The Parachute Problem: When Good Intentions Land Without Roots
In East Los Angeles, we know the rhythm of things that come and go. The street vendors who appear at dawn and vanish by noon. The seasonal rains that flood our alleys and then dry up, leaving cracks in the asphalt. And the nonprofits—those well-meaning organizations that descend with clipboards and promises, only to pack up their banners six months later. This is the parachute model: an outside group spots a problem, secures funding, runs a program, and then leaves when the grant cycle ends. It’s a pattern that treats our neighborhoods as projects, not as places. It mistakes urgency for sustainability, and in doing so, it often does more harm than good.
I am Father Tomás Guerrero, and I have served the parish of Santa María de los Ángeles for over two decades. From this corner of Boyle Heights, I’ve watched the cycle repeat. A shiny new initiative arrives to “address food insecurity” or “promote youth leadership.” They rent a storefront, hire a few local residents at entry-level wages, and hold a press conference. Then the funding dries up, the staff is laid off, and the storefront becomes another vacant window. The community is left with the residue of broken trust—and the quiet, bitter knowledge that they were never truly partners in the work. This article is not an attack on all nonprofits. It’s a call to examine a specific, damaging practice, and to imagine something better: community organizing that is rooted, accountable, and shaped by the people who will still be here long after the grant reports are filed.
How the Parachute Model Undermines Community Trust
The parachute model isn’t just inefficient; it’s a form of institutionalized discontinuity. When an organization enters a community without deep roots, it often fails to understand the existing networks of care that already hold people together. In East L.A., those networks are our parishes, our comités de vecinos, our abuelitas who check on each other’s children, our mutual aid circles that have operated for generations without a 501(c)(3) designation. The parachuting nonprofit rarely sees these assets. Instead, it diagnoses deficits and designs interventions that duplicate or disrupt what’s already working.
Consider the experience of a food distribution program that arrived in our neighborhood three years ago. The organization, based in a distant city, secured a large grant to combat food insecurity. They set up a weekly pantry in a local park, staffed by volunteers from outside the area. For six months, they handed out boxes of non-perishable goods. Then the grant ended, and the trucks stopped coming. What they didn’t know—because they never asked—was that our parish already ran a small but consistent food ministry, supported by local donations and staffed by parishioners who knew every family by name. The outside program undercut our ministry by offering more food, more conveniently. When they left, families who had come to rely on them were confused and angry. Our ministry had to rebuild trust, one conversation at a time. The parachute had landed, delivered its cargo, and departed—leaving a crater where a garden could have grown.
This pattern repeats across sectors: health, housing, youth development. The common thread is a lack of place-based accountability. The nonprofit is accountable to its funders, not to the neighbors. Its metrics are outputs—number of people served, number of workshops held—not outcomes like long-term stability or community ownership. When the metrics are met, the mission is considered complete, regardless of what remains on the ground.
The Liturgical Calendar as a Model for Sustained Presence
In the church, we live by a calendar that returns, year after year, to the same stories. Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Ordinary Time. This cycle isn’t repetitive in a stale way; it’s a spiral that deepens our understanding with each turning. Community organizing, at its best, follows a similar rhythm. It’s not a one-time campaign but a long-term commitment to a place and its people. It requires showing up in the same neighborhood, on the same streets, through multiple seasons—building relationships that can weather conflict and disappointment.
When I think of rooted organizing, I think of the posadas we hold each December. For nine nights, we walk through the neighborhood, knocking on doors, singing the ancient plea for shelter. This isn’t a program with a start and end date; it’s a practice that has shaped our community’s identity for generations. It teaches us that hospitality is not a transaction but a way of being. The organizations that have earned our trust operate in a similar way. They don’t arrive with a fixed agenda. They come to listen, to learn the names of the abuelitas and the tías, to understand the history of each block. They stay through the hard seasons—the budget cuts, the leadership transitions, the moments when nothing seems to work. And they adapt their work to the community’s evolving needs, not the other way around.
What Rooted Organizing Looks Like in Practice
Rooted organizing isn’t a new concept, but it requires a different set of commitments than the parachute model. Here are some of the practices I’ve seen work in East Los Angeles and beyond:
1. Hire from Within the Community
An organization that’s serious about staying will invest in local leadership. This means hiring staff who live in the neighborhood, who speak the language—not just Spanish, but the cultural language of confianza and respecto. It means paying a living wage and providing benefits, not relying on the underpaid labor of community members who are expected to be grateful for the opportunity. When the staff are neighbors, they’re accountable in ways that outsiders can never be. They see the people they serve at the grocery store, at Mass, at their children’s schools. That daily accountability changes everything.
2. Build on Existing Assets, Not Deficits
Every community has assets: strong families, local businesses, faith institutions, cultural traditions, informal networks of care. Rooted organizing begins by mapping these assets and asking how they can be strengthened. This is the opposite of the deficit model, which sees only problems to be solved. In our parish, we have a group of women who have been making and selling tamales to support families in crisis for over thirty years. A rooted organization would ask: How can we support this existing mutual aid network? Perhaps by helping them secure a commercial kitchen space, or by connecting them with local farmers for ingredients. The goal isn’t to replace their work with a formal program, but to amplify what’s already working.
3. Commit to a Place, Not a Project
Funders often prefer projects with clear timelines and deliverables. But community transformation doesn’t happen on a grant cycle. It requires a commitment to a specific geography—a neighborhood, a parish, a block—over many years. This allows organizers to build deep relationships, to understand the history and the power dynamics, and to earn the trust that’s necessary for collective action. One organization I respect has been working in the same four-block area of Boyle Heights for over a decade. They’ve seen children grow up, families move in and out, businesses open and close. They’ve become part of the fabric of the place. That’s the kind of presence that can support real change.
