Alternative Organizing and (In)Visibility

Hidden Organizations

Hidden organizations can be classified along a continuum from “fully transparent” such as transnational corporations to “dark,” secretive, and local organizations such as men’s bathhouses (Scott, 2013). Between the extremes are shaded and shadowed organizations. Shaded organizations exist mostly in the open, and their members and actions are largely recognizable; however, they take steps to protect some aspects of their identity. In contrast, shadowed organizations are less visible, avoid public recognition, may engage in questionable practices, and are often decentralized. Overall, hidden organizing presents unique advantages, as well as challenges to overcome (Stohl & Stohl, 2011). The challenges are especially interesting when discussing issues of nonprofit organizing because NPOs face intense pressure to operate transparently (Hale, 2013).

NPOs and Transparency

In some ways, the modern nonprofit and its transparency pressures can be understood as a product of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and its tax codes, which encourage individual contributions to NPOs (Eisenberg & Eschenfelder, 2009). NPOs emerge in response to various global or local social causes, including homelessness, women’s rights, disability issues, and funding for local schools. Yet, from a legal perspective, nonprofits are most easily understood via their tax designation as a 501(c)(3) organization (Hale, 2013). A 501(c)(3) may not distribute excess funds to shareholders, but must rather take those funds and apply them toward furthering its charitable cause to maintain its tax-exempt tax code designation.

To operate, most NPOs also must continuously seek out funding relationships with donors, stakeholders, and organizations (Eisenberg & Eschenfelder, 2009; Hale, 2013). These relationships between NPOs and organizations such as United Way often represent a deeper tie than just funding, with the resources and expertise of external organizations fostering an interorganizational relationship (IOR) that better enables the NPO to achieve its goals (Barringer & Harrison, 2000).

Frequently, these IORs carry a heavy burden for transparency and an emphasis on easily displayed and understood measures of resource allocation and impact (Isett & Provan, 2005). In Western society, organizational transparency is socially constructed as something that promotes accountability (Christensen & Cheney, 2015). Organizations that refuse to be transparent may find it more difficult to develop interorganizational partnerships and receive financial contributions, affecting their ability to achieve organizational goals (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010).

Transparency is often viewed as the “normal” state of affairs for organizations (Scott, 2013), and even in instances when total transparency is not required, it is still perceived as a positive trait that leads to favorable reputations (Christensen & Langer, 2009; Moffitt, 2010). Therefore, an organization that avoids transparency as part of its shadowed or shaded organizing practices may be viewed as deviant. Hale (2013) noted, “Nonprofits lacking transparency risk loss of support from the public or particular constituencies. Loss of support courts risk of organizational failure; in very real ways, the ability of a nonprofit organization to fulfill its mission depends upon transparency” (p. 33). Overall, transparency is viewed as a way to generate organizational accountability, and thus, organizations are increasingly conforming to transparency norms (Christensen & Cheney, 2015; Nadesan, 2011).

However, research notes that while transparency may increase accountability, it also increases the possibility of external disciplining of organizations (Christensen & Langer, 2009). As a result, organizations that desire autonomy and resist external governance may organize in ways that circumvent transparency demands. In particular, anarchist organizations eschew authority structures and “battle for autonomy, self-determination and decentralization; they emphasize freedom from top-down social structures, and resistance to the rules and regulations of large-scale organizations” (Ferrell, 2014, p. 302). Thus, anarchist organizations operate in a manner that is almost incomprehensible to a society that is accustomed to transparent organizations (Ferrell, 2014).

