Have you ever had a funder pull out of a sponsorship or grantmaking deal because of your association with a revolutionary movement or because of something a person at your nonprofit said about them?
Do YOU find it horrifying that an AmeriCorps VISTA might make $16,000 per year, or just minimum wage, while the CEO of Goldman Sachs makes $16,000 per HOUR?
Did you hear Goldman pulled out of a fundraiser after learning it honored Occupy Wall Street?
Apparently, the revolution will NOT be funded.
If you read Phil Cubeta’s short posts over the last week or so, you’ll see that he is picking the scab on the thing fundraisers don’t like to talk about, namely, you have to keep your head down and not seem TOO revolutionary, or you won’t get funded.
According to Phil, if you look too closely at the cause of income inequality, you find the very people who are funding you to study it. And they don’t want to hear that.
Here’s some good news. Occupy Wall Street now has almost half a million dollars in donations. They are putting it in a credit union. The credit union decided to throw a fundraising dinner, and Goldman Sachs withdrew their $5,000 sponsorship. Capital One, however, is still in. Wonder why?
Maybe Goldman Sachs thinks that Occupy Wall Street can actually WIN.
If you even mildly criticize your funders, you get denuded of funding as well, as Pamela Grow reported on the Reel Girls/Comcast debacle. She called it, “The Story of a Small Nonprofit and the Power of Social Media.” Then Reel Girls decided to show what Comcast was doing, and make up the comcast grant (which was only about $15,000) and ask their supporters to side with them. And they did, overwhelmingly. Because Reel Girls are about free speech, and they think that Comcast should recognize it. Comcast later said okay, you can have the money (probably because it turned into such a PR headache for them) but Reel Girls said no, thanks, we’re good. and this is why your gift policy and grant agreements should clearly state that funding will not stop just because your nonprofit exercises free speech.
What do you think?
How do YOU feel about having to rub shoulders with people high up in finance and industry, in the name of your cause, all the while knowing that the people you’re talking with make more in a few months than anyone at your nonprofit makes in a year?
Have you ever had an issue with wanting to criticize a funder, but being afraid to lose your funding?
Oh Wait! There’s MORE!
We seemed to have lost, at least until the advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement, not only all personal responsibility but all capacity for personal judgment. Corporate culture absolves all of responsibility. This is part of its appeal. It relieves all from moral choice. There is an unequivocal acceptance of ruling principles such as unregulated capitalism and globalization as a kind of natural law. The steady march of corporate capitalism requires a passive acceptance of new laws and demolished regulations, of bailouts in the trillions of dollars and the systematic looting of public funds, of lies and deceit. The corporate culture, epitomized by Goldman Sachs, has seeped into our classrooms, our newsrooms, our entertainment systems and our consciousness. This corporate culture has stripped us of the right to express ourselves outside of the narrowly accepted confines of the established political order. It has turned us into compliant consumers. We are forced to surrender our voice. These corporate machines, like fraternities and sororities, also haze new recruits in company rituals, force them to adopt an unrelenting cheerfulness, a childish optimism and obsequiousness to authority. These corporate rituals, bolstered by retreats and training seminars, by grueling days that sometimes end with initiates curled up under their desks to sleep, ensure that only the most morally supine remain. The strong and independent are weeded out early so only the unquestioning advance upward. Corporate culture serves a faceless system. It is, as Hannah Arendt writes, “the rule of nobody and for this very reason perhaps the least human and most cruel form of rulership.” -Chris Hedges, Danelion Salad: http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/finding-freedom-in-handcuffs-by-chris-hedges/
This is actually the title of an anthology with some great writing and thinking on this topic. Check it out. http://www.southendpress.org/2006/items/87662