4. Share Power, Not Just Resources
Parachuting nonprofits often bring resources—money, food, expertise—but they rarely share decision-making power. Rooted organizing requires that community members have real authority over the work: setting priorities, hiring staff, managing budgets. This can be messy and slow. It requires that outside organizations give up control and trust the wisdom of the people most affected by the issues. But without this power-sharing, any gains will be temporary. When the outside organization leaves, the community will be no stronger than before.
The Cost of Disruption: When Parachuting Becomes Extraction
There’s a deeper problem with the parachute model that’s rarely discussed: it can function as a form of extraction. Nonprofits that parachute in often gather data, stories, and testimonials from community members. They use this material to secure more funding, to publish reports, to build their brand. Then they leave, taking that social and intellectual capital with them. The community is left with nothing but the memory of being studied and used. This isn’t service; it’s a kind of mining. And it’s particularly damaging in neighborhoods like ours, where residents have learned to be wary of outsiders who come asking questions.
I’ve seen this in the context of cultural memory work. East Los Angeles is rich in stories—of migration, of resistance, of faith. Well-intentioned researchers and artists sometimes arrive to “document” these stories. They record oral histories, take photographs, collect artifacts. Then they return to their universities or galleries, and the community never sees the results. The stories are taken, but they’re not returned. This is a form of cultural extraction that mirrors the economic extraction our neighborhoods have endured for generations. True memory work is reciprocal. It stays in the community, is shaped by the community, and belongs to the community.
Questions for Discernment: Before You Fund or Partner
If you’re a funder, a nonprofit leader, or a community member considering a partnership, I invite you to ask these questions. They’re not a checklist but an examen—a prayerful, honest assessment of intentions and practices.
- Who is already doing this work? Before launching a new initiative, have we identified and listened to the existing groups, leaders, and networks that are already addressing this issue? Have we asked them what they need?
- What is our exit plan? If we’re not planning to stay forever, how will we ensure that the work continues after we leave? Have we built local capacity, or have we created dependency?
- Who holds the power? Who makes the key decisions about the work? Is the community represented in governance? Do residents have veto power over initiatives that affect their lives?
- Are we accountable to the community? How do we report back to the people we serve? Is there a mechanism for community members to hold us accountable if we fail to deliver on our promises?
- What are we leaving behind? When the project ends, what will remain? Stronger relationships? Local leadership? Or just memories of a program that came and went?
FAQ: Common Questions About Nonprofit Accountability
Why do nonprofits parachute into communities in the first place?
Often, it’s not out of malice but out of a structural problem. Funders typically award grants for specific, time-limited projects. Nonprofits respond to these funding opportunities by designing programs that fit the grant requirements, even if the program isn’t what the community needs or wants. The pressure to show quick results and meet funder metrics can override the slower, more relational work of building trust and local leadership. Additionally, some organizations lack the cultural humility to recognize that they’re not the first or the best equipped to address a community’s challenges.
How can a community protect itself from parachuting nonprofits?
Communities can develop their own standards and processes for engaging with outside organizations. This might include forming a neighborhood council or advisory board that reviews proposals from outside groups, asks critical questions about their plans for sustainability and power-sharing, and has the authority to say no. Building strong local networks and institutions—like faith communities, mutual aid groups, and local businesses—also creates a buffer against disruptive interventions. When a community is well-organized internally, it’s harder for outsiders to come in and impose their own agendas.
What does a healthy partnership between a nonprofit and a community look like?
A healthy partnership is one where the community sets the agenda and the nonprofit provides resources and support to help achieve that agenda. The nonprofit is transparent about its funding, its limitations, and its timeline. It invests in local leadership and shares decision-making power. It measures success not by outputs but by outcomes that the community defines—such as increased local ownership, stronger social networks, or improved health and well-being over the long term. And it commits to staying for the long haul, or to leaving behind a sustainable, community-led structure when it does exit.
What can funders do to discourage parachuting and encourage rooted work?
Funders can shift their practices to support long-term, place-based work. This includes providing multi-year, unrestricted funding; prioritizing organizations with deep local roots and community-led governance; and measuring success by community-defined outcomes rather than short-term outputs. Funders can also support capacity-building for local groups, helping them develop the infrastructure to receive and manage grants directly, rather than relying on outside intermediaries.
A Call to Conversion
This isn’t just a matter of policy or practice. It’s a matter of conversion—a turning of the heart. The parachute model is rooted in a mindset that sees communities as problems to be solved, rather than as neighbors to be loved. It’s a form of poverty, not of resources but of relationship. And it won’t be fixed by new techniques or better grant applications. It requires a fundamental reorientation: from doing for to being with, from fixing to accompanying, from projects to presence.
In this season of Ordinary Time, we’re reminded that the bulk of our lives is lived not in dramatic moments but in the daily, faithful work of tending what God has given us. The same is true for community organizing. The most transformative work happens not in the splashy launch but in the quiet, consistent presence of people who have committed to a place and to each other. Let us be those people. Let us build organizations that are rooted, accountable, and shaped by the communities they serve. And let us have the courage to say no to the parachutes, no matter how well-intentioned, and yes to the slow, holy work of staying put.
Father Tomás Guerrero is the pastor of Santa María de los Ángeles Parish in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles. He writes at the intersection of faith, community organizing, and cultural memory.