Despite the challenges of resisting transparency norms, we believe that not only have hidden NPOs been able to exist, but they have also been thriving in the shadows, managing the inherent tension-filled relations between (in)visibilities as they promote and serve their social causes. Organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) maintain a public image but persist with a secretive membership. Other organizations such as the Independent Media Center (IMC) have existed for more than 15 years and have established an international network while remaining largely unknown (IMC, n.d.). Both these organizations face challenges to achieve their goals without exposing themselves to regulations (IMC) or revealing their membership (AA). Scholars have argued that individuals encountering similar challenges and organizational tensions manage rather than eliminate these tensions (e.g., Meisenbach, 2008; Wieland, 2011). More recently, scholars have addressed how terrorist organizations (e.g., Al Qaeda) are benefitting from enacting and managing such tensions (e.g., Schoeneborn & Scherer, 2012; Stohl & Stohl, 2011). Interest in understanding how these tensions may be enacted and experienced in NPOs operating in the shadows leads to the following questions:

Data Analysis

To understand how Assisi House operated as a shaded and shadowed organization and to examine the communicative strategies for navigating tensions of being both visible and hidden, the authors adopted a constructivist grounded theory reading of the data (Charmaz, 2006). After initial observations and interviews revealed some shaded and shadowed aspects of the organization, the authors engaged in theoretical sampling (Corbin & Strauss, 2007) by adding questions to the interview guide aimed at uncovering more information about the importance of the organization being autonomous, hidden, and visible. Data were coded by incidents (Charmaz, 2006) where incidents are compared with one another. Incident coding allowed the authors to locate recurring patterns within the data and highlight different stances toward particular topics and areas of ambivalence, agreement, or disagreement about organizational strategies among participants. These areas laid the groundwork for the development of focused codes highlighting how the organization and its members experience and navigate tensions around remaining relatively shaded and shadowed while offering public services.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT)

First, the strategically silent communicative strategies of Assisi House could largely be characterized as operating under a DADT policy. By carefully selecting organizational relationships and only communicating with organizations that would not ask for high degrees of transparency, Assisi House members felt that they could focus more on their goals as an organization. Although Assisi House and its members would always answer direct questions, the organization sought to keep itself out of the path of organizations that might ask undesirable questions or force the creation of undesirable policies.

The main arena in which the silence strategy played out for the house is in its choice to avoid communicating with various government entities. Assisi House and its actions were relatively unknown to the Department of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and the IRS, the types of government agencies that normally regulate homeless shelters in the United States. The key to this shadowed activity was not participating in the official government bureaucracy associated with incorporation as a 501(c)(3) organization (which grants tax-exempt status). Robert King, who helped found the house and has remained active in it for the last 30 years, argued that one of the largest problems with incorporating was that the organization would have to report its actions to the government:

If we took 501(c)(3) status, we’d become forced to be bureaucrats and statisticians. And we’d have to document how we spent all the money that we got, and we’d have to document . . . census statistics on . . . ethnicity and age, and all that on who we’re serving and so . . . we don’t want to spend all our time filling out paperwork.

Robert noted that being forced to report to the government would distract from the more meaningful work that the house was accomplishing.

Esther, a longtime worker who handled most of the financial paperwork for Assisi House, reflected that how Assisi House did or did not engage with external and supervising organizations was based on anarchist principles that questioned the validity of government rules. Esther stated that many of these leanings came from a Catholic Worker belief that needing permission from the government to operate was problematic, and furthermore, that engaging with a tax system used primarily to fund military actions was even worse in light of the pacifist orientations of Catholic Workers. Esther’s comments aligned very closely with a letter, written by Worker House Movement co-founder Dorothy Day (1972), which is posted on the movement’s webpage: “Our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the Works of Mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social ‘order’ which brings on wars today.”

Government agencies were not the only external organizations with which Assisi House avoided communicating and working. Organizations such as United Way, which carry requirements for transparency and oversight, were also deliberately avoided to remain unsupervised. However, Linda, a 14-year-old House volunteer, pointed out that United Way could provide Assisi House with several advantages, including the capacity to help more people:

I like the fact that [the house is] not . . . receiving funds, but I think it could be so much better if they, relied on something like United Way, you know, they could make more improvements. I feel like . . . if the Health Department came in here they’d probably have a cow.

