January 2009 – Enough Enough

January 27, 2009

Call for submissions from Class Action

I wanted to share this call for submissions from a cool organization in Massachusetts, Class Action. It’s a cross-class anthology of personal stories about class, money, privilege, oppression, and other things we love to talk about here a lot. The deadline is soon (February 28th) – but I know lots of y’all have great stories to share and you should!

January 21, 2009

A different kind of morning.

Is it just me, or have things been particularly rough recently? I got back from a winter vacation a couple weeks ago to news of attacks on Gaza, Oscar Grant being shot in an Oakland BART station, and a well-known activist from my hometown admitting to being an FBI informant. The economic crisis (and its devastating effect on communities) is ongoing, neoliberal fundamentalism is as out of control as ever, organizers are still being targeted, state-sponsored murder of people of color is happening everywhere.

Meanwhile, Obama was inaugurated yesterday, but that’s not what’s giving me hope. I’ve been thinking about the tirelessness of the organizers in my life, many of whom worked hard get Obama into office, and who are still organizing – in solidarity with Gaza, to stop police violence, against privatization, gentrification, war, homelessness – mostly organizers who are affected by these things so much more directly than I am, and are inspiring me endlessly with joy, art, camp, attitude, and resilience in the face of ongoing crises.

I thought Enough readers might appreciate this wonderful statement by the Audre Lorde Project: A Different Kind of Morning in AmericaÂ – so helpful in thinking about the interconnectedness of these crises and how to approach them in our work.

January 6, 2009

Enough.

A reader wrote in after I posted my giving plan, asking if I ever plan on having children or buying a house, and how those things affect my decisions about giving. These are questions I get a lot, so I thought I’d post part of my response here: Continue reading “Enough.”

January 4, 2009

A year of giving away money

Happy new year, folks! I wanted to post my giving plan for the past year, as promised: here it is, with some background info and some of the thinking that went into creating it.Â Â

Giving away all this money has been such a weird experience. One one hand, it’s been so great to have so much money to support organizations I know are doing amazing work. But also, it’s been really hard and frustrating to observe/participate in philanthropy culture and continue to learn more and more about how much philanthropy screws over social justice movements. Having lots of money to give away is such a palpable experience of how horrifyingly unjust wealth distribution, capitalism, and social justice funding are. But I’ve also gotten to have so many amazing conversations with friends, family, and other organizers in my community about all the things I love to talk about that we write about here all the time. I’m trying to get more comfortable with navigating those complicated spaces that exist when trying to act in just ways in totally unjust situations.

There are lots of things I could have spent a lot more time thinking about: whether to give a lot to a few places or less to more places, how much to give nationally vs. internationally, to give through activist-advised re-granting institutions or just give directly to organizations, to give all at once or to spread my giving out over a few years, etc. I never found satisfactory answers to any of these questions, and I tried to just move forward instead of getting caught up in doing things perfectly. I’m so excited for when every wealthy social justice activist is giving away their inheritance and talking about it openly with the whole movement, because then it will be so much easier to make these kinds of decisions. Actually, I’m so excited for when capitalism ends and we find ways to take care of ourselves that aren’t based on oppression and exploitation, and social justice organizations have all the resources they need without having to rely on the whims of a handful of lefty rich people.

January 4, 2009

What I Gave and Where I Gave It: 2008 Giving Plan

Tyrone Boucher

Where The Money Came From (and some history)

My dad set up a trust fund for me when I was young, with stock from a software company he started. The company ended up making lots of money, andÂ my trust fundÂ grew to about $400,000. When I turned 25 (last year), the option opened up for the trustees to begin transferring the money into my control.

Because ofÂ my involvement in economic justice organizing, I’d already had lots of conversations about class, inheritance, and giving with my father by the time I started to get the money. He agreed to arrange for $200,000 to be transferred into a brokerage account that I controlled. I used some of the money to pay him back for my expenses he’dÂ paid for inÂ the past (like school), and put most of the rest of it into my giving plan.

