“Who Am I Fighting For? Who Am I Accountable To?”: Comradeship as a Frame for Nonprofit Community Work in Technical Communication

ABSTRACT

While entrepreneurship is a pervasive cultural concept, it is not universally applicable. Drawing on a year-long study with nonprofit workers, this piece articulates a frame for understanding technical and professional communication work within nonprofits rooted in comradeship, which privileges community needs, everyday people, listening, and solidarity across stakeholder groups. Such a frame offers a more nuanced understanding of how accountability frames the work of nonprofit employees and other stakeholders dedicated to social justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Workplace studies
• ethics
• nonprofits
• community-based research
• entrepreneurship

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank: the participants in this project who forever shifted my understanding of community-engaged work; the reviewers and editorial staff at TCQ who offered generous and generative feedback on this piece; Krista Speicher Sarraf and Lynne Stahl for helping me fine-tune this piece’s contribution in our writing group; and Dustin Edwards and Bridget Gelms for reviewing multiple drafts of this article and (always) cheering me onwards.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The results shared in this article come from a study approved by Purdue University’s IRB (Protocol #1804020503). The author was affiliated with Purdue University at the time this study was conducted.

2. Civic entrepreneurs are a specific brand of social entrepreneur, focused on community building between business, government, and the public (Gerding & Vealey, 2017, p. 300).

3. The program was a great success. Mychele ran it several times, resulting in funding for multiple public art projects and a coffee shop start-up managed by local high school students.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Purdue College of Liberal Arts, Association for Business Communication, Purdue Research Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Erin Brock Carlson

Erin Brock Carlson is an assistant professor in the Department of English at West Virginia University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Professional Writing and Editing. Her current research focuses on the relationships between place, technology, and community, specifically in rural areas.