Linda expressed some of the tensions and ambivalence here about the pros and cons of accepting help from outside organizations. She pointed out that the funds that organizations like United Way provide could be used to offer more services and improve the conditions of the house, but acknowledged that by accepting those funds, other supervising agencies (such as the Health Department) would also be granted access. In other words, the organization would be stepping out of the shadows in undesirable ways. By not communicating with or asking for help from these organizations, Assisi House remained autonomous and under the radar of organizations that might seek to regulate its activities.

Assisi House’s work with the homeless in the community also remained largely unmarked by local news media. The organization was generally only mentioned in the media when homelessness in the community was being discussed more broadly, but there was never mention of Assisi House’s specific commitment to homeless with mental illness. An online search for Assisi House yields the organization’s defunct blog, current Facebook page, and a few recent news stories on updates to the house. Assisi House is listed as a resource by some other organizations on their websites and as a cooling center on the city’s website. Interestingly, the presence of Assisi House in this city list is something that mystifies members, with Robert stating during a meeting that he was not sure how it got listed. Overall, by implementing a strategic DADT communication policy that avoided drawing attention to certain services, the organization operated in a shadowed manner.

Word-of-Mouth Communication

Although it was never described as an intentional strategy, word-of-mouth communication was prevalent among house members, contributing to the shaded practices of Assisi House. Word-of-mouth interaction was key to reaching out to donors and organizations that did not demand a high degree of transparency. The practice also served as the medium by which Assisi House spread word of its needs and services to potential volunteers and the homeless community.

First, volunteers and workers cited word-of-mouth communication as the method by which they had first heard of the house. Jimmy, who had been a worker for 4 years, said that he had heard of Assisi House from a friend who worked at a house in another city. Similarly, Anna, who had volunteered for 16 years, heard of the house from a friend. Assisi House seemed to have a smaller (though sufficient) pool of volunteers than other organizations that helped the homeless in the area (e.g., the local food bank and soup kitchen have large rotating volunteer groups), and that fact could be attributed to the shaded nature of the organization.

Word-of-mouth communication was also the primary method for letting homeless or housing insecure individuals know about Assisi House’s services. Guests such as Paz and Sonny said in their interviews that other members of the homeless community had informed them of Assisi House’s existence. Similarly, workers and volunteers both stated that when they encountered new homeless in the community that they would personally direct them to the House and tell the newcomers about the services offered by Assisi House. When other area shelters were full, unable, or unwilling to provide services, they would often suggest that homeless walk to nearby Assisi House.

Word-of-mouth communication served not only as the primary method by which Assisi House spread word of its services, but also as the principal medium by which it entered into relationships with other organizations. Instead of relying on written agreements that created paper trails, Assisi House used informal, face-to-face promises as the guarantee of future support. Two such “verbal contracts” demonstrate how some of these casual organizational relationships occurred. The first was mentioned during a house meeting, where the discussion addressed how one church no longer wished to earmark specific donations for Assisi House so that the donors could write the donations off on their taxes. However, while this church elected to discontinue the practice, Robert stated that another church was willing to start earmarking donations for the house. This new arrangement was not found through advertising, but by drawing on Assisi House’s informal word-of-mouth network.

Another verbal commitment of support occurred due to a need for roofing material. When seeking donations for the project, several local businesses were asked via phone about discounts on materials. When one business owner expressed interest in the project during the call, Sonny, a worker, arranged to meet with the owner. Sonny learned that the man had never heard of Assisi House, and after an extended conversation, the owner not only agreed to donate the materials for the new roof, but also pledged to help with one new project every year.

Assisi House extended its word-of-mouth strategy by being rather selective about its other public communication actions. Newsletters, one of the organization’s few external communications, were sent only to current donors and supporters, not to potential new supporters. If a need arose (e.g., clothes or blankets), Assisi House would normally take to its Facebook page, where the message was seen by those who already “liked” the organization. While newsletters and Facebook are more visible means of communication than word-of-mouth, Assisi House used these resources as an extension of relationships that had been previously established through personal interaction. This shaded strategy stands in stark contrast to organizations such as Salvation Army, whose bell ringing and Tree of Lights campaigns are nationally recognized and help constantly recruit new supporters to the cause.

