Planting Liberally

The Nation has the most mammoth, detailed story on the shadowy Democracy Alliance I have yet seen. Unfortunately, the news is not that sunny. There appears to be no commonly held vision amongst the donors, other than "the left is in trouble"; the Alliance is highly risk-averse; the Alliance is Establishment-oriented, and doesn't want to fund edgy projects that might rock the boat. This part, among many others, made me woozy:

Alliance staff originally conceived of an "innovation fund" to funnel smaller amounts of money (between $25,000 and $250,000) to newer ventures, such as the blogs and MeetUp-type gatherings, at the discretion of the managing director. That concept, too, has yet to get off the ground. Instead of directing the fund Wade, with her McKinsey background, appointed yet another committee to oversee it, reinforcing the inside joke that the Alliance at times resembles a "let's have a meeting about having a meeting" self-parody. The inability to move quickly and take risks in areas like media has persuaded a number of progressive donors to stay out of the Alliance, most notably Silicon Valley venture capitalists Andy and Deborah Rappaport, whose New Progressive Coalition is specifically aimed at finding and funding under-the-radar policy entrepreneurs and down-ballot candidates at the state and local levels. Joining the Alliance, Deborah Rappaport says, "would have constrained our ability to jump on new things as they appear."

The innovation fund should have been agenda item number 1 for the Democracy Alliance. The progressive movement right now is absolutely teeming with great ideas for catching up to and surpassing the conservatives. What kind of magic could we unlock by funding 10 to 20 innovative projects a year for a modest-but-doable budget of $100,000? I feel sick. There are apparently state-level Democracy Alliances, which I have heard very little about. There is also the New Progressive Coalition, which I was initially very excited about. The group appears to have foundered a bit on the dichotomy between investing in a group and mentoring that group, but I think (or hope, maybe) they are bound to get their act together. At the end of the day, I think most of these problems could be solved by small-dollar liberal movement philanthropy. This mechanism ultimately revolves around the vision, enthusiasm and energy of a small group of people who want to start a project. If I want to raise money for a project similar to DistrictBlogs called JusticeBlog, which makes it easy for people to blog about any judge, court, or decision made in the federal judiciary (not a bad idea, by the way), then I'd have to put together the energy and the vision to make enough other people throw me a dime to get the project off the ground. JusticeBlog might be an awful way to build a movement, but that would get settled soon enough: the base of donors would shrivel up as the ineffectiveness became apparent. It's a sort of Darwinism applied to movement building ideas. By the way, what would I do with the gobs of money the Democracy Alliance has? I damn sure wouldn't spend it on issue groups, as they appear to be doing, and I certainly wouldn't spend a minute worrying about issue differences amongst the donors. I would move aggressively to support revitalization of the social movements within the progressive coalition, including union organizing efforts; progressive college newspapers, progressive college religious groups, and youth leadership training initiatives; organizations that make leaders of the religious left more vocal, and which move to actively grow the religious left, via church planting, paid advertising to recruit new members, or otherwise; support for much, much more local bloggging; and support for hybrid social/political groups like Drinking Liberally. Also, I would set aside at least some of the money for use in loans. There's a fair amount of enthusiasm for liberal entrepreneurship out there; we can maximize our philanthropy dollars by using that energy.