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Are You The Movement?

This is interesting.



We tried a similar ask during my time at MFA. We set up a microphone (similar to the famous Howard Dean "Bat" or one of these money-counting thermometers you always see), told people how we were going to spend their money (organizing some shows leading up to the election), and asked for contributions of $5, $10, $15 bucks - a coffee, a pizza, a CD. I think we set a goal of $15,000 and barely raised $4,000 (with the help of some generous artists).

One problem might have been that we didn't have a strong enough bond with more than a handful of our supporters - most of whom had a stronger connection to a band than our organization. Our ask might have rung hollow, too, as it was pretty widely known how well-funded we were (we weren't shy about talking about it on the site). The video makes the League's ask a lot stronger than what we did at MFA, and I'm betting that they've got a list with tighter bonds to the org than we did.

Self-sustainability is the holy grail that all nonprofits strive for - and its something donors look to achieve as well (they can say job well-done and invest in other places). Over-reliance on large donors for operating funds is an albatross on the youth movement's neck - it makes us hugely vulnerable to having our legs cut out beneath us, and in some instances forces us to compete with our partners for the same pools of money. It's not surprising - young people have less cash to spend on something like this and sustain our own institutions - yet its the opposite situation from what's going on with the national party and in the netroots, where Democrats are making huge gains among small dollar donors, and thousands of small donors are uniting to help more progressive candidates get on the ballot and win.

I wonder how this will go down.

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April 10th, 2007 11:32am
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I hope it works!

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Tue, 2007-04-10 12:42.

I’ll be kicking in, in spite of the fact that I haven’t really done anyting with the League in quite a while. I will also try and spread the word about this.

On a related note, I also like that Matt and Chris from MyDD have been fundraising, and that Living Liberally is making a serious run at self-funding. I think it will be a struggle, but I find it really encouraging that people are starting to push more seriously to bootstrap and self-finance rather than chase big-donor payoffs.

I've thrown down; Catch-22

Submitted by Michael Connery on Tue, 2007-04-10 13:15.

Agreed.

I threw down $30 for Chris and Matt. I’d do so for Drinking Liberally too, but their fundraiser is a bit stiff for my budget right now. I’ll probably throw $30 to the League once I get my paycheck this week.

Seeing the self-funding going on is great. These are also all institutions that have spent years building base. In the case of the League, they’ve been fed by the big grantmakers. Which is fine - yay on them for getting the grants and double yay on all the funders for giving the money and investing in youth. MyDD and DL have scraped by on pure force of will and civic spirit (and booze), but they’ve got hugely loyal followings.

I’m encouraged. I think DL and MyDD will survive and eventually be self-sustaining. I hope the League can pull it off to. That would be encouraging.

One of the things I’m thinking about is young voter donations to Presidential candidates. I threw Dean $100 and Kerry $50 back in the day. I’ll probably do the same for Edwards at some point (if I’m still with him during the summer or fall) and whoever becomes the Democratic nominee.

I really wish there was a way to know how much voters under 30 give to Presidential campaigns. I’m sure its not insubstantial, and there has to be a way to channel some of that elsewhere … It’s a problem though. Institutions like DL need to work their way up and build a base before that’s really an option. And groups like the League (or MFA) get the large checks from big donors - making the whole idea of giving kinda pointless in the eyes of many folks.

It’s a bad-ass Catch-22.

There are ways...

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Tue, 2007-04-10 21:55.

I think the fact the neither the League of MFA are very open about their budgeting is part of the issue. I agree that there’s a whole “we don’t need to give to you because you already got the cash” deal, but I think that’s vastly exacerbated when people don’t know how much money you actually have or how you are spending it. I mean, even now the League talks about “losing a third of our funding” without explaining how much that is or where it was coming from.

Fiscal transparency is something I think we all crave, but most organizations reflexively recoil from the idea. I mean, in MFA’s case we didn’t even have it internally.

On another track, I actually feel good about giving money to the MyDDers, LL and the League. Much better than trying to donate to any of these candidates. Early in 2003 I tried hard to raise money from my peers for Dean and did a decent job (a little over $600). I think if more people like me engaged like that for “our” orgs rather than joining the fray for the primary candidates, we might see a better ROI.

I love me some ROI

Submitted by Greg Bloom (not verified) on Wed, 2007-04-11 12:30.

And right now I’d love even more some data (any data!) on whether people under thirty are donors in any significant way. To what causes and through what channels.

Not snarking that it can’t happen, it’s just that everything I’ve seen in standard fundraising lit is that donors are typically 40+ or even 50+; but I’d like to think otherwise. Got data?

No Data

Submitted by Michael Connery on Wed, 2007-04-11 12:41.

I certainly don’t have any data. I’ve asked some of the campaigns if they are able to break that data out (from online donations), but they said it’s not something they’re tracking.

So anecdotally, I’m willing to bet that young voters give a not insignificant amount of money ($1-$2 million/cycle) donating to presidetial candidates. I’m willing to bet that giving to anything else - particularly obscure “youth” nonprofits - is significantly less likely.

I'd go more.

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Wed, 2007-04-11 21:35.

I would guess that in the 2004 cycle, including primaries, people under the age of 30 accounted for about 1% of political donations.

That’s still around $10M.

Not all, but most

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Wed, 2007-04-11 21:39.

Certainly people over 30 donate a lot more. But the aggregate contributions of people under 30 is hardly an insigificant sum of money. My suggestion is that, especially at this stage, Millennials are better off giving to youth orgs which will pressure/promote candidates, than to candidates directly. Indeed, the relatively small scale of our contributions should make that obvious. We’re not about to buy influence directly. Need to invest that shit in building real political power if we want to have any real juice.

Making it easy

Submitted by Fred Gooltz on Tue, 2007-04-17 21:03.