This study examines strategies for organizational survival among community-based nonprofit organizations operating in a political environment antithetical to their missions. Qualitative fieldwork is drawn upon to examine how syringe exchange programs in New York City manage to operate despite government hostility and the disenfranchisement of drug users from policy making. This work examines the presentation of forms chosen by the groups in question, their political machinations and interorganizational relations, and the manner of claims made or not made by representatives of exchange programs in the political arena. Programs are found to have altered their outward appearance and forms away from the needs of their constituents toward protection of state interests, but they have not received very much in return.
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