These examples show some of the issues associated with operating as a shaded organization. The challenge of attracting just enough attention to continue to function is indicative of a fundamental tension between Assisi House’s desire to remain autonomous and its need for community support to meet its goals. The next section will more thoroughly explore how the organization manages tensions between remaining shaded and shadowed and being visible enough to receive support from the community.

Serving the Underserved

The first way that Assisi House managed (in)visibility tensions is by more publicly serving the homeless, while more secretly serving marginalized subsets of the homeless population. The organization’s central and publicly stated goal on its Facebook page was to be a “house of hospitality—offering meals, shelter, and community for homeless folks in [city].” The organization’s subfocus is only vaguely hinted at in a Facebook description line that says, “We welcome all people regardless of race, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status, and mental or physical ability.” When it was first opened, Assisi House was often filled to capacity, with men sleeping on the floor. Fifteen years after opening, Assisi House decided to create a safer environment by limiting the number of individuals who stayed in the house, no longer allowing intoxicated individuals in, and focusing on helping individuals with mental illness. Robert explained that the decision to focus on the homeless with mental illness was because they are often victims of abuse by other members of the homeless community:

We realized that . . . you know there is a hierarchy of homeless people, people that exert their power over the weaker ones, uhh, the people who are street smart, often times take advantage of the weaker ones, the people with developmentally, developmental disabilities or, or head injuries . . . some of the addicts are quite good at extracting money from other, other homeless folks. So, uh, we decided to give priority about 15 years ago to the mentally ill guys that were being taken advantage of, and the weak ones.

However, while several participants verbally shared the organization’s commitment to serving the mentally ill, this commitment was absent from the house’s few written materials. In fact, the only written mention of issues pertaining to mental illness was found on the house’s old blog, and it said that their guests with mental illness had been with them for years instead of the normal stay of a few weeks. Thus, Assisi House very publicly served the homeless, but less obviously focused on what appeared to be its core identity of providing support for the marginalized mentally ill within the broader homeless population.

Homeless individuals struggling with mental illness were not the only subpopulation that Assisi House sought to serve. Jimmy, a worker at the house for 4 years, shared that he often gave preference to undocumented immigrants who could not find any other shelter in the area. Esther said that they used to be much more involved with helping undocumented immigrants, and would actually go and pick them up when a group would break down on the highway.

Finally, individuals with certain kinds of criminal convictions on their record also struggled to find shelter in the area. The other shelters in the city required an individual to submit to a background check at the police station before being granted services and would often refuse service to individuals with violent or sex crimes on their record. While this practice might protect these organizations and their clients, it also risked losing sight of individual circumstances surrounding a conviction. Although no participants explicitly stated it, it is not a stretch to argue that if Assisi House was more transparent about its willingness to house sex offenders, felons, and undocumented immigrants as well as the mentally ill, it might have strained relationships with donors and other supporting organizations. Research participants did note that the people that Assisi House served might not be the kind of people that donors were excited to help. Highlighting the organization’s focus on these subpopulations may have damaged Assisi House’s ability to fulfill its mission; therefore, Assisi House was constantly managing visibility tensions around these issues.

The ability to make the decisions to help these particularly stigmatized populations was attributed largely to Assisi House’s commitment to act without external supervision. By employing the DADT policy, the organization served several stigmatized subpopulations and avoided oversight pressures to move people out of those beds. Members viewed this emphasis on autonomy as a virtue, and as why the House described itself as an “a-profit” organization (i.e., one operating without nonprofit tax designation). Thus, Assisi House was public about its goal of supporting the homeless population, but its less public focus on helping stigmatized groups within that population led to and/or fit well with the organization’s desire to operate outside of traditional bureaucratic and government-regulated nonprofit organizing processes. However, by operating largely as a shadowed and shaded organization and by eschewing the norms of the traditional nonprofit model, Assisi House faced unique challenges in regard to establishing credibility.

