We Gotta Talk About the Money, Honey!

If you’ve been following along on our blog here, you know that earlier this year, we fielded research to determine how we can better serve the movement, created the new program structure that research pointed us toward and the staffing structure behind it this spring.  And now, to quote Progressive Multiplier Fund board member, Worker’s Lab CEO Adrian Haro: We gotta talk about the money, honey!

Adrian said this in the middle of our board retreat back in February as we presented our four-pronged strategy for PM’s evolution and growth. And he could not have been more spot on about this fourth element to our new approach to our work.

Now, we’ve never shied away from discussing money— our mission is to multiply financial resources to fuel sustained power in our movement. AND discussing independent revenue the way we have been over the last six years hasn’t yielded the growth we need, for Progressive Multiplier or the groups it serves.

PM has not yet made its case to be invested in as a movement builder, which we see as a proxy for philanthropy embracing that independent rev gen is required for groups to build power.

So talking money in this growth context has two interconnected parts:

1. how we can light a fire under all parts of the progressive movement ecosystem to bring about faster change in how groups organize financial capital, and by who and how those capital investments are made. 
   
   And 
2. how can PM grow and diversify its own revenue to scale to where the movement’s need is for its mission? (aka how do we walk our IRG talk)

The narrative around building movement resilience and power has definitely gotten louder in the last year, and we’re consistently seeing  money’s role in building power as a secondary part of the solution.  

“Current conditions also contribute to the organizational tensions under which we operate. These include but are not limited to...the structural and ideological limitations of 501(c)3 non-profits in terms of their subservience to funding sources and resulting incompatibility with power building.”

(The Forge, 2022) 

“Eighty-five percent of respondents—the overwhelming majority—agreed that Left-wing organizations have become more accountable to our funders than to our bases and constituencies.” (Power to Win, 2023)

“Most organizations don’t want to talk openly about financial struggles because we associate them with failure and shame.”(Movement Voter Project,  2023)

“The more fundamental problem is that the liberal left, for all of its frustrations with philanthropists, is today more reliant on foundation support than the right.”
(The Fragile Left, The American Prospect, 2024)

"Almost all organizers (surveyed)—95%—felt that progressives need independent, non philanthropic revenue streams; and organizers also suggested ways that philanthropic institutions could shift, becoming better partners to and enhancing the effectiveness of Left organizations." (Organizing to Win, 2024)

“There is an alarming gap below the surface: hundreds of little-known organizations who do the vast majority of the work of actually talking to tens of millions of voters - aka “the grassroots ground game” - are not yet on track to fund their largest possible voter contact operations this fall.” (Bat Signal, 2024) 

The key to PM’s growth strategy is to upgrade the solution status of revenue generation from secondary to primary in our movement’s effort to build power.  We need to shift the conversation from philanthropic transactional funding to transformative investments from philanthropy and beyond that drive systemic change. Our growth initiatives are strategic responses to the broader challenges facing the progressive movement. By focusing on structural resilience, strategic alignment, and effective fundraising, we contribute to the larger ecosystem and we’re poised to position Progressive Multiplier as a leader in driving forward the movement to prioritize independent revenue generation.

Our first growth “toe test” has been part narrative change and part organizing.   

PM and the groups we serve have struggled to attract impact investors, limiting access to flexible funding essential for growth and programmatic R&D.  So our hypothesis was if we create a platform through which impact investors could get educated about investing in the infrastructure the movement needs to realize democracy, we could increase independent revenue for movement groups.

Starting in March we partnered with Impact Finance Center to run a series of webinars and in-person events to educate democracy groups and impact investors about the opportunities available to them and impact of this kind of revenue. 

“Our whole program is based on year engagement, so we understood that revenue generation is really critical so we got this model there has to be a way to monetize it in a way that still works for our audience” Tareq Alani explained in IFC 's Investing in Democracy webinar. “What the grant from progressive multiplier finally allowed us to do was to hire somebody to manage some of the day to day so that we could really spend a significant amount of time to optimize and maximize this donation program. How did we turn $25K into half a million dollars? We optimized the user experience for our users, everything from testing donation language to donation ads, to experimenting with the content.”

Our next webinar is Sep 11, 2024 and will feature Florida Rising doing a real time impact investment opportunity scan. 

We have four additional tests we’re running in order to scale our support for the movement and diversify our own revenue. Stay tuned to hear more about our Fellowship Program, Rev Gen Innovators Virtual Conference and more.