Funding

I was a bit inspired by Justin's post last week about ways students returning to school can buy their new gear in a sustainable way, and thought I'd revive an old post from way back in the day.

Every semester, college students spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on textbook purchases. Frequently these text books go for outrageous prices. Wouldn't it be great if some of that money could go towards your activism instead of into the pocket of publishers with dubious liberal credentials?

The College Democrats of Harvard University hit upon an easy way to do just that using Amazon.com’s Associates Program. The Associates’ Program allows third parties to refer book sales to Amazon by pasting a simple HTML badge into their website. Referrers can earn between 5% and 10% of the sales they direct to Amazon based on the volume of sales.

How did it pay off for the Harvard College Dems?

“Last year we sold $6000 through Amazon.com, earning the Dems about $360,” Dems Treasurer Harlan M. Piper ’08 wrote in an e-mail. “So far this year, we’ve sold about $1600, though we hope that number will go up as people buy more books!”

...

“It’s not a huge amount of money, but it’s significant,” he said, adding that the windfall is enough to fund perks like pizza at general board meetings.

So how can you make this work for you on your own campus? It couldn’t be simpler:

• Sign-up for Amazon’s program (this will require a checking account or a PayPal account). For tax purposes and transparency, it’s probably best if this account is in the name of your organization.
• Paste the Amazon Search badge onto your group’s website. If you don't have a website, sign up for a free Word Press blog. Here's a look at what the Harvard Dems did:

• Request that all of your members, their friends, and anyone sympathetic to the goals of your organization buy their course books through the search badge. Use Facebook and anything other tool at your disposal to promote this fundraiser to as many students as possible.
• Rake in the cash.

Through their Amazon referral link, the Harvard College Democrats were able to raise $360 a semester. Not bad for some quick HTML work. With some good promotion via Facebook, and requests to get your non-political friends to support you through their own text book purchases, who knows what you could do . . .

Some light summer reading.

• Did Obama lift the ban on independent expenditures to outside groups? Maybe so. The real question is, will donors listen and how much can we get done in the time that is left.
• Obama to announce VP pick via text message. - First Read
• In a changing corner of PA, a glimpse of Obama's "age problem." - Washington Post
• The Bradley Effect or the Obama Effect: what aren't the polls telling us? - Huffington Post
• Could religious youth tip the election this fall? - Fox News
• Politics Unusual: Hip Hop's Hopes for Obama. - Huffington Post
• Help Our Veterans Vote - New York Times
• A New Generation of Black Leaders Looks to Lead - Hip Hop Caucus
• Are We Neglecting the Next Generation of Activists? - The American Prospect
• Court Supports Rights of Gay Students - AlterNet
• In Virginia, 64% of the states new voters are under 35. - InRich.com
• Early history of the Creative Commons. - Lessig Blog
• Rock the Vote is finally getting ready to air their Christina Aguilera PSA. - Washington Post

Matt Stoller offers a broader view on the lack of funding in progressive organizing that I identified last week. According to Stoller, this isn't just a problem in youth organizing, it's a movement-wide problem among a range of single issue groups, 527s and anyone not directly associated with the Obama campaign:

I keep having conversations this cycle that come back to a basic theme. People assumed that there would be lots of money available for organizing and media work, and yet not only is there less than they expected, there is less than would naturally exist in a Presidential year. Normally the Democratic economy works based on the Presidential cycle; lots of money once every four years, some money during the midterm election, and starvation other than that. It seems as if 2008 is an anomaly, unless you are working for the Obama campaign.

As far as I can tell, there are three intersecting trends that are cutting off the funding stream for progressive groups. One, Obama defunded outside parties reliant on big dollar donors, which means that a good amount of talent is sitting on the sideline, helpless to affect Congressional or Presidential races. There is no cavalry in case Obama stumbles and there are no groups that can go negative against McCain. We knew that. Two, Obama is vacuuming up huge small dollar donations, and sucking some of the oxygen out of downticket races. The media glare on Obama has effectively damaged the megaphone of downticket candidates, and their ability to pull in small dollar donors. This is hurting Senate candidates like Al Franken, for instance, because there is no VoteVets ad to go after Norm Coleman like there was to after George Allen in Virginia. A dozen candidates might lose because the right is going to come after them viciously, and there is nothing on our side to deal with that - no small dollar donors, no outside groups, and very little media attention.