“A-Profit” Organizing and (In)Visibility

Another (in)visible tension that needed to be managed by Assisi House revolved around being recognized as a credible organization without enacting the practices of other credible homeless shelters. Guests, workers, and volunteers often drew comparisons between the things they were able to do at Assisi House and things that were not permitted or possible in other, more traditional, nonprofit homeless shelters. Nature Boy, who had been at the house for 3 years, described Assisi House as an “a-profit organization” due to its lack of incorporated status. One worker, Abe, described Catholic Worker organizing as similar to an underground movement and noted that the house functions “just at a, kind of a, grassroots level, kind of like terrorist cells right? The way, terrorist cells work is each one functions independently, right? And so we’re kind of doing the same thing but for a good reason.” The independence that Assisi House enjoyed as a result of its organizing and its lack of oversight from other houses gave the organization a great deal of freedom, but it also created new challenges for the a-profit organization.

Tension existed because most service and social justice organizations in the United States tend to be publicly incorporated and regulated via federal and state tax regulations, giving these organizations an appearance of accountability. Individuals and organizations are more likely to fund a shelter they believe can be held accountable for its actions. Therefore, Assisi House managed the tension between being visible enough to appear accountable, but not so visible that it was compelled to become more bureaucratic and marketized. For example, Esther argued that the tendency for publics to conflate incorporated status with accountability was problematic:

There’s a theory that, I DON’T think that is true, that if you’re a 501(c)(3) that you’re somehow more accountable . . . and some funders believe that. Of course, Lindsey [Robert’s ex-wife] was famous for saying, “I’m only accountable to God,” and of course she ripped us off famously. But, the number of . . . 501(c) . . . organizations that have people embezzle from them is significant, the . . . registering as a nonprofit corporation doesn’t make you immune from that.

In this statement, Esther is arguing that the belief in automatic accountability that is tied to 501(c)(3) status is unfounded, and although one person had allegedly “ripped off” Assisi House in the past, that incorporated organizations are not immune to such problems.

By not seeking funding or aid from organizations that require high accountability and financial transparency, Assisi House’s a-profit organizing provided autonomy to determine its own standards of effectiveness. Jimmy expressed how Assisi House’s focus differed from more easily quantifiable ways of measuring of output, such as the number of people helped each year. When asked about the relative lack of rules at Assisi House in comparison with other homeless shelters, he responded,

They [donors to other organizations] wanna get their money’s worth, you know, who wouldn’t? So they, wanna see results, they wanna see like souls saved. They wanna see good people . . . their definition of good people, get off the streets. And they want to see results too . . . so one of the really nice things about Assisi House is that we’re not 501(c)(3), we’re not like a charity technically.

Jimmy’s sentiment of not having to count a particular definition of good people’s “souls saved” as being a good thing was shared by many participants. Unlike traditional NPOs, Assisi House has not bought in to the idea of efficiency as proof that it is worthy of dwindling financial resources (Lewis, 2005).

Securing External Support via Anti-Bureaucratic Organizing

Although Assisi House was not a registered nonprofit and did not focus on numbers, it still needed donations, creating a key locus for managing (in)visibility tensions. Some organizational members explicitly noted that the house’s desire to not become bureaucratic affected its ability to raise funds. For example, Ross, a longtime house volunteer who had also served on a tithing committee for a local church, talked about the funding challenge this anti-bureaucracy attitude presented to Assisi House:

[my local church] would ask groups to apply and they would have to put down their basic budget, and organizations that were well organized, had . . . professional people on staff that could write these things out, and they looked great. Well, the Catholic Workers, just had the Catholic Workers who were working with the homeless everyday . . . and so theirs didn’t look so good to the budget people at the church.

In other words, Ross perceived that the organization’s aversion to traditional record keeping and lack of experience with the standard bureaucratic look of grant applications hindered the organization’s financial success.

