Bassem K's Library tagged fundraising → View Popular, Search in Google

Feb

2012

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The left’s funders, on the other hand, have pursued high-profile national legislative wins. Their money is impatient and results-based. Institutions receiving the money are treated like untrustworthy employees, forced to submit endless progress reports and beg anew for money every year or two. The result is short-term thinking and number-pumping. Young people are treated like chattel, given unpaid internships and asked to accept poverty. Grassroots organizing and local politics are neglected in favor of D.C.-focused lobbying meant to influence elites.

When it comes to environmental philanthropy, this familiar critique is, at least in broad outlines, correct. What’s more, environmental funding tends to be extremely siloed; there’s little overlap with broader issues of social and economic justice. Basically, a few big D.C.-based green groups get the bulk of the money, to be spent effecting federal legislation and policy, while smaller community-organizing groups go hungry.
A new report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy puts some numbers behind these concerns. It finds that “in 2009, environmental organizations with budgets of more than $5 million received half of all contributions” in environmental philanthropy, though they represent “only 2 percent of the nearly 29,000 environment and climate public charities in the country.”