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With issues like teen suicides and the urgent needs of homeless LGBTQ young people how do we focus on getting results on improving the lives of vulnerable people?
A follow up to J Todd's - does the lack of transparency of these organizations disturb these panalists and does it affect your donating to the organizations?
Few donors approach their giving as strategically or thoughtfully as their financial investments. How do you approach your evaluation of impact? And what resources do you find that help you or other donors be more effective in your philanthropy?
The Victory Fund and individual donors contribute significant sums to get lgbt folks into elected office. Despite the election itself being a goal, is there any follow-up to see if the $$ invested in these candidates causes them to advance lgbt legislation and policy ? It is no longer enough to simply have the visibility of lgbt folks in elected office -- they need to become the advocates for lgbt rights. I observe reluctance on the part of some lgbt electeds to lead on lbgt issues. What is the donor community doing to leverage the investment in lgbt electeds to make them the agents of change ?
Regardless of the contribution level, how does a donor become an activist? The donations for Equality do not carry the same level of significance if the donor does not cross the threshold and show up for the fight however the fight is defined. We are stalled out as a community not only because of who sits in a state legislature, Congress or the White House, but because we are not connecting contributions to activism. How do we inspire donors of any level (the $100 donor to the millionaire) to not only contribute money but also energy and effort to our fight for equality?
On one of the first calls organized by Juan and Ken, Masen Davis made the point that in the most recent year for which we have data only $3 million was spent on trans causes, out of a total LGBT budget of $167 million. The recent MAP study showed that the percentage of staffers at the major LGBT organizations was 6%, and that was also the percentage of board members. Those numbers, however, drop significantly when you remove the major trans organizations from the list. And the membership organization, HRC, has never had more than one trans person out of 45 on its Board of Directors, and in some years there were none. It’s hard to see a change in mission as long as that is the case. How can you, who either hold the purse strings or direct the movement of funding, significantly alter those percentages? With so few trans persons with the means to impact these organizations, how can the gay community be encouraged to alter the playing field?
All struggles for social justice have included civil disobedience; GetEQUAL is the organization that includes non-violent civil disobedience as a tool to achieve LGBTQ civil rights. But many of the major donors as well as the larger organizations seem reluctant to include GetEQUAL in their strategy. How do we get major donors to include GetEQUAL as a recipient and by doing so influence the more established organizations to work with GetEQUAL more closely?
What resources do you use to decide to which organizations to give and to which politicians or political organizations?
With 30% of the LGBT community voting Republican in the 2010 midterm, why do we not have a more balanced bi-partisan movement among board members and major donors? Don't most sophisticated political campaigns play both sides of the isle? Why doesn't ours?
Why is there no national LGBT coalition of peers coordinating on movement strategy? Is the competition for money keeping groups apart, or is it just egos and turf? What can the donors do to get the groups to work together in a formal coalition?
Liberals rage against elite institutions generally, but HRC & NGLTF are arguably just that. They have unpublished by-laws and articles of incorporation, self-perpetuating boards (totaling around 100 people combined) that are controlled by the staff, which are entirely unaccountable to the broader LGBT community, while conflict of interest policies and reports are confidential. On top of this, according to MAP's recent report, about 10 donors contribute almost 50% of most organizations funding, yet their names are cloaked, the role they play in the organization is virtually invisible, and there is no public conflict of interest reporting there either. Essentially, we have a non-transparent, non-democratic, oligarchical system, powered and controlled by a monied elite. So, given that this system has not produced a single federal non-discrimination law, how do we continue to justify maintaining it? Don't the people deserve to have a role and a voice in their own liberation, particularly given that our own groups are not even seeking full federal equality legislatively.
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Last Modified 2011-03-25 |
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