In spite of these limits, Assisi House maintained ties with other organizations within the community to survive financially. Especially interesting were the ties that Assisi House fostered with the local churches. Some of these churches were established partnerships, for example one church housed the soup kitchen that Assisi House helped run. Other ties were less formal but no less important, especially in terms of donations. Several local churches donated hundreds of dollars every month to continue Assisi House’s work, though due to the informal nature of these collaborations, there was sometimes an air of uncertainty about whether or not donations would be forthcoming from month to month.

The primary forms of support were individual donations of money, food, and clothing. Yet, even in these cases, Assisi House’s shadowed “a-profit” status was a small but still significant barrier. Not only did Assisi House not wish to draw attention to how it was helping sex offenders and undocumented immigrants, but it also had to navigate the tension around its unincorporated status. Many participants stated that they understood that people might like to receive a write-off on their taxes for their donations, and that Assisi House’s lack of incorporation might deter some people. However, Esther and Jimmy said that some donors likely did not realize that their donations could not be written off. Esther also discussed that most donations were small enough to not be reported, and the penalty for writing the donations off was relatively small and not worth worrying about:

Gifts are, that are under $250 you don’t need to have any kind of receipt for . . . so . . . if somebody’s trying, somebody gives us money every, you know . . . several times a year, is doing their taxes, they want to get the deduction and then . . . they’re $200 short, and they say they gave us $200 nothing’s going to happen to them . . . If they get audited they’ll have to get, they’ll have to take that back out.

The somewhat casual disregard for taxes from Esther is unsurprising, considering the Catholic Worker attitude toward the tax system. Operating as a shadowed organization by not creating a legible “paper trail” and by offering a shaded path for allowing tax deductible donations created a unique set of challenges that needed to be navigated as Assisi House sought to maintain an (in)visible presence within the community.

Hidden Versus Public Social Justice Advocacy

In addition to the tensions associated with raising funds for and serving an underserved homeless population outside of bureaucratic norms, Assisi House frequently managed (in)visibility tensions when it engaged in its more visible social justice actions (e.g., public theater, peaceful trespass on military bases, candlelight vigils). One particular social justice event is worth noting as a clear example of how the organization managed the resulting visibility tensions during community meeting discussions. In an unobserved meeting, Robert suggested that the house invite an excommunicated female Catholic priest to perform a mass at the house. Robert also suggested notifying the local media about the mass. The suggestion caused a great deal of tension within Assisi House for several reasons, including its potential to affect donations from local Catholic churches and offend workers who attended such churches. Indeed, two Catholic women in the house expressed strong reservations about inviting media and one left the organization following the incident. Despite the lack of consensus, Robert brought the female priest in and informed local media about her coming, which led to Assisi House being mentioned on the local National Public Radio station the next day.

This event and its aftermath led to the next two community meetings explicitly discussing issues of visibility within the community. Nature Boy and Jimmy, who along with other community members had supported bringing in the female priest, suggested that the event could have been hosted elsewhere, without Assisi House being involved. Robert agreed that there were ways to manage the event without alienating community members and the local Catholic churches supporting Assisi House. However, he pointed out that as a community they had agreed that they supported female ordination within the Catholic Church, and he stated that “I don’t want to hide my light under a bushel.” While donations ultimately continued from the Catholic churches in the area, uncertainty about whether or not that funding would disappear persisted for nearly a month.

Debate also persisted over multiple meetings regarding how much of the next house newsletter should be focused on the female priest’s service. Some members were concerned about potentially further alienating the Catholic churches in the area, resulting in ties being cut between the organizations, and some suggested sending advance copies of the letter to the church. Other members suggested that by foregrounding the social justice action in the newsletter, the organization could generate more interest and support from groups and individuals that supported their ideals more closely.

