I just got home from training Resource Generation’s Donor Organizing Institute (it was awesome by the way – thanks so much to all the fabulous participants for your smarts and heart), and I barely have time to do laundry before getting on a plane Friday morning to head to the Bay for POOR’s Revolutionary Giving seminar. I have a million ideas racing around in my head from the combination of these two things and I’ve been dying to gather them here but I have two seconds of free time and for now – I wanted to collect my thoughts before heading into this weekend and share three reasons why I’m excited for Revolutionary Giving:
1) I’ve spent a lot of time in both: spaces for people with wealth talking about leveraging privilege for social justice AND in spaces for grassroots fundraisers talking about building accountable funding structures from the ground up. But it is SO RARE (/unheard of) to have these two (often overlapping) groups of people in one room intentionally having this conversation.
2) People who are dealing with immediate, poverty-based struggle on a daily basis very rarely get to shape conversation about philanthropy and what rich people should do with their money and what a just redistribution of resources looks like. And we need those voices at the forefront.
3) In the past few years I’ve witnessed/been part of so much awesome grassroots fundraising conversation about shifting power by raising money from a broad base of constituents/members rather than from foundations. This is such a huge and crucial part of building sustainable movements, but to me one piece that’s often missing is how we talk about rich people. Because the wealth that rich people own rightfully belongs to poor people/people of color/grassroots movements/etc. I want to be able to talk about rich people giving money as a form of reparations rather than “philanthropy” or charity.Â
My head is kind of exploding from all the people from different areas of my life that I’ve always wanted to have this conversation with who are going to be there this weekend. I’m so excited and a little bit nervous and I can’t wait and I also wanted to let you know that although the registration is officially closed, my sources tell me that it is not too late to get in on this if you are cursing the fact that you never signed up. Just email deeandtiny@poormagazine.org. It starts Friday night with a Juneteenth ceremony. Maybe I’ll see you there?