And three, I keep hearing that Foundations are cutting back on funding for non-profits. Foundations are huge entities that grant a certain percentage (usually 3-5%) of their asset base every year in keeping with their mission statement. Because of the market drop, these groups are cutting their grants, which is further starving progressive groups. Foundations are the biggest source of reliable funding for progressive nonprofits, so this is quite nasty. The progressive movement, aside from the Obama campaign, is starving. The better groups are building small dollar donor networks, and the incentive to build revenue streams independent of foundations and large dollar donors is growing. That is a positive development.

Matt looks at the sunny side here - a whittling down of groups that are "unfit" and fat on the largesse of big donors and foundations, and a forced push towards more sustainable practices. But I still think that it's a hell of a gamble that donors are taking and it's consequences go well beyond the lack of a proper infrastructure supporting rapid response efforts and down-ballot candidates. Even in the best of circumstances it is going to leave us with a weakened infrastructure that will be entirely dependent on Obama to move policy. And if we dont' like that policy? Well I guess we can just suck it because our options will be pretty limited.

One final comment. Matt identifies this as a problem affecting "single issue groups," which are more and more getting a bad rap for creating a disjointed (or "siloed," as folks like to say) movement and affecting little if any real change. I just want to be clear that I don't consider youth organizations "single issue" operations. Getting young people civically and politically engaged builds a constituency for the Party and for all issues. It's an investment in the future (and current) health of the Party and the larger progressive movement.

Over at The Pace, Young Democrats Executive Director Alexandra Acker responds to the post I wrote about "doing more with less" and the shortage of funding in youth organizing this year.

There are great lessons to be learned from 1992. In 1992, Bill Clinton won on the heels of the youth vote and then never talked to young voters again. He didn’t address the issues they cared about (beyond general economic stewardship) and he didn’t court their vote in 1996. It doesn’t take a genius to then guess that young people didn’t turn out in 1996 – they didn’t. And not only did we lose those young 1992 voters in 1996, we lost them, period.

This is my huge fear about this election. There is huge potential to capitalize on enthusiasm among young voters for Obama in this election. But there’s also an even greater danger of a cult of personality movement. The downsides are obvious if we lose – young people may become disillusioned altogether and weaker youth organizations, who could not maximize their potential in the Year of the Youth Vote, won’t have the capacity to re-energize them for issue advocacy work and future elections. But, if we win, Obama will then have to carry the mantle while also nurturing competing interests (and if you think young people’s power at the ballot box is still weak relative to older generations, our power of persuasion – organized by us, for us – is nearly non-existent). He will also inevitably disappoint all or some of his supporters, as no one’s star can shine that bright forever (even his).

Young voters will have to hold Obama, and others elected on our heels, accountable. But how can we do that in an only Obama-led movement? How can we try to move an agenda that may be at odds with the Administration’s priorities? How can we win primary challenges or have more young people run for office against older, safer, more seemingly reliable incumbents?

Great points all. Al's point about Clinton and the youth vote in the 90s is spot on, and a parallel can also be drawn between today and the Republicans of the 1980s. Conservatives have invested heavily in leadership building and voter registration. As a result, we got Reagan, Rove, Grover Norquist and Bush Sr. Then they stopped investing in voter registration and turnout and we got Clinton. Youth voted heavily for Kerry and now we're voting Democratic 2 - 1.

Things seem great, but they won't always be. The progressive movement is about to make the same mistake the Republicans did and assume that because the youth vote is in the bag this election cycle it will always be that way. How soon we forget.

One of my all-time favorite television shows is HBO's The Wire. So it's a little surreal to feel like I'm living in an episode. No, I'm not involved in the drug trade or police department. I'm not a stevedore losing my union job, and I'm not a school teacher struggling with No Child Left Behind. Like the reporters and police officers in the 5th and final season of the show, though, I feel like my work, and the work of many of my colleagues are not being adequately supported. In short, the youth vote community is being asked "to do more with less."

As I've written many times before, 2004 was a boom year for youth organizing as the progressive movement built many new institutions (and strengthened others) to reach out to young voters. There were two driving forces behind this boom: entrepreneurial activism on the part of young people, and a willingness among donors to take risks and support that work. The results were impressive and verified by independent research.

This year, the "surging" youth vote is one of the most important stories of the election cycle, and one would think that interest in moving as many young voters to the polls as possible would be a high priority. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. Many of the organizations responsible for engaging young voters in 2004 and 2006, and many new organizations working to fill holes in the youth engagement sphere, are struggling to raise funds and scale up their operations for the fall.

"As far as I'm aware, all the youth voting groups put together haven't secured more than $10 Million toward their budgets in 2008," said Billy Wimsatt, founder and former executive director of the League of Young Voters. "If the $40 Million figure from 2004 is correct, this means we are seeing only one quarter of of the funding for youth voting as in 2004. This is a staggering decrease."

Indeed, it is. At a time when expectations for the youth vote are at their highest, youth organizers are not being provided with the resources they need to make good on that promise and capitalize on the energy and excitement among the country's youngest voters. Youth organizers - who have worked for the last 5 years to build up to this moment when our peers could potentially tip a Presidential election - are in a very bad spot. In an election cycle that may see our biggest victory in decades, we do not have the resources to play more than a small part in that victory.

The reasons behind this drastic decline in support are varied. Some point to the success of the Obama campaign in turning out young voters, and a desire on the part of potential funders to put their money "where it is most needed." Others point to statements made by the Obama campaign itself asking that funders not support "outside efforts" on the campaign trail. The tightening economy is also a potential - though less likely - culprit.

This isn't about ego or a turf war between the Obama campaign and independent youth organizers. It's about how the funding cycle works and the long-term health of youth organizing on the progressive (and Democratic) side of the political aisle. As we've seen, Obama's youth support comes almost entirely from college-educated youth who make up only a fraction of the eligible voting population. Everything I hear from inside the Obama campaign points to a college-based youth strategy in the battleground states identified by the campaign. Obama can't and shouldn't be allowed to run the youth component of this campaign cycle alone. His campaign needs the help of complimentary, independent youth organizations to reach out to those non-college voters and get them to the polls - not just to secure his own election, but for the election of down-ballot candidates as well.

The consequences of this dearth in funding go far beyond this single election and may have a negative impact on progressive youth infrastructure well into the midterm elections. As David Simon himself said, you don't do more with less. You do less with less. That will show when youth organizations and donors study their 2008 GOTV efforts and plan presentations for their work in 2009 and 2010. Less impressive results in those post-election studies will likely yield a smaller investment from donors. With a continued decrease in funding, our nascent movements' capabilities to move votes will slowly begin to wither.

Meanwhile, we'll have to wait and see whether the Obama campaign was a worthwhile gamble. And let's be clear - that is exactly what donors are doing by withholding support. They are betting that the Obama campaign will be able to move a sufficient number of young voters on its own, and that those mobilization efforts will continue as long as - and beyond - an Obama Presidency.

Will that organization be the shining savior that continues to effectively mobilize young voters in 2009 and 2010? Or will the Obama administration focus on its own goals and brush aside our concerns about continued youth mobilization as easily as they brushed off concerns about his votes on FISA? In four or six years, will young people (middle and high schoolers now) have the same motivation to support President Obama as do those who carry his campaign today? How about eight years? Is that something you want to bet a movement on? I don't.

This is one of the "big" announcements I was talking about. I'm going to sit on the other announcement for a while.

For those who don't know, Skyline Public Works is one of the biggest givers to progressive youth organizing. They've funded numerous projects and have a reputation for trying outside the box strategies in both how they fund and the projects in which they invest. Lately, they've been particularly known for their GO Grants program. (full disclosure - they bankrolled Music for America, my first project, and basically gave me my start in youth politics.)

There was a bit of a shake-up at Skyline this week. The incubator laid-off some of their staff, and they are starting to reevaluate their system of grantmaking - basically what types of projects they want to invest in and how best to make those investments. Until they work that out, the organization will not entertain any new GO Grants. They will, however, continue to fulfill their current commitments to organizations. Once Skyline establishes their new way forward, they expect to continue giving at the same or a higher rate than they have thus far.

To be clear: No one is losing any money they have already been promised.

It's a shame that there will be a lull in youth funding so close to the election, but Skyline has a track record for pushing the envelope, and I'll be eager to see what they come up with and how it differs from their recent and past strategies.

Here's the official statement from Skyline:

Skyline Public Works is making some changes in how we do things, but we remain as committed as ever, especially to youth programs. We are in the midst of a strategic review about what kinds of new commitments we want to make given the current state of things in the progressive movement, and these will likely be different than some of the things we have done in the past. As a result, we no longer have need for the part of our staff that has provided technical assistance to some of our grantees. These were tough decisions because the staff is extremely talented and they have exceeded our expectations of them. We remain as committed as ever to the progressive movement and look forward to this new chapter in our activism.

Shai Sachs at Planting Liberally has another post about how to fund progressive organizing and ease the reliance on big donors. Shai's idea - to fund an incubator that would promote for-profit/non-profit partnerships - is pretty ambitious, and I think there'd need to be some serious cost/benefit analysis to see if his model would be more efficient/sustainable than the current big-donor model.

My ideas in this area tend to be smaller in scale, like how to build revenue into projects. At MFA we tried selling merchandise, and had a very successful partnership with MoveOn, Barsuk Records and McSweeneys). I've also talked about even smaller scale stuff like College Democrat chapters, which have budgets in the thousands of dollars, hooking up with Amazon to bolster their budget.

Yesterday I read about a new project by Microsoft to promote their new instant messenger service. Called "IM (making a difference)," Microsoft has created partnerships with a number of nonprofit organizations including Sierra Club, The Human Society and the Red Cross. When you download Microsofts new IM client, you can choose one of these charities. Every time you IM your friends, Microsoft donates some of their ad revenue to the charity you selected.

I was thinking that something along these lines would be perfect for youth organizations to pursue in partnership with Working Assets. If you don't know, Working Assets is a dual for-profit/nonprofit organization that is in the credit card, wireless, and phone biz. Part of their profits go to supporting progressive causes, and since its creation in 1985 they have donated over $50 million to help sustain progressive organizations.

I have no idea if and how such a partnership could work (or if WA is even interested in the IM/chat business), but I saw that Microsoft program and it got the wheels spinning a little.

• Not at all shockingly, a whistle blower in the Dept. of Education tells the New York Times that political appointees in the Dept. shut down his investigations into exploitation of student loan programs by corporate lenders:

  When Jon Oberg, a Department of Education researcher, warned in 2003 that student lending companies were improperly collecting hundreds of millions in federal subsidies and suggested how to correct the problem, his supervisor told him to work on something else.

  Ya gotta love conservative government.

• This is interesting. From an article about Obama's youth support:
  

  The Obama campaign said the students are also an increasingly important source of cash, particularly through the Internet. While they wouldn't give specific numbers, Obama officials said students make up one their largest donor groups.

  Students are ``getting into being donors,'' said Billy Wimsatt, executive director of the League of Young Voters, a political organization in New York. The new technology ``is what's putting it over the top.''

  More than a little fishy that they wouldn't give specific numbers. How do you know, and why wouldn't you say if the numbers are high? I think it would be really interesting to get some hard numbers on student donations. The number of donors is only likely to grow each quarter for Obama. The campaign has an opportunity to set some positive trend lines for youth campaign support - they should set that bar. It would make a great story to bolster the narrative about growing youth engagement.

Campus Progress just announced that it is offering $200-$1,000 micro grants to students doing anti-war activism on campus. And up to $300 in travel grants to students traveling to marches, rallies, conferences, etc. dedicated to stopping the war in Iraq.

Get the details here.

This is a really good idea - not just for working to end the war, but in general. The Leadership Institute, a right-wing training organization, has a campus program that does microgranting. It’s been used to bring conservative speakers to campus, fund the start up of conservative publications - all manner of conservative student activism.

Finally getting around to reading this month's edition of Harpers, and I came across a great expose on the National Conservative Student Conference - The Kids Are Far Right: Hippie Hunting, Bunny Bashing, and the New Conservitism. I'd link you to the article, but it's Harpers, so it's not online yet (if it will ever be).

You can get all the creepy cultural details over at Mahablog. I'd like to focus on the purely infrastructural revelations.

According to the Harper's article, Campus Progresses budget last year was $650,000 (it's unclear whether this is purely operational or includes adminstrative costs. I've heard in other places that Campus Progress's 2005 budget was twice that number). In comparison, the article pegs the combined budget of Young America's Foundation - which sponsors the conference - and affiliated conservative organizations at around $35 million. It costs the NCSC $2,000 to host a student, yet attendees are only required to pay $375 of that cost.

Also noted in the story - College Republican chapters have risen from 650 to 1,775 in the last six years. By contrast, the College Democrats wouldn't reveal the number of chapters they have for "fear of provoking a war with the college Republicans." I'm going to take that lame excuse as confirmation that their chapter list doesn't even approach that of their conservative counterparts.