{"id":456,"date":"2005-01-01T08:29:21","date_gmt":"2005-01-01T14:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/01\/01\/non-profit-and-grassroots\/"},"modified":"2005-10-05T17:37:39","modified_gmt":"2005-10-05T22:37:39","slug":"non-profit-and-grassroots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/01\/01\/non-profit-and-grassroots\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-Profit and Grassroots?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Originally posted to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/small-change-news\/\">sCNN &#8211; the smallChangeNewsNetwork<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\"><\/div>\n<p>A few weeks back, Phil Cubeta his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gifthub.org\/2004\/12\/gifthub_directi.html\">View from the Dumpster<\/a> at GiftHub.  In it he says, &#8220;&#8230;there is a need for a nonprofit membership association of funders, activists, and forprofits devoted to the public good, and supportive of grassroots efforts&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This raises a heap of questions for me, all directly related to sCNN strategy.  What I&#8217;ve been envisioning and developing here is a place where individuals (and organizations, if they like) can give to <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">individuals<\/span> (some of whom <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">may<\/span> have organizations chartered as non-profits).  This necessarily swims a bit upstream, against the common assumption that you must organize a 501c3 structure in order to do good on any kind of meaningful or sustainable scale.  <\/p>\n<p>So as Phil talks about wanting to support non-profits to support grassroots, mostly I&#8217;m wondering if\/how these two ways of being can play together.  <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Are the skills and mindsets required to form and maintain the current structures dictated by 501c3-ness consistent with the skills and mind of grassroots movement?  <\/li>\n<li>If sCNN is to run on the passion and responsibility of individuals, what role is there for large gifts and formal organizations to support it?  <\/li>\n<li>Would establishing sCNN as 501c3 make it stronger or sell it out into the view that formal structure must precede all real action?  <\/li>\n<li>Can little individuals organize significant and sustainable movement without bowing before the God of tax-deductibility? <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> I don&#8217;t assume for a moment that non-profit and grassroots cannot play together.  Mostly I think they don&#8217;t, though.    Perhaps that&#8217;s because I&#8217;m most often talking about a strong form of grassroots, where the little people are <i>doing<\/i> things, not just sending in their checks.  In my view of grassroots, <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">everybody moves.<\/span>  How do we organize that?  It still sounds more like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalchicago.net\/ost\">OpenSpaceTech<\/a> and blogging than 501c3 to me, but I&#8217;m glad to bring it all together if we can.<\/p>\n<p>P.S. to Phil&#8230; can you add sCNN to the GiftHub blogroll, please, thanks?<\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both; padding-bottom: 0.25em;\"><\/div>\n<p>technorati:  <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/sCNN\" rel=\"tag\">sCNN<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/smallchangenews\" rel=\"tag\">SmallChangeNews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally posted to sCNN &#8211; the smallChangeNewsNetwork A few weeks back, Phil Cubeta his View from the Dumpster at GiftHub. In it he says, &#8220;&#8230;there is a need for a nonprofit membership association of funders, activists, and forprofits devoted to the public good, and supportive of grassroots efforts&#8230;&#8221; This raises a heap of questions for &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/01\/01\/non-profit-and-grassroots\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Non-Profit and Grassroots?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-smallchangenews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}