Democracy Alliance

Matt Bai's new book, The Argument: Bloggers, Billionaires, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics hit the shelves this week. The buzz about this book has been pretty heavy, as Bai is known for writing some of the better political pieces in the New York Times Magazine in recent years, and he's been something of a fixture in the new progressive movement, appearing at Yearly Kos (both years) and tagging along at Drinking Liberally's and other events.

Over at AlterNet, Don Hazen rips the book to shreds, basically calling Bai a shill for Clintonism and the DC insider class in opposition to which the blogosphere and broader netroots have arisen. This is the book people are going to be talking about for the next few months, and even Hazen admits that it provides valuable history on the last 4 years in Democratic politics (particularly Dean's 50 State Strategy and the rise of the Democracy Alliance).

My copy is in the mail. I'll be looking forward to seeing if Hazen's review holds up.

For the next few days I'll be in Chicago attending the Second Annual Yearly Kos Convention. Last year I had a great time at the convention, but I didn't really get to sit in on many panels or blog much, as I was there on behalf of the Iraq War documentary The War Tapes. This year I'm working for myself, and so while I be spending some time networking to try and sell my "wares" (web/Drupal development and tech/outreach consulting), but mostly I'll be trying to sit in on as many panels as I can and blog about the convention here and on Young Philly Politics.

Currently, I'm sitting in on the "Connecting Major Donors the the Netroots", featuring Rob Stein, Chris Bowers, Lisa Seitz Gruwell, Mike Lux, and Dave Johnson (pictured). Rob Stein is giving his famous presentation on Right Wing infrastructure, to which he recently added a piece on the growth of right-wing internet assets. The presentation definitely lived up to the hype, and it really is incredible how many resources right-wing activists and movement players have at their disposal.

Anyway, I have to get back to enjoying the conference. I'll put updates below the fold as the day goes on.

When we talk about the youth movement in America and ways to get us to engage and participate in the process we often find a huge amount of ambiguity – little hard data/evidence (except the Harvard Institute of Politics or the CIRCLE research) and even fewer willing to conduct experiments into microtargeting the 18-30 demographic.

A few months ago I read a great article that talked about microtargeting Labor Supporters in California. Seems the California Labor Federation was beginning to notice that the stereo-types about supportive labor voters were no longer true. Because the world has evolved – not all labor supporters live in urban areas. Some now living in outer lying surburbes or even rural counties. The CLF’s Chair Art Pulaski decided to look outside the box:

“The shifting demographics of the country mean you have to look for them in non-traditional ways and sometimes in unexpected places…

Traditional targeting has always told us to focus on union members and their families in big cities, and that’s where most labor resources went for persuasion and GOTV efforts in years past. But it’s important not to build a targeting model for today’s voters based on outdated demographic patterns. Understanding that pro-labor voters aren’t just urban union members and their families anymore, we at Winning Directions worked with the CLF team to help find California’s pro-labor voters, wherever they live.”

We need a political infrastructure for young people that will both cultivate future progressive leaders and drive new and diverse youth towards higher levels of progressive political participation. Below is a working list of the broad challenges associated with current progressive youth politics:

• Progressive Political Programs Focus Exclusively on Youth Activists: Political programs and leadership training’s engage a small number of politically savvy young people and fail to mobilize new youth to participate in progressive politics
• Progressive Youth Activists Are Not Diverse: Progressive youth activists lack significant economic, ethnic, and regional diversity, as the same student activists are recycled between a few progressive groups

• Missing Strategic Management or System to Disseminate Information: Progressive political organizations often lack defined objectives and benchmarks to measure success; and they do not effectively share research and best practices to benefit the broader progressive community
• Absence of a Progressive Identity and Infrastructure to Connect Young People: Unaffiliated, small, and self-funded progressive groups or individuals are not easily connected to a larger progressive political community
• Progressive Activism and Democratic Politics Remain Miles Apart: Party leaders, activists, elected officials, and young people do not connect their support for progressive issues and values with support for the Democratic Party

What should be added or removed from the list? Many of the Dem/Progressive organizations that focus on youth and are financially secure have lacked vision and strategic capacity to address these critical problems. These challenges require action from our generation and the progressive community.

This week was a big one for da yoots. (can you tell My Cousin Vinny is on?) Skyline Public Works released a statement and launch of their new youth funding program the Go Grants The Program commits to giving $250,000 contributions to an organization in each state over the next ten years that specifically targets youth participation and engagement in sustaining organizations that continue work for elections and after.

It prompted me to take a deeper look into funding for youth programs, who gives, what they give, how they give, and what the partisan break down of funding to these groups is.

