| Saturday, March 25, 2006 |  |
| How Foundations Are Undermining America's Social Change | 1 comment |
| 25 Mar 2006 @ 01:03 How Foundations Are Undermining America's Social Change & Public Interest Movements Posted 3/24/06 Subject: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded From Adbusters Magazine (Canada) [link] The Secret to Being as Radical as We Want to Be is to Finance the Revolution Ourselves By Michael Shuman and Merrian Fuller If Mohandas Gandhi were a typical North American activist these days, he would probably be wearing a three-piece suit and working in a plush office with his law degree prominently displayed. He would have little time to lead protests, since every other week would be spent meeting with donors - and those power lunches would hardly go well with fasting. He would be careful to avoid salt marches or cotton boycotts, so as not to offend key donors. To sharpen his annual pitch to foundations, he would be constantly dreaming up new one-year projects on narrowly focused topics, perhaps a one-time conference on English human-rights abuses, or a documentary on anti-colonial activities in New Delhi. To ensure that various allies didn't steal away core funders, he would keep his distance and be inclined to trash talk behind their backs. In short, there's little doubt that the British would still be running India. The problem with activism today is that it is largely funded by grants and gifts from rich foundations and individuals. The long-standing assumption that you can take the money with few strings attached, and then run, needs to be fundamentally reexamined. Building a philanthropic base of support can cripple an organization's mission and wreck it altogether when the well runs dry. Most nonprofits have engaged in a kind of fundraising arms race in which our best leaders focus more time, energy and resources, not on changing the world, but on improving their panhandling prowess to capture just a little more of a philanthropic pie that actually expands very little from year to year. Armies of "development" staff spend as much as a third of an organization's resources, not to advance the poor, but to cultivate wealthy donors. Significant numbers of our colleagues create campaigns, direct-mail pitches, telemarketing scripts, newsletters and other products exclusively to "care and feed" prospects and to frame positions that will not offend the rich. Nonprofit structures dictated by this mode of funding also burden organizers with the heavy regulatory hand of the state. To qualify for tax-deductible contributions, for example, US nonprofits must agree to limit lobbying and not to campaign for political causes of candidates. We believe it's time for North American progressives to break free from the philanthropic plantation. Those of us serious about social change increasingly must get down to business, figuratively and literally. Every social change group may not be able to generate all its funding through revenue-generation, but every nonprofit certainly can generate a greater percentage than it is doing now. In other words, we should become our own funders. Once we start generating our own resources, we can invest them politically - as corporations do now - largely without limitation, without wasting our time on fundraising appeals, without worrying about that next grant, without apologies. More > |
| Meet Rick Cook, Beau Ideal of Green Architects | 1 comment |
| 25 Mar 2006 @ 00:16 Lime Planet, New York, New York Of the many rising stars in the field of green architecture, Richard Cook is arguably the brightest. He has a theoretical rigor and passion for sustainability on par with William McDonough. He has the design ingenuity of Frank Gehry. So it’s not surprising that Cook is quickly making his name known among the vanguard of 21st century architects. In 2003, Cook joined forces with Bob Fox, one of the original pioneers of green architecture who designed the ultra-glamorous Conde Nast building in Manhattan’s 4 Times Square – the first skyscraper in the country to incorporate green-design elements and rooftop solar panels. Known as Cook + Fox, their firm is now constructing one of the world’s most ambitious sustainable building projects: A 54-story tower of glass and steel at One Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan. It will include high-performance green elements ranging from copious natural lighting and waterless urinals to on-site electricity generation and laser sensors that turn off lights and appliances when not in use. Cook spoke to LIME about his green conversion experience, his heroes, and his vision for an urban utopia, and offered an intimate glimpse of his own family and home. Read the interview at: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/03/lime_meet_rick.php or click MORE More > |