Our Organizing & Economic Health are Inseparable. Here’s How We Protect Both.
Groundwork has authored a budget resolution we intend to introduce at the next NPC meeting.
The resolution has 3 goals:
Restore DSA’s economic foundation through a *combination* of increased income and reduced spending.
We cannot deal with something as important as our organization's health if we leave half the tools on the table. We see what plans premised on the idea that DSA members cannot increase income by even a cent results in: desperate moves like the current Mass Layoffs Resolution
Prioritize increasing income organizationally, moving from a desperate discussion entirely based on cuts to a holistic approach that prioritizes organizational health today and tomorrow.
Emerge, quickly, with a cohesive, collective push to reach a specific, agreed upon, concrete financial target that we can mobilize members for, and hold the NPC accountable to ensure.
This aims to finally end highly disruptive, demobilizing, and destructive process that has for months failed to produce a conensus on concrete, numerical goals
The resolution’s numbers and specifics are not set in stone—our NPC members are fully open to adjustments as needed to reach consensus.
Its core pieces can be broken down as follows:
CONCRETE, QUARTERLY GOALS: The core of this process is to set quarterly financial goals, which will amount to $250,000 every three months.
This will reach a ~$500,000 deficit in the next six months, a number that has been previously suggested by the Budget & Finance committee. (NOTE: this number is not exact due to changing numbers over time, but can easily adjusted based on those factors as needed.)
This is also a lower deficit than the Mass Layoff’s proposed $630,264 deficit for 2024.
Through this resolution, DSA will make it a national priority to meet these targets, which will be made clear to all DSA members, through a sustained national fundraising campaign, held in tandem with chapter efforts. While the NPC unanimously passed a proposal from Ashik, Megan, in January, it has not been operationalized.
Any shortfall towards the $250,000 will be met through cuts, which will be determined through the original, unamended, consensus budget process.
NPC PRIORITY, NPC ACCOUNTABILITY: In January, the NPC unanimously passed a resolution to raise 1.2 million dollars over this year. But it has been largely not operationalized. For example, the Fundraising Committee, which only admitted it’s latest wave of new members (which include members who have collectively—and in some cases, individually—raised millions of dollars), a few days ago.
This is not what a leadership body that prioritizes the economic foundation of our organizational health looks like. We owe it to every member currently spending time they would rather spend organizing for things like Uncommitted, Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy, or our hundreds of other campaigns to model what it looks like when DSA’s highest leadership body actually commits to following through on their own proposals. We must at least attempt to put in the work enacting this vital proposal, and it is a collective failure that this has not happened.
To that end, our proposal also includes mandatory fundraising targets for NPC members—though again, we are open to adjustments on hourly requirements, and enforcement mechanisms.
The current text is as follows. Again, this is a framework for how to turn the tide. The current process is rapidly spiraling into what could be our most destructive period in modern DSA history. But that will only happen if we let it. Instead, let us come together to ensure that as our organizing marches across the national stage, the party-level economic foundation we need to go even further will rise to match.
The current resolution text is as follows:
Socialism Is Worth The Effort: For a Funded DSA
Whereas: A fully funded DSA is a top national priority.
Whereas: The NPC in January unanimously passed a plan to raise at least 1.2 million dollars, which has largely not been operationalized.
Whereas: DSA faces a budget deficit of 1.2 million