What I found with a simple OpenSecrets is a significant divide between Young Democrats and Young Republicans in funding. If you look under the 527 section you see that the YD’s received about $1.6million for the 2006 election cycle and made about $1.5million in expenditures.

What do you suppose the Young Republicans did?

Update: Another update. These groups are not totally frozen out of Democracy Alliance grants. They can apply again for 2008 funding. All in all, a considerably better situation than I originally reported. Though I still stand by my comments below.
---------------------------------

Got an update on the Democracy Alliance funding question. Turns out that they are not cutting off all youth funding. The League and USSA are both losing support from the group, but other youth groups are still candidates to receive support from the Alliance for this granting cycle.

Whether this situation still represents an overall decline in support for progressive youth orgs, or if money that would have gone to The League or USSA will be directed to other youth organizations is up in the air. Most likely the Alliance is scaling back this year, reassessing its giving priorities and the field of potential grantees, and will ramp up their giving in 2008.

I'm not a fan of the whole cyclical model of progressive giving (ramp up at elections, scale back in off years). It's not a good strategy to help orgs stay on their feet, stay at scale, and build on their previous work. But the situation is definitely better than I'd originally been led to believe.

Cross posted at MyDD. Please recommend.

The League of Young Voters is reporting that they are losing a full 1/3 of their national funding, and rumor has it that the reason is that Democracy Alliance is cutting off all of its youth outreach efforts. If true, this is really fucked up.

The League is one of the only youth groups that appeals to a truly multi-racial audience. They're focused in how they distribute their resources, they are culturally in touch with their target audience, and they are serious about getting shit done. At almost every conference I go to, there is a huge contingent from the League sharing the experiences and improving their game. The fact that they are struggling for funds is bad news for the progressives everywhere.

If the rumor mill is correct, and Democracy Alliance is abdicating all responsibility for youth funding, that is even worse news. Democracy Alliance is supposed to be the progressive answer to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and the immense conservative funding network set up by the Coors, Olin, Scaife, Koch and Bradley Foundations. In 2003, Conservative Foundations gave approximately $48 million to conservative youth organizations. That's almost as much as Democracy Alliance gave to all progressive grantees in its first two years of operation. We need to be spending more money on youth programs, not less. After the last three elections you would think progressive donors would understand that.

I still haven't spoken with the League yet for my book. This seems like as good a time as any to get in touch. I'll also make some other inquiries and try to find out if its true about Democracy Alliance. Will report back when I know more. If anyone has more information, please email me at mike [dot] connery [at] gmail [dot] com.

You can help out the League by donating here.

I have some quibbles with this article (I'm not sure Rock the Vote should count as a progressive youth organization, and many new organizations are not included in her figures), but Iara Peng of Young People For speaks truth about the state of progressive youth funding (emphasis mine):

Last year alone, the Right invested $48 million in 11 youth-focused organizations aimed at increasing the number of ideologically friendly campus papers, fostering networks of students on campuses, shifting the way that students self-identify in terms of political ideology, providing skills and strategies training, and promoting right-wing values.

...

Collectively, we're (youth groups) doing great work, but we're not doing enough. Right-wing groups spend more than ten times as much on long-term political leadership development than we do, and financial trends over the past four years show that progressive leadership development organizations are actually, on average, experiencing a decline in revenue. Unlike their conservative counterparts, youth-focused progressive organizations are often funded with a "buying," not "building," mentality, meaning that donors want their contribution to have immediate payoffs, such as election-year voter registration, but are not focusing on investing in the strategic, long-term sustainability of those organizations.

The folks at Emerging Democratic Majority agree with Peng's assessment, and are encouraging progressives to donate more to youth training and mentorship.

Most interesting to me is the $48 million figure for conservative youth funding. That's roughly equivalent to all the money distributed last year by the Democracy Alliance.

That's not just short-sighted or disconcerting, its shameful.

Ari Berman has a truly informative article about the uber-secretive Democracy Alliance in The Nation. Berman tracks the history of the Alliance since its inception in 2004, and his conclusions are not encouraging.

It's a long piece, but well worth the time of anyone interested in what the progressive funding world looks like. There's really too much good stuff to pick a single quote.

My questions, none of which are adequately addressed in the article, are these:

1. How much money has the Alliance given to youth groups?
2. Who are those groups?
3. How much of that money have they invested in youth GOTV/engagement organizations?
4. How much has been spent on training young people for leadership positions in field work, the media, public policy, and public speaking?

If they truly are interested in building for the longterm, dollar for dollar, cultivating new leaders and engaging Millenials is the best investment.