Organizing the left

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Thu May 16 12:10:22 PDT 2002


----- Original Message ----- From: "joanna bujes" <joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com>
>Every time Planned Parenthood calls me for a contribution, which I
>invariably make, I try to talk to them about organizing folks and criticize
>the fact that their entire political effort is exclusively focussed on
>lobbying.
>My gut feeling about a lot of "left wing" non-profit groups is that the
>leadership is more interested in fluffing themselves up in their
>hands-clean middle-class positions than in organizing any major opposition
>to the right-wingers. Planned Parenthood is one example, but there are
others.

Here's the odd problem for non-profits in our system-- they can't take responsibility for electoral victories (legally because of non-profit status rules), so they can't fundraise on election organizing. And because electoral organizing is inherently multi-issue, even those groups that do electoral organizing have trouble claiming the "credit" that pays off in organizational growth. It is far easier to hype some amendment to some bill that no other group has paid attention, lobby like hell on it, and then take credit for it in direct mail if you win, since you know that your organization "owns" the issue.

Elections are inherently multi-issue and victory has many fathers and mothers, so it is terrible for fundraising in the traditional non-profit model. I wrote an article many years ago called "Market Leftism: Money, Machines and the Left's Decline" on the way fundraising imperatives divide the left, based on my own experience as a telephone fundraiser. It's at http://www.nathannewman.org/other/cross-marketleftism.html from an issue of the left magazine Crossroads.

-- Nathan Newman



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