Dealing with this money has been an ongoing process of talking with my family, understanding kind-of-complicated financial and tax stuff, making compromises (mostly about moving more slowly than I’d like), and getting clear on my own motivations and vision. I’m planning to give away 50-60% of the money from my trust fund by 2010, and most of the rest of it later, as I get access to it.

I’ve been really glad to have this opportunity for honest conversations with my family and community about wealth, class, and giving. I try to share my giving plan as much as possible if people are interested, mostly to start community dialogue and get feedback and provide an example of giving money with a social justice framework.Â I always like hearing people’s thoughts and ideas and impressions. I hope this can be a tool to inspire people to create new and interesting ways to give money – there are so many different ways to do this and I sure don’t have it all figured out.

Values

1. The vast majority of my giving goes to social justice organizing (i.e. groups that organize communities to fight the root causes of injustice).

2. I give almost entirely to groups that are led by theÂ communities they are organizing; specifically, folks who are most directly affected by oppression – people of color, poor/low-income people, queer and trans people, women, etc.

3. I give to organizations with a multi-issue analysis because I believe that all forms of oppression are connected, and that everyone’s liberation is bound up together.

4. I give without regard to 501c3 status or whether or not my donation will be tax-deductible.

5. I strive for accountability and transparency in my giving by sharing my giving plan freely and soliciting direct input from other activists, organizers, friends, and family.

6. I always give unrestricted donations rather than requiring that my gift be used for a specific purpose or project.

7. I make multi-year commitments as much as possible, and try to be clear with the recipients about how much I can give and for how long.

8. A percentage of my giving goes to social justice foundations with activist-advised funds, because I believe they do important work to support grassroots organizing and reshape philanthropy in positive ways, and that they are an important model for shifting the decision-making in social justice funding from individual donors (particularly folks with privilege)Â to community activists. I also know that the grant application and review processes that come with foundation funding can drain the time and energy of organizations – so, I chose to give the majority of my donations directly to orgs.

9. I make a point to give to individuals when I can, because I want to live in a world where people support each other and share resources within networks and communities.

10. When possible, I try to pair my giving with fundraising and donor organizing. I believe that donations can go farther when I use them as an opportunity to educate and engage with other donors about my choices, so I always give publicly rather than anonymously and try to use my giving to help get other people to give.

Process

I was intimidated by the idea of creating a giving plan, because I wondered how I would ever be able to choose between all of the amazing social justice organizations that I wanted to support. I had been giving smaller amounts somewhat haphazardly for a few years before I began gaining access to my inheritance, but I’d never created a clear plan.

When I finally sat down to do it, it wasn’t as hard as I thought. I made a list of all the organizations I’d given to in the past, and all the organizations I’d always meant to give to. I wanted to give consistent support to these groups, so I added them all to my new, multi-year giving plan.

I wanted my giving plan to reflect a wider range of organizations than the ones I was personally familiar with, so I informally approached several organizers in my extended community whose work I admired and asked them for input. They recommended organizations with whom they shared values and who they saw as allies in their work (I also specifically asked for organizations who had a hard time getting funding from traditional sources), and these organizations also went on my giving plan.

The process of trying to figure all this out has taught me that there are so many ways to give money, and most of them are both useful and challenging in their own ways. I try not to get too caught up in working towards perfection, because there is definitely no perfect or best way to create a giving plan. I think of giving money as one small facet of my social justice work that hopefully reflects my broader commitment to wealth redistribution, anti-oppression, and grassroots organizing.

Here’s how it worked out:

Anti-Incarceration

Safe Streets/Strong Communities $7000Â ($5,000 was for Expungement Day (partnered with Critical Resistance NOLA))

Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children $2500

Critical Resistance $150 through monthly sustainer program + $600 for CR10

Critical Resistance New Orleans $2000

Anti-Violence/Transformative Jusitce

Communities Against Rape and Abuse $500

Generation 5 $360 (through monthly sustainer program)

Healthcare

New Orleans Women’s Health and Justice Initiative/INCITE! New Orleans $6000

Women With A Vision (New Orleans) $2000