The conventional wisdom among social movement researchers and activists is that foundation grant making is inherently suspect. The limited empirical work on this topic has documented the pitfalls of accepting support from elites, specifically the pressures to conform to more conventional models of political activity and the tendency of external funding to coopt or channel dissent. Susan Ostrander, in Money for Change , takes this wisdom as her starting point and offers an inside look at the transformative potential of progressive social movement philanthropy. This very careful and well-written ethnography of Haymarket People's Fund provides an important opportunity to rethink the relationship between established funding sources and social movement activity. It is worthwhile reading, not only for social movement researchers but also for activists, funding practitioners, and scholars interested in the dynamics of participatory organizations.
Haymarket People's Fund is a New England-based public foundation created in 1974 by politically progressive, younger people of inherited wealth. In a dramatic departure from typical philanthropic practices, Haymarket supports "community controlled" grant making. Regional boards comprised of community activists make local funding decisions, within the organization's broad ideological mandate of "change, not charity." Haymarket targets local community organizing that mobilizes people to make fundamental social-structural change. Readers wondering why people of inherited wealth would be complicit in their own class demise will find some answers, although the topic does not get much theoretical attention. Those curious about their personal histories will, however, have to satisfy such (prurient) interests elsewhere (for example, re-runs of Oprah Winfrey interviews). To her credit, Ostrander keeps this book focused on the politics and organization of Haymarket. Donors are only one node in the "social relations of philanthropy."
Another distinctive feature of Haymarket is that for almost all of its first twenty years it was organized as a cooperative organization with decentralized, nonhierarchical, and consensus decision making. In the early 1990s, Haymarket began to institute a number of significant changes in operating procedures, trying to maintain a commitment to democratic forms of participation and grant making while formalizing its organizational structure in ways that arguably call such commitments into question. These changes were pursued around the time that Ostrander began her fieldwork, offering a unique opportunity to observe and analyze processes of organizational change. We therefore get an inside look at how groups negotiate a commitment to progressive principles of democratic participation and the need for organizational procedures that are more centralized and hierarchical.
Ostrander argues that these features of Haymarket People's Fund community-controlled grant making and democratic organization place it squarely among the social movements it supports. They also redefine philanthropy as a kind of social movement organizing. As a movement "insider," Haymarket avoids the heavy- handedness of established foundations. To the extent that it influences the activities of the groups it funds, it tries to do so "carefully, not wishing to preempt these groups in their definition of themselves and the larger social movements of which they are a part" (p. 164). Much of the book details how such funding decisions are made, what are the criteria used for assessing a grantee's potential merit, and which groups are excluded and why. Importantly, Ostrander places such decision-making processes in an organizational context and clarifies how specific features of the organization its structure, demographic diver-sity, and political commitments exacerbate the dilemmas of "democratic philanthropy" and set limits on Haymarket's effectiveness. Here her analysis of the play of race, gender, and class within the organization and the ways in which organizational structure reinforces privilege is particularly informative. It illustrates how we can (and should) make such concepts central to our analyses of organizations and social movements.
Ultimately, it is difficult to criticize an account of an organization that is doing more than most to support fundamental social change and address head-on questions of power and privilege. Nonetheless, in the context of the local social movement environment, Haymarket is also a powerful organization that contributes to the structuring of social change activity. Some greater attention to the ways in which the so-called social relations of
philanthropy continue to represent the operation of power and shape organizational and movement communities despite the best intentions of donors, funding board members, and staff would add a critical dimension to Ostrander's analysis. Although a good portion of the book describes how and why grantees are selected, there are presumably other groups that meet the requisite criteria but are nonetheless denied funding. How do such exclusions reinforce the marginalization of certain actors, issues, or innovative organizational forms? Knowing more about such funding decisions would provide unique insight into what are the outer bounds on the legitimacy of innovative social movement practices, and how they are established even from within the movement. Ostrander provides some clues, but some more prominent theorization of the implications for social movement activism and organizational activity would have been an additional contribution.
In Money for Change , Susan Ostrander sets out to tell the story of Haymarket People's Fund as a progressive social movement actor. The result is successful because of the author's deep knowledge of her subject matter and her clear commitment to Haymarket's democratic project. Readers looking for more explicit engagement with social movement literature and research on philanthropy, however, may be frustrated (as I was) that Ostrander's talent for analysis was demonstrated largely in the extensive footnotes, where she makes a number of promising theoretical insights but does not develop them systematically. Still, the story itself is very compelling. It provides a number of leads for future research on social movements, philanthropy, and the prospects for democratic social change.