Mo' Money: Fundraising Without Assimilating

Fundraising always presents an issue for people who are first engaging in direct action based community organizing. The first is, obviously enough, that people do not usually want to endorse radical non-institutional solutions. In the conventional left-right spectrum of American politics the left, often referred to as the “left wing of capital,” is supportive of liberal or progressive work through an institutional framework that is a functioning wing of the current order. State agencies, non-profits, business unions, and the like, all serve as possible functioning tools within this apparatus. This is not even to criticize them per se, but they have their obvious drawbacks since they can never fully confront and smash the system they are a part of. If we propose radical solutions that do not come within this framework it may appear as too radical, lacking in seriousness, “not effective,” or possibly even dangerous or immoral. This means, generally, that liberals would rather give money to the United Way than Take Back the Land. Only if we get massive enough will the general liberal mass be open to our solicited donations, as was the case with Occupy Wallstreet.

The second is that we simply do not have infrastructures in place to collect such money, nor would we want to operate in the way that many of these institutions do. Hardly a week goes by without an expose about a different charitable 501(c) 3 that has been spending the majority of their resources on fundraising and paying their staff exorbitant salaries. Instead, we want to focus on the power of organized people, not simply collecting and redistributing money in supposedly helpful ways.

This notion often takes over where we chastise these fundraising methods altogether since we see how terribly it can play out in the non-profit industrial complex, and since we do not see ourselves as part of that framework we should not be beholden to those financial forces. We do not pay staff, we are not a part of impersonal structures, and we have no elections to buy. Put simply, we are the awakened mass who is going to wash ourselves of the old order.

The problem is, shit costs money.

What we end up with is the basic reality that organizing, even when money has no foundation in our strategy and tactics, still has expenses. This means that, whether you acknowledge it or not, every organization or organizing effort actually has a budget. When no treasury function is in place then it simply comes out of the pockets of those organizing, and often times it is the people who have lower incomes that actually give the most. This is always going to present a problem because structures that have permanence and the ability to push dual power must have some ways of stabilizing, and part of this is money. Unlike non-profits and unions, we do not need exorbitant sums to keep things flowing, and participation is our glowing core, we still need to have some influx so that things remain functional.

The question here is how to approach this and maintain some dignity in the organizing effort. If you have some sense of the “purity” of working class organizing you should check it at the door. We are here to get things done, which means finding some concrete ways to support the organizing effort. What ends up happening in organizations that do not have a serious plan on how to secure funding is that they have periodic schemes to make some kind of bank statements appear. A fundraising party here. Selling t-shirts there. Often times they get incredibly elaborate, trying to draw together complex cultural institutions. What happens, just as what occurs in non-profits, is that an unreasonable amount of time is spent on these fundraising activities rather than on-the-ground organizing. This presents a huge problem as we have simply absolved ourselves into the same behavior because we have not created a plan to avoid it. We don’t want to fundraise, we want to organize.

There are a number of solutions to this that people propose, the most obvious of which is dues. This can be a great way for an organization to know exactly how much money they have and will have monthly. Its problems are obvious since people often want something in return for dues money and you can only contribute to so many organizations at a time. What is a more comprehensive solution is to create a unique plan for the organization that remains consistent over time. This may mean the same type of fundraising event at fixed times every month or two. This may mean soliciting to grants, though this often makes your work beholden to others. It may be selling merchandise or literature. It could be some combination of the two. What is important is to not try anything and everything, waiting until the need is urgent. Instead, as an organization begins, its basic expenses need to be considered and a plan put in place. Think about exactly what kind of work you will be doing and what kind of expenses are normally associated. Travel costs? Printing costs? Set up a plan to meet a vague budget, make it consistent and cyclical, and then find ways of reducing the labor it requires so that you can put that effort back into fundraising. The best way to avoid thinking about money in your organizing is to have a consistent way of bringing in a moderate amount of funds that meets just the basic organizing costs, but not too much more. A treasurer is usually good to keep this on track, but only if it functions with the kind of transparency and accountability that we expect from directly democratic organizations.

We are in this to eliminate the exchange institutions that require financial commitments, but we still deal in the real world. If we are going to solve this issue in our organizations without making it a preoccupation, then we need to determine structures in the beginning that are going to solve the need before the circumstances become dire.