Right—and the Reality Confirmed

Nonprofits are often framed as the moral alternative to markets. In practice, many are bound by the same inefficiencies as large institutions—sometimes worse.

Grant-based models tend to suffer from structural flaws that aren’t accidental:

• Decision-making is slow by design, favoring risk avoidance over responsiveness

• Funding incentives reward compliance and narrative, not outcomes

• Administrative overhead grows, while frontline impact stagnates

• Urgency is diluted, because no one inside the system bears the immediate cost of delay

When help is needed now—housing, safety, stability—months of review cycles and unanswered applications are not benign. They are harmful.

This isn’t cynicism. It’s observation.

The Myth of the “Responsible” Path

There’s an unspoken rule in mission-driven work: if you’re serious, you pursue grants. If you don’t, you’re seen as unserious, impatient, or ungrateful.

But what’s rarely acknowledged is how much time, energy, and human capital grant chasing consumes—and how little accountability exists when nothing materializes.

We’ve experienced non-responses, stalled programs, shifting requirements, and quiet denials with no explanation. Meanwhile, real needs continued to exist outside the inbox.

At a certain point, continuing down that path isn’t responsible. It’s performative.

Why We Chose a Different Model

We are intentionally building a self-sustaining, earned-revenue model—not because we don’t understand nonprofits, but because we understand them too well.

Our work centers on building and deploying skoolies as real, usable housing. That requires:

• Speed

• Autonomy

• Direct decision-making

• The ability to act without permission

Earned revenue creates pressure—but it also creates clarity. If what we build isn’t needed, it won’t survive. If it is, it can scale without waiting for approval from a committee far removed from the problem.

Independence Over Appearances

Grant dependency often shifts organizations away from truth and toward optics—toward what is fundable rather than what is necessary.

We’re choosing independence because it allows us to:

• Respond to complex, real-world situations

• Adapt quickly based on lived experience

• Measure success by outcomes, not reports

This doesn’t mean we reject collaboration or aligned funding outright. It means those tools are secondary—not foundational.

This Is a Deliberate Choice

We didn’t arrive here by accident or desperation. We arrived here through study, experience, and hard confirmation over time.

Some systems are designed to manage problems, not solve them.

We’re building something that works whether or not a grant committee ever responds.

That isn’t idealism.It’s realism.