Charity for Sale

by Nicole Hsiang

“The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house”
-Audre Lorde

Working as a fundraiser for a non-profit, I spend just as much time thinking about money as a small business owner does. Thinking about how to attract donors to our work. How to network with our constituency. How to brand ourselves and establish a niche. How to partner with wealthy foundations and corporations. As we fundraisers struggle to raise money from every angle possible, I am fearful that non-profits are adapting to a corporate mindset, where values are compromised for financial growth and power. After all, we live in a society where capitalist greed has contributed to the very problems we are working so hard to solve. How is it possible to package and sell social justice? As I sit and reflect on my work as a non-profit fundraiser, Audre Lorde’s famous words haunt me.

The non-profit industry continues to strengthen in size and number, with reports of more individuals, corporations and foundations giving their money away each year. Charity has become so popular, that more and more celebrities and companies are now attaching themselves to a cause, instantly making social change “trendy”. We all know about Angelina Jolie’s crusade to save refugee children and Bono’s fight against the AIDS epidemic and genocide in Africa.

While appearing generous and compassionate, corporations practice charity as a new business model and branding strategy, where popular social issues are exploited for their own profitable interests. This is the way charity is reduced to a commodity. I first noticed this phenomenon when PG&E went “green”. That’s ironic, I thought. I don’t recall PG&E ever caring about environmental wellness before, when their power plant in Bay View Hunter’s Point was once the single largest stationary source of air pollution in San Francisco.
Following that was the Red campaign championed by Gap, and Credo Mobile’s bus stop billboard ads that boast, “Make a difference every time you talk” – because they donate 1% of their proceeds to a variety of non profit organizations. As the funds pour in, it’s hard to complain about it – after all, money is money. 1% of a corporation’s earnings is more than 100% of the average amount a typical American makes in a year. To a fundraiser, that means less work and more money. But along with it comes a bunch of moral and ethical questions that is impossible to ignore. Is it wrong for an environmental justice organization to accept a $100,000 check from Chevron?

Meanwhile, we still have a war going on, an overheating planet, a soaring increase in the prison population, a widening gap between the poor and the wealthy, and inequality along the lines of class, race, gender, and sexuality remains. It is clear that something’s wrong with this picture. If non-profits are building, and more people are giving, we should be making more change and progress, not less. Can I take accept corporate money while staying true to my beliefs?

As I struggled to understand my own work and its place in the movement for social justice, I talked to my peers and read The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex, an inspiring anthology that I believe all of our comrades in the struggle would benefit from reading. I was reminded of all the different creative ways that successful organizations have been able succeed without selling out their core beliefs. These ways include grassroots fundraising, staying true to your vision and mission, prioritizing the leadership of the community your work affects most, participatory consensus-based decision-making, and avoiding top down hierarchies. It’s about practicing what you preach, essentially. Audre was right. We have to build a new house with new tools.

Yes, I know it is possible for grassroots organizations to avoid the commoditization of our struggles, be accountable to the communities we work with, and still be financially sustainable. It’s undoubtedly a challenging process, but beautiful as well.

Five hours and two peanut butter sandwiches later,

by Karen Topakian

I emerged into the chilly wind from the outdoor holding pens at 850 Bryant Street, the Hall of Justice. It was 6:30 p.m. on March 19, 2008, the 5th anniversary of the US led invasion of Iraq and more than 100 of us had been arrested for protesting the war.

More women than men filled the three makeshift pens that kept us in place behind concrete walls next to Route 101. We sang, we laughed, we lent each other warm clothes. We did the Bunny Hop and the Hokey Pokey. We even rattled our cages.

I was arrested because I refused to disperse. I disobeyed a police order. At 12 noon, I preferred to lie in the middle of Market Street at Montgomery next to a flower-laden coffin,

Father Louis Vitale, a professor from San Diego in a pin striped suit and other men and women who weren’t going to let this day pass without notice. We were there to say No, not today. Today won’t be like other days in the financial district. Today we will be stopping business as usual.

Our “die-in” lasted for close to an hour. With two spring flowers clutched between my gloved hands, I closed my eyes and wept.