In the end, the House managed the tensions by having Robert take personal responsibility for the female priest’s visit without apologizing for it. Robert’s newsletter piece on the topic was used both to deflect criticism from other organizational members and the House itself, and also to take the church to task for its stance on female ordination. Issues of authorship are always complicated in regard to organizational messages (Cheney & McMillan, 1990), but Robert’s nonapology sent out a strong message to readers about the importance of autonomy to organizational members and the house, even when potentially putting the operations and financial ties of the organization at risk.

Social justice advocacy actions that took center stage and attracted increased scrutiny and potential criticism from supporters clearly highlighted (in)visibility tensions. Assisi House members sought consensus on visibility-related decision making, with one outcome being loss of organizational members who did not share the group’s stance. Achieving consensus on visibility-related actions sometimes was complicated by conflicting organizational goals (e.g., the desire to receive financial support and the desire to promote social justice). The presence of potentially conflicting organizational goals created a tight line of (in)visibility that was negotiated during meetings by the organization and its members.

Overall, tensions among goals of serving underserved populations, securing external support, and pursuing social justice advocacy were all viewed as necessary for the organization even as they demanded various levels of organizational visibility. Maintaining the autonomy to serve the desired subpopulations of homeless meant that the organization engaged in some shadowed organizing practices. However, to secure funding and to engage in social justice actions, the organization and its members became much more visible, yet shaded by taking ownership for its actions and assuming a more public persona. Assisi House demonstrates that it is possible to enact various levels of (in)visibility simultaneously by, for example, engaging in very visible social justice work while still remaining quiet about the details of their work with marginalized subpopulations within the homeless population.

Theoretical Implications

The empirical findings have implications for scholarly understanding of why organizations might seek to maintain (in)visibility tensions through communication practices. As Scott noted, shadowed organizations may be seeking to protect their clients or to hide questionable practices. Assisi House appears to be maintaining a tension of (in)visibility to do both things in that it is serving a homeless subpopulation subject to stigma and may be keeping certain practices related to tax deductions off others’ radar. However, one of the distinct contributions of these findings is in how the shaded and shadowed communication practices and tensions seem to be maintained and tolerated instead of being eliminated. The findings suggest that the rationale for organizing in a way that constantly manages these tensions is directly tied to the organization’s anarchist principles, in particular to its desire to push back against what we are calling the tyranny of transparency. Because transparency has assumed such an unquestioned space in public discourse (Christensen & Cheney, 2015), organizations that resist transparent organizing norms are likely to be treated as suspect. As such, it is rare to find organizations willing to question the value of transparency. Assisi House members do not accept the standard assumption that government-mandated forms of transparency are equated with being a good organization. We argue that the House’s resistance to transparency norms results in the constant discursive management of (in)visibility tensions that can be seen as an alternative organizing practice. Assisi House deviates from the trend of increasing organizational transparency, and embraces an alternative framework that calls into question the normative practice of becoming voluntarily transparent (Christensen & Langer, 2009; Nadesan, 2011).

The resistance to transparency also reveals the complications inherent in issues related to communicative transparency and IORs. IORs carry many benefits, but as seen in the results above, they also pose several risks. Although IORs may help organizations by providing resources and reducing risk, they also open the possibility for loss of flexibility, culture clashes, and loss of autonomy in decision making (Barringer & Harrison, 2000). Assisi House’s IORs are focused on maintaining the possibility of obtaining vital resources while limiting outside organizational influence. The challenge of navigating these relationships is increased by the shaded and shadowed nature of Assisi House’s actions, because the lack of a traditional contractual relationship requires a higher degree of trust among collaborators (Mellewigt, Madhok, & Weibel, 2007). Isett and Provan (2005) found that nonprofit and public sector organizations often strove to be as formal in their relationships as possible based on the nature of their services. Assisi House’s shaded and shadowed nature challenges these assumptions. The organization’s decision to refuse funding from government and other supervising agencies necessitated that its IORs remain informal and flexible.

