What Are Progressive Blogs Lacking?
Posted by Guest Blogger at  http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/57946… on July 25, 2007.

Mike Lux: Bloggers have revitalized the Democratic Party and progressive politics, and yet for the most part, they are ignored by its major donors.

This post, written by Mike Lux, originally appeared on Open Left

There is a great deal of conversation in the blogosphere about why Democratic and progressive donors don’t do more to support this movement. Bloggers are justifiably proud of the incredible added value they’ve brought to Democratic/progressive politics in the form of breaking important news stories that the media has ignored, shaping the debate on major issues that nobody else has done, identifying candidates early on that the Democratic establishment was ignoring and helping them go on to victory, recruiting tens of thousands of new volunteers for Democratic candidates and raising millions of dollars for the Democratic Party and progressive candidates. Bloggers have revitalized the Democratic Party and progressive politics, and yet for the most part, they are ignored by its major donors.

I wanted to share my perspective on this, as someone who knows and has worked for many years with people in the donor community. I believe that bringing these donors into a mutually beneficial relationship with the progressive blogosphere will happen, but that it will take a different kind of strategy and some patience before things change. I am optimistic over the long term, because for all their differences, the big donor community and the blogger community have one big thing in common: candidates and groups all too often look at them as ATM machines, rather than valuing their ideas and strategic thinking.

Here are the barriers I see to the relationship:

First, I think it is important to understand the frame of references donors are living in: anybody who gives a lot of money to good causes has a huge target on their back. I was once, about 10 years ago, visiting one of my dearest friends in the donor world, a legendary force of nature named Bernard “B” Rapoport. B has given away millions of dollars a year, for many decades now, to Democratic causes, progressive think tanks and advocacy groups and to educational institutions to help poor kids. I got to his hometown of Waco, Texas late in the afternoon, and went to his office to hang out with him before going to dinner with he and his wife, Audre. In the hour I was with him in the office, he had eight phone calls. One was related to his business, the other seven were from people asking for money. Among that seven were six from politicians, including Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt, Tom Harkin and Ted Kennedy. The one that wasn’t a politician was from another major donor friend, whom B had just gotten to give a big check to a favorite cause of his own, who was calling to ask B to return the favor.

This is the life of a big donor. They get hit up constantly by just about everybody they know, including big name politicians, other donors, celebrities and heads of well-known organizations on a very regular basis. All of the folks asking make their strongest possible pitch as to why their campaign, or other candidates they are supporting, or their organization is the best thing since sliced bread.

I’m not telling you this story to make you feel bad for the donors- they have all the money they need and get stroked constantly by famous and important people. I’m telling you this to give you a sense of the marketplace you are operating in. These folks can’t say yes to everyone who asks and everyone they say no to thinks they are cheap bastards. And if two people are on the line, and one is Ted Kennedy and one is someone you have never heard of, most folks will take Ted Kennedy’s call.

Another key thing to understand about the donor community is the typical demographic profile. They tend to be older, they tend to be extremely busy and they tend to have staff people (either for their work or for their philanthropies) hand-feeding them things to review: not exactly the profile of your average blog reader. Most of the donors I know have at least heard the phrase “blog”, but few of them have read any of them, or understand what they are or how they work. They certainly don’t know the extraordinary things the progressive blogosphere has accomplished in the last few years.

The final thing to understand is the giving patterns of the big donor community. They are used to giving to (a) candidates, (b) party committees, and (c) organizations such as think tanks or issue advocacy groups that focus on the issues they care the most about. They are not used to giving to individuals or websites, and frankly, they aren’t used to giving to broader strategic initiatives that help the broader progressive community. And it takes time to change giving patterns: most donors don’t just randomly decide to give to whichever suitor they like the most on a given day. They have a yearly budget for their giving, and they tend to give the lion’s share of their money to the groups and candidates they have given to in the past.

So there are some mountains the blogosphere needs to climb, but I don’t think they are insurmountable- I think of them as more Appalachian-size mountains rather than the Himalayas. We just need a good path. Here are my thoughts on strategy going forward:

1. Build a constructive relationship with those in the donor world trying to change giving patterns. Like I said, none of this is easy, and the attempts so far to get donors to be generally more strategic in their giving have been an adventure, to say the least. But I think engagement in this arena is important.

One of these projects was started by Silicon Valley venture capitalists Andy and Deborah Rappaport, called the New Progressive Coalition. It has been trying, in its words, to help donors “make smarter decisions and improve the quality of your political and social engagement.” I was very involved in discussions in the early days of this project, helped them launch, had even agreed to be on their board, but was frustrated with some communications breakdowns and ended up not getting involved. However, I still try to stay in touch, because Andy and Deborah are friends, and because NPC has some worthwhile ideas, values, innovation (always a good thing), and their hearts are in the right place.

They’ve had a bit of a rough start, had at least one major restructuring, and it’s not clear to me what they have accomplished of substance yet. And I frankly haven’t heard much from their Executive Director Kirstin Falk lately, so I don’t know what is percolating within their walls. I know some bloggers have stayed in touch with Kirstin, though, and that is a good thing, because experiments like this should be encouraged, bloggers being in dialogue with the donor community should be a constant thing, because sometimes ideas get sparked and turn into something of real value, and the folks at NPC are very open to creative and innovative ideas.

The other big project worth mentioning here is the Democracy Alliance, which has gotten a lot more notice than NPC because it’s a bigger donor network that has moved serious money out to progressive organizations. The Alliance has also had a challenging beginning, including hiring a CEO out of McKinsey who didn’t get politics very well, and as a result, didn’t last very long. The Alliance has received a lot of criticism in some quarters (including the blogosphere) for funding too many safe, traditional, already well-heeled groups, and for being too centralized and mysterious in its approach.

I should disclose here that a lot of Democracy Alliance members, including much of their board, are friends of mine; that I have done a little bit of consulting work for them; and that several groups that I am on the board of, or am close to, have gotten money from them. So I have several biases that lead me to wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt. But here’s my thinking: in spite of their problems, I think there is great potential for good coming out of the Democracy Alliance, for the broader movement, but also specifically for the blogosphere. I say this because, for all their support of well-established groups (which, by the way, there is nothing wrong with- there are some great groups they are helping), the Alliance has already begun to change American politics by making major investments in new and innovative entities like Progressive Majority, the Center for Progressive Leadership, CREW and Catalist. They have also already moved serious money into internet activism through supporting ProgressNowAction (based in Colorado) and Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films.

They haven’t yet begun to support the blogosphere in a big way yet, but I believe that will change. The barriers I mentioned earlier to donors supporting bloggers, such as being inclined to support organizations rather than individuals, have been barriers for the Alliance as well, but I think if the movement can both be strategic itself regarding how to take down those barriers, and engage in honest dialogue with Democracy Alliance donors and staff, I believe real progress can be made over the next couple of years.

2. Create, or work with, organizations willing to support bloggers. Given that donors are much more comfortable giving to organizations than individuals, we need to develop a strategy for getting the blogosphere resources through organizational entities. There are two ways of doing this:

(a) The first and quickest is to work with existing progressive groups that are open to working with the blogosphere to create joint programs that help the organizations in their outreach to bloggers, and get bloggers the financial support they need to keep doing their great work on issues that the groups care about organizations and bloggers can then go to the donor community together to pitch these ideas to them.

One of the reasons Matt, Chris and I formed OpenLeft.com was to be a bridge to existing organizations, and to the donor community. We have had a series of great conversations with folks in both camps over the last couple of weeks, and I think that this kind of joint fundraising approach has a lot of potential.

(b) The second approach is to begin to build our own organizations that are in existence to build the progressive blogosphere. The Center for Independent Media and the New Organizing Institute are great examples of groups formed in the last couple of years that serve and assist the broader progressive blogosphere. And Joel Silberman is working with DailyKos and Firedoglake on some creative new organizational ideas. But we need more groups- formed of, by and for bloggers- that can raise money from the donor community, and move it to bloggers in the form of writing fellowships, health insurance, training, and travel to conferences.

These organizations must have structured accountability, both in terms of accountability to the blogging community, and in terms of accountability to the donors giving the money. And they have to have legitimate plans, budgets and timelines that show that they money given will be a true value, resulting in tangible accomplishments for the broad progressive community.

3. We need to look for venues for relationship-building. There are a lot of really good folks in the progressive donor world, and I think a lot of them will be interested in building relationships with bloggers. What folks in the blogosphere have to figure out is venues for such interactions to take place.

One of the things we plan to do at OpenLeft.com is to be involved with organizing different kinds of events where bloggers and progressive donors are both invited and involved.

4. The movement needs to show its long-term, tangible value-added to donors. A pitch to donors needs to be more than “we’re really good people, and we do lots of great things, and we don’t have enough money.” Many people coming to donors for money can and do make those claims and this is an incredibly competitive environment. If you want real money to start going from the donor community to the progressive blogosphere, there need to be proposals that show what tangible, significant benefits are going to flow to progressive candidates and causes in the future. If you can make a strong case along those lines, you are going to start getting a lot more “yeses” to requests for money.

I understand how hard it is to show patience and lay foundation blocks for the future when you are broke and have no health insurance. But engaging the big donor community will take time and patience. People like me, who have known folks in the donor community for a long time and also understand the value of the progressive blogosphere, can be a bridge to this community, but it’s not like just turning on a spigot. There needs to be a serious, thoughtful strategy- and then bloggers need to begin patiently going out and asking for the money, because donors don’t give unless they are asked and asked with a pitch that gives them a tangible value-added proposal to give toward.

Editor’s Note: The video to your right is from Open Leftand features Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). Durbin is going to holding an “online conversation” on Open Left in the hopes of crafting better broadband legislation which would make internet access more widely available.

Tagged as: progressive blogosphere, democratic party, donors, blogs
Mike Lux is the co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies, L.L.C., a political consulting firm founded in 1999, focused on strategic political consulting for non-profits, labor unions, PACs and progressive donors.