Nonprofit crisis responses and the reproduction of systemic inequities: an autopoietic ecology account of neutrality failure

Purpose Neutrality has been upheld as a guiding principle in nonprofit crisis response, with nonprofits favoring impartial service provision to maintain broad legitimacy. We challenge the presumption that neutrality is inherently virtuous and explore how it can perpetuate inequities in communities already burdened by social and economic marginalization. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on critical nonprofit studies and the emerging framework of autopoietic ecology, we reconceptualize neutrality not as apolitical impartiality but as a programmatic logic: a distinction-encoding mechanism that stabilizes nonprofit operations by selectively constraining what can be observed, prioritized and acted upon. Findings We introduce nonprofit neutrality failure, a condition in which neutrality programs–while once effective in securing legitimacy and reducing complexity–become rigid filters that generate organizational blind spots and reproduce systemic inequities. We develop a process model showing how neutrality failure emerges, becomes self-reinforcing and may be countered through equity-driven counter-programming. Practical implications The framework equips nonprofit leaders, funders, and policymakers with a diagnostic tool for identifying neutrality failure and experimenting with counter-programmatic interventions that expand organizational reflexivity and responsiveness. Social implications By revealing the structural complicity embedded in neutrality programs, the paper reframes equity not as an external moral imperative but as a viability-enhancing reconfiguration of organizational distinctions. This perspective repositions nonprofits as actors capable of systemic transformation rather than mere crisis stabilizers. Originality/value We extend existing accounts of nonprofit sector failure by theorizing neutrality failure and demonstrating how claims to impartiality function as programmatic constraints that sustain exclusion. This contributes a novel systems-theoretical foundation to the critical turn in nonprofit studies.