This isn’t the first die-in I’ve been in, nor sadly will it be my last. But this one struck me differently. All I could envision with my eyes closed was a photo that appeared that morning in the New York Times. A color photo of an operating room in Kirkuk where a car-bomb victim, who had just lost his life lay on a rusted gurney under soiled sheets. A defeated hospital employee stood a foot away staring at the blood soaked floor and the discarded evidence of the doctors’ futile efforts. This wasn’t the first casualty photo I had seen, but that day the sheer hopelessness struck me. And so for a few moments I let myself be overwhelmed, and I cried.

When the police took us away, a few women were caught up that had not been part of the demonstration. But there they were being arrested, detained and unable to tell their employers why a one-hour lunch break was going to turn into a daylong affair. Those of us who had been victims of similar events in the past or who just knew the police drill, made sure to stick close to these accidental activists.

As our detainment wore on under an overcast sky, many people became agitated and upset that the police weren’t processing us out fast enough or at all.

The not knowing is the tough part. Would we be released today, tonight? Or would we spend the night? I reminded myself that I came here willingly and intentionally and that I would bear the consequences. For a moment, I tried to put myself in the position of people whose daily fate is tied up in the hands of others: jailers, INS officers, judges, military tribunals. This is how they must feel most of the time, their freedom, their lives, their future is not theirs to decide. With that I tapped into a more patient Karen.

I was one of the last three people to be released. The officer who accompanied me outside the jail walls told me, “We all hate this war, too.”

Photo: Karen Topakian Participating in a Die-In on Market and Montgomery, from IndyBay Media

Work That is Real

By Nicole Hsiang

The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

-"To be of Use" by Marge Piercy

Last December, the Agape Foundation offered a fund appeal writing workshop to our fiscally sponsored organizations, an essential aspect of grassroots fundraising. Representatives of at least seven groups, most of whom are volunteers, attended the training. Everyone in the room- all three Agape staff members and our grantees- identified as female. At some point this fact was mentioned, and we all simply chuckled and said, “Of course, the women do all the work!”

Is social justice work at the grassroots level automatically seen as women’s work? Often in casual conversations, I hear assertions that women are raised to care less about making money, fame, and power, and more about working for the greater good of the community. Agape Board of Trustees member Gwyn Kirk commented in a recent interview, “There seem to be many more women in peace and environmental organizations than men…I don't think it's because women are closer to nature than men. I do think it's the way women have been raised to think of themselves as people in relationship, whether it's with children or family or the wider community.”

Thinking about my own upbringing and socialization, I have to agree that this was true for me. As early as I can remember, I was taught by my parents to see myself as part of a community that works and supports each other. I knew I wouldn’t be happy with any job I didn’t care deeply about, and where I felt I wasn’t making a positive social change. I volunteered, joined student groups, and even now after I’m being paid to do work that I’m passionate about, I don’t see activism as only a job.

My friend Kristen Petroshius from Madison, Wisconsin, works with several social justice groups including Operation Welcome Home, a community of Black low-income and homeless people organizing to build power and self-determination, as well as Groundwork, a white racial justice collective. She sees social justice work as a very spiritually grounded life practice. “The work I do is putting my vision for a just world into action…the struggle for self determination is woven into my own struggle to live a life rooted in truth, justice, beauty, community, and love.”


Kristen observes that there seems to be a gender breakdown when we ask the questions, “Who's behind the scenes and who's public? Who's getting paid and who's volunteering?”

Kristen isn’t paid for the activist work she does. Another friend of mine, Amy Schoenwald, who is involved with Palestine solidarity work, felt lucky when she found out that she could earn money for work she was already doing. “When I was getting paid to coordinate an event for Communities in Support of KGIA, that was especially amazing because it was literally the work I would be doing anyway, and the payment just allowed me to put more time into it… the work I do that isn't paid definitely feels empowering and validating. It’s the major piece of what gives my life meaning.”

Gwyn Kirk says, “I do this because it makes me feel alive, and it brings me into contact with other people who are really alive, and that's a fantastic gift.”

It’s nice to know that the Agape Foundation supports activists like Kristen, Amy, and Gwyn who would “do the work anyway.”