Another theoretical contribution of this project is the link between alternative and hidden organizing theories. We view hidden organizing as one way in which an organization can act alternatively. We see similarities between Assisi House’s (dis)organized principles of decentralization and the rise of the alternative Occupy movement in 2011, which began as a protest about income inequality, but later splintered into hundreds of groups aimed at local and global concerns. In addition, we suggest that Assisi House shares characteristics with organizations such as AA, which Borkman (2006) argued is alternative in its implementation of nonhierarchical organizing. AA and Assisi House display that not only are hidden organizations acting alternatively by hiding, but also that hidden organizations may likely engage in other alternative communicative organizing practices such as using nonhierarchical and egalitarian structures. Assisi House took this emphasis and embraced anarchist ideals of consensus as the preferred method of decision making. Also, Assisi House’s resistance to paperwork and bureaucratization, a stance intricately connected to its shaded and shadowed organizing practices, displayed another way that the organization deviated from “normative” organizing practices.

Furthermore, we contribute to Schoeneborn and Scherer’s (2012) argument that the distinction between types of organization is important when considering visibility issues. The current project has offered one example of these tensions as experienced by an organization that may be credible by some standards, but still is not a nonprofit following the institutional practices of filing papers of incorporation and applying for 501(c)(3) status. We find it telling that one of the house workers explicitly noted the potential comparison of some of Assisi House’s shadowed communication practices with those of a terrorist organization. Finally, Sanders (2012) suggested that nonprofit organizing is an inherently tension-filled way of organizing due to the need to balance unprofitable goals within a market society, which is consistent with our findings. We suggest that operating as a shaded or shadowed organization may be one way to manage that tension and resist total consent to transparency norms.

Practical Implications

On a practical level, these findings highlight an alternative path for philanthropic organizations, one that allows an organization to achieve a common goal without fully adopting market and bureaucratic values. With recent scholarship calling for serious attention to alternative models for organizing that are not based on capitalist principles (Parker et al., 2014) and Koschmann’s (2012) argument for a more nuanced and communicative based understanding of nonprofit phenomena, this article offers insight into how alternative NPOs might be able to function within a market economy without embracing market values. Although, as displayed by Esther’s description of how the organization had been “ripped off” by a former member, refusing to engage in market values does not entirely insulate an organization from some similar challenges faced by more normative NPOs. In particular though, Assisi House’s resistance to mission drift (Lewis, 2005) over a period of 30 years, even as it commits to difficult-to-serve populations, and its refusal to be altered by funding sources and market pressures suggest that “a-profit” organizations may be a sustainable alternative to marketized NPOs.

Future Directions

Additional research across a range of unincorporated nonprofits could be beneficial in testing and developing these ideas. Although this article takes a case-based approach, examining how multiple NPOs navigate the tensions of (in)visibility in response to their local organizational environment would be worth exploring via interviews and surveys. This work could highlight the moments and loci of shifts between various points on Scott’s (2013) continuum between transparent and dark organizing practices. Furthermore, studies that do comparative ethnography with organizations operating within different organizational environments would be invaluable to understanding the viability and variability of hidden organizing across contexts. We also encourage future research to delve further into organizational members’ desire to resist societal norms as a potential motivation for implementing hidden and alternative organizing practices. Furthermore, we advocate for scholars to consider how hidden and alternative organizing research relates to theorizing about stigma management communication (e.g., Meisenbach, 2010) and strategic ambiguity (Eisenberg, 1984) at both individual and organizational levels.

Although this article has emphasized tensions for the organization, future research should attend to the tensions experienced by individuals, such as guests. For example, does an organizational preference for shaded practices hinder a guest’s ability to get potentially valuable support and treatment? We note as a limitation that though our data collection sought to include the guests of the house, this analysis of the shadowed and shaded practices of the house does not highlight those voices, which suggests a possible lack of agency for the guests in determining the levels of shadowed and shaded practices at the house. Future projects could attend specifically to the role of agency in hidden organizing and focus more on the motivations, facilitation, and consequences of who does and does not get to determine how visible an organization is.