501c4

This is going to be a sloppy post because I don't quite have my head around the topic. I just want to get out something that I've found interesting lately and is starting to rattle around in my mind.

Apropos of all the talk about defunding the left and Obama's consolidation of the party, I've been reading a new blog lately called Tactical Philanthropy, and wondering about ways that we can make our movement and nascent infrastructure more stable and sustained. If the well of partisan dollars dries up, what are our alternatives? Or even if it doesn't dry up, how can we supplement it so we're not so reliant on those few donors?

One post in particular at Tactical Philanthropy piqued my interest - The Next Generation of Philanthropists. The post identifies them as new program officers or low-level staffers within the foundation community, social entrepreneurs like Joe Green (Facebook Causes) who are building new ways for young people - and all people - to make charitable gifts, and Millennials as a generation, who are showing surprising ingenuity in contributing to the causes in which they believe and which a new study shows that is giving at a rate consistent with previous generations.

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of dollars in politics/social change: partisan (or PAC/c4/527 dollars) and non-partisan (c3) dollars. The partisan dollars are mostly what Obama is talking about when he says not to give money to outside groups. He's starving independent organizations engaged in partisan issue/candidate advocacy. These dollars are not tax deductible and are generally harder to raise from donors than c3 money. The large donor pool for 527/c4 dollars is much smaller than it is for c3 money. This is unfortunate, because these partisan dollars have done a lot of good work over the last few years, particularly in the sector of youth organizing.

That c3 money, however, tends to come not merely from a few wealthy individuals willing to stick their neck into the political fray. It comes from major foundations like Robert Woods Johnson, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Center and the Open Society Institute, to name a few. Those foundations - and that whole world of charitable giving - is what Tactical Philanthropy covers everyday.

The name is also very apt. I'm somewhat familiar with this world in that my previous employer, The Opportunity Agenda, is a Tides Center Project and my old boss was a former program manager at the Ford Foundation. Foundation money helps many good, progressive nonprofits with their work. The problem is that foundation tends to be, well, tactical in how their dollars are deployed. Program officers fund specific geographic ares and issues for limited periods of time. Programs are funded, but general operational support is rarely provided. It's not very strategic and it is a piecemeal way to build a movement. In fact, in some respects it's anti-movement because foundations are afraid to appear too partisan.

Nevertheless, foundations - particularly the George Soros Open Society Institute - provide a good amount of money to pieces of youth infrastructure like Young People For, Campus Progress, Center for Community Change's "Generation Change," Young Elected Officials Network and more. Even with that support, though, these groups are vastly outspent and out fundraised by their conservative counterparts.

So the first strand of thought I want to unravel here has to do with foundations, their program officers, and how their dollars are spent. During our panel at the Demos conference, Maya Enista of Mobilize.org mentioned that a new study (sorry, no link - Maya is trying to find me the study) were incredibly few young people in any position of power to direct funds at the major foundations. Will that change soon, and with so many young people coming out of the new leadership pipeline on the progressive side, what will that mean for the kinds of grants foundations make to youth-oriented projects and the amount of dollars directed at those projects? Is there a way we could boost some of our own into the ranks of foundation staffers to hurry this process?

Tactical Philanthropy has one suggestion along these lines - another "leadership" organization called Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy. I don't know much about it now other than the blurbs they put up on their site, but perhaps it could be a vehicle?

Beyond foundations, what about young people as donors? One specific post on Tactical Philanthropy made me aware of a group called Resource Generation, an organization geared towards helping rich young people find smart ways to promote charitable causes with their wealth. I've heard some stories here and there about well-off young people supporting partisan,electoral youth organizing, but I wonder if there isn't a way to more systematically get them giving and working with today's progressive youth institutions. Would it be possible to start a partisan version of Resource Generation? Does such a thing already exists?

Finally, what about normal young people as fundraisers? As the Nick Kristoff column I linked shows, young people can be quite ingenious in raising money for the causes in which they believe. That surely seems like what they are doing for Barack Obama (side note - it is a shame that we'll probably never know just how much cash Obama received in small dollars from donors under 30). How do we get them to be mini-bundlers and fundraisers not just for campaigns or Darfur or world hunger, but for partisan organizations supporting youth engagement and youth issues? This is the age old question in youth organizing (at least since I've been involved), but evidence from the Obama campaign and the foundation world suggest it can be done. Why do we have such a hard time tapping into it?