Organisations – especially the bigger ones – often get a lot of criticism from grassroots groups and individual activists, for all kinds of things. One of the accusations these organisations get thrown at them is that they are all about money/fundraising/donations. Organisations are being called corporations or businesses. Francione, for instance, lately seems to make it a sport to point out “big red donate buttons” on all the major organisations’ websites.

Let me be clear. I believe that organisations should be as transparant as possible about where they get their money and how they spend it. From strategically stupid choices and bad management, to extravagant wages for certain functions or even downright corruption: these are risks in any movement, also in ours. Apart from intentional misconduct, sometimes organisations may become less dynamic after a while and just raise funds to keep existing and keep people on board. Organisations should constantly be aware of this risk, and can use their members and donors. to help them watch out for them.

Corruption and abuse of funds should be called out. Fundraising, however, obviously should not. There is no shame in looking for donations or fundraising. There is no shame in big budgets. There is no shame in being big. On the contrary: if small is beautiful, then in our movement, big is wonderful. 

In most organisations, the biggest part of their bugdet goes to staff costs (salaries). This is normal too. Yes, you can run volunteer-only organisations. But they usually won’t get as big or as impactful as organisations with paid staff (I’m sure some people will try to come up with counterexamples. Bring them on.)

Many people can invest volunteer hours, but once you need full time staff on the job, you pay them a wage. It’s simple. Often an organisation will need to find people with professional backgrounds and expertise. The battle against the ag-gag laws in the US, I assume, cannot be won with volunteers only.

Another criticism (again by our friend Francione) is that organisations will often choose (single issue) campaigns in order to raise funds. Apart from the fact that I’m sure these targets are chosen for other reasons (like strategic ones, or just to alleviate suffering), I think there’s nothing bad with choosing a target or campaign because we know it will raise some funds. If we can raise a lot of money on an antifur campaign (say), that can often provide money or other opportunities to also work on other topics.

What’s the insinuation here anyway? That organisations and their staff are interested in money for money’s sake only? That the people in organisations want big wages, or want to expand their organisations for their own ego? Give me a break. The industry of animal (ab)use has billions of dollars at its disposal. So I hope we’re not going to whine about the few hundred million that our movement has in total? 

It’s strange how suspicious people are of money when the context is the nonprofit sector. It seems that the world is allowed to make a lot of money selling laundry detergents or video games, making movies, but not by doing good. It’s an absurd idea, and it’s very much a pity, actually, that the hardest way of actually making a living is by doing good. Many people want to work the entire time for animals or some other good cause, but they can’t, because there are not enough paid jobs available and they have to make a living somehow. The more of these paid jobs there are, the better.

To those saying we can’t change things with money, I’d say: indeed. But we can change things with committed people able to give 100% of their time to the cause. We can change things with TV-commercials. We can change things through lobbying. We can change things by handing out hundreds of thousands of booklets. We can change things with undercover investigations… And for all these things, we need… money.

Fundraisers, do your work! Money is something in our movement that we should get as much of as possible, and do great things with. Let no one tell you any different.