This article is part of our series The Alt-Labor Chronicles: America’s Worker Centers.
The art of financially sustaining a configuration of working people has bedeviled alt-labor organizations from the get-go. Even now, they remain locked in a careful, complicated dance with the foundations, unions, and individual donors who subsidize their work.
Mainstream unions were able to achieve economic independence due to a convergence of historical forces in the 1930s, which led to wide-scale collective bargaining in an era of relatively supportive governmental infrastructure; that, in turn, made it possible for unions to assess and collect dues from their members and establish robust funding for their ongoing work.
Worker centers, on the other hand, organize among constituencies and work classifications that have often received short shrift from the government and established unions, and, like domestic workers and farmworkers, were intentionally excluded from the National Labor Relations Act by Southern legislators bent on barring African Americans from coverage. Most serve and advocate for low-wage workers, and cannot survive on member dues or fees for services. They have never become financially independent. Instead, they have sometimes been underwritten by labor and often by progressive foundations.
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Worker center staffs tend to cite a handful of funders and program officers who have consistently helped them to survive and grow. They especially credit the recently dissolved Discount Foundation (which spent down its endowment) and the Solidago Foundation for maintaining a commitment to the immigrant workforce; the LIFT Fund, an amalgam of unions and foundations, for its unique efforts to fund programs at the intersection of unions and alt-labor; and the Ford Foundation for committing substantial resources for worker centers and the auxiliary infrastructure that supports them.
However, relationships between the funding and organizing communities remain complex. In the past decade, as the Obama and Trump presidencies transformed the political landscape, progressive foundations that addressed societal inequity increasingly became aligned with progressive political donors and PACs seeking election wins. They also became more prescriptive about what work should occur, and how it should be done. The Democracy Alliance, which convenes a broad spectrum of progressive funders, is credited with strengthening partnerships among donors, foundations, and unions (a backbone of funding for Democrats and organizing groups), with the goal of creating a more focused and effective strategic approach in these volatile times. That process encouraged consolidation of the organizing landscape into larger networks like the Center for Popular Democracy, People’s Action, and Community Change (formerly the Center for Community Change), which serve as intermediaries for training and funding groups across regions. These networks, while still grantees, acquired sufficient heft to take on gatekeeper functions vis-à-vis some worker centers and other smallish organizations.
These consolidations have had a number of positive benefits—notably a comprehensive shared voter file (VAN), communications hubs, and vehicles to better coordinate interorganizational activity to avoid duplication and maximize the amassing and distribution of resources. These, in turn, facilitate building greater power and capacity to move an agenda.
But they also come at some cost. Consolidation can become a de facto vehicle for homogenization of principles and practice, where donor-driven brokers at the top of the food chain dictate the conditions for support and often the manner in which the work should be done by groups on the ground.
In addition, as funders have advanced their own theories of social change—and seek to implement their favored solutions—there has been a danger that the groups receiving grants and donations can become more like contractors for hire. And that is especially true for electoral work.
Political funding tends to follow the political map of any given year, often narrowing the states for which money is available to those prioritized by Democratic strategists. “The consolidation of the structure reduces the number of groups that can get aid,” notes one political organizer, “so now there may be just five states that the Democracy Alliance focuses on in its Latino or African American funding, rather than twelve.” That calculus then seeps into 501(c)(3) funding as well, prioritizing those groups situated in states that are politically in play, or in progressive cities where model policies can more easily be enacted and implemented.
But there are more existential components to the relationship as well. In his groundbreaking 2018 book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, Anand Giridharadas witheringly describes how the very wealthy have granted themselves the power to graciously solve the inequalities they themselves have perpetrated. As he observes, “They reflect a highly influential view that the winners of an unjust status quo—and the tools and mentalities and values that helped them win—are the secret to redressing the injustices.”
As funders have advanced their own theories of social change, there has been a danger that the groups receiving grants and donations can become more like contractors for hire.
These views are especially prevalent among the progressive-libertarian Silicon Valley donors who control so much of the newer wealth and political capital. A 2017 study by Stanford business school professors David Broockman and Neil Malhotra revealed that the same technological scions who staunchly advocate for gay rights, gun control, and universal health care have an antipathy toward unions and regulations that protect labor by restraining the prerogatives of business owners. This bias tends to favor feel-good and photogenic initiatives and groups that embrace sophisticated social media and branding, while it dismisses, even disparages, the labor unions that actually have been most effective in achieving the voice and power that led to higher incomes and sustainable middle-class lives. It also disadvantages those worker centers which may have skills, authentic membership, and community relationships but lack a shiny internet presence or savvy Ivy League director.
This is not the fault of the organizations that receive support, most of which are remarkable triumphs of will over wealth, led by activists of vision and dedication. But the dynamics speak volumes about who gets resources, and for what purposes, which in turn becomes part of the calculus that worker centers face in determining their futures.
With major progressive political donors and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs—still overwhelmingly white, male, and anti-union—playing such a large role in setting the agenda, there is both a perceived need to charm them into collaborations and an unease about how they will respond as workers’ groups make a greater bid for real power and protections for workers, or hold capital, including those donors, responsible for their role in fueling economic inequality.
But by far, the greatest concern voiced by worker centers involves funding consistency. Political donors have been, almost by definition, cyclical funders who hang on to their money until a race becomes hot, and often dump in mega-dollars late in the election cycle. They are notorious for their lack of interest in the critical synapses between election cycles, when the most effective civic engagement for long-term change often takes place. “It’s taken us many years to build up the capacity of our c4 so that we have enough of the network that when funding comes in at the last minute we can go out and grab all the people we’ve trained in the past,” explained one organizer in 2019. “And even so, it’s difficult because we are constantly scaling up and scaling it back down to zero, and then scaling back up again. It’s completely debilitating to a c4’s ability to keep people engaged, and to educate in a deeper way.”
Most of the alt-labor groups report, however, that 2020 was different. Driven by the absolute necessity to protect democracy, confront white supremacy, and remove Trump from office, c3 foundation funders and a host of political donors came up with early money, and in very significant amounts. As the terrain kept shifting, the funders remained more agile and flexible than they have sometimes been in the past.
The experience of 2020, and the emerging data on what actually yields enhanced voter turnout, only reinforces the need for ongoing engagement to reap the maximum gains, especially among communities of color and younger voters. As the victories in Georgia make clear, earlier contact, forged before the heat of the election cycle and nurtured straight through the elections, can produce better outcomes. It’s the time between elections when groups can nurture the long-term educational organizing that turns nonvoters into likely voters, changes minds on issues, expands the progressive base, and builds new leadership.
One would hope that 2020 hammered that home, but the jury is still out. Already, several worker centers are reporting some bumps in raising the funds they need to deepen their bonds with the people whom they reached during the election cycle. If this plague year has taught us anything, it’s that year-round education and engagement is central to a healthy democracy. A lapse in funding that effort is something none of us can afford.
This series was made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation.