I’m not sure if I buy the arguments that women are caretakers, are better at building community, or are peacemakers by nature. But one thing is crystal clear: as women living in a sexist, patriarchal society, working for justice is life itself. And the same could be said about anyone who suffers oppression due to their race, class, gender, sexuality and/or immigration status. The motivation to create change comes from within each of our personal struggles.



Thank you to Gwyn Kirk, Amy Schoenwald and Kristen Petroshius for helping me with this blog entry!

About the contributors:

Gwyn Kirk has been a member of Agape’s Board of Trustees since 2006. She is a teacher-writer-activist-scholar concerned with gender, racial and environmental justice in the service of genuine security and creating a sustainable world. She is a co-founder of Women for Genuine Security, an organization that is fiscally sponsored by Agape.

Kristen Petroshius lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Her paid work is coordinating a sexual assault prevention transportation program through a local human services agency.

Amy Schoenwald has just moved back to San Francisco from New York. In 2005 she was the coordinator of Students Transforming and Resisting Corporations, a group that was fiscally sponsored by Agape. Besides an activist she’s also a poet and a blogger!

To Give or To Spend

By Karen Topakian

Last week, as I walked past a DSW (Discount Shoe Warehouse) store, I toyed with the idea of going in. I didn’t need another pair of shoes. But they were having a sale. As I stood on the crowded sidewalk feeling the magnetic pull of the words, “Everything 30% off,” I spied a worn out looking man holding a battered paper cup. One that literally couldn’t hold water. He stood there quietly asking for change. Not thousands, not hundreds, but spare change.

Most people walked past him without seeing him. Others simply bumped into him with their shopping bags and kept going. No one stopped. The sight of this poor man trying to raise enough money to buy a meal or pay for a temporary roof over his head made me instantly forget the shoe sale. And made me ask the question. I might have bought a $30, $40, $50 pair of shoes I didn’t need, but would I consider giving this man the same amount for something he truly does need?

I didn’t have a good answer.

Many of us know the high we can feel from shopping, buying, consuming. Scientists have even mapped the part of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, a part of the ventral striatum that is stimulated when we shop. Why don’t we get that same high when we give money? Or do we?

A scientist at the University of Oregon conducted a study on the brain effects of donating money to a cause. The researcher noted that pleasure areas of the brain, that same ventral striatum, that are traditionally stimulated by food, sex, sweets, shelter and social connection were significantly activated when people gave money to an organization of their choice.

So why don’t we give more than we spend since we are stimulating the same part of the brain?

Is it because we won’t have that new pair of shoes to show off and enjoy? Or is it because the good feeling we receive from giving might not last as long as the black boots or the strappy sandals?

Giving money can educate, inspire, protect, treat, help, change the lives of others and the planet. Shopping is mostly about feeling better or thinking we look better. But retail therapy is temporary.

We need to adjust our minds to enjoy giving as much as we do spending. Imagine if malls weren’t filled with stores hawking the new “must have” shoe, cell phone, electronic gadgets, etc. but with organizations hawking the value of their services and programs. Would we go in and spend money?

Since where we spend our money illustrates our values, I challenge us all to think before we shop and then donate somewhere instead.

Welcome!

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the Agape Foundation’s official blog, where every week you will read about turning ideas into action.

Because that’s essentially what we do.

Since 1979, the Agape Foundation has funded and supported radical, grassroots social change for peace and justice in California. We are fundraisers, grantmakers, and activists who want an end to systematic oppression in our world. Who demand accountability from institutions responsible for violence, while working together to create our own peaceful solutions. And we seek to build community with all individuals and organizations that share this commitment with us.

Some of the topics we intend to blog about include:

• Information and updates about our grantmaking
• A list of our latest grantees
• Issues in the peace and social justice movement
• Trends in social change philanthropy and the non profit sector
• Grassroots fundraising and other organizing tools for activists

We're open to more ideas. In fact, go ahead and add a comment below on what you'd like to see us talk about!

We hope our blog will be interesting, informative, and helpful to you and your work. We encourage you to send us your thoughtful comments, feedback and new ideas, as well as share our blog with your networks! This blog is a forum and a resource.

To learn more about us, please visit our website at: www.agapefdn.org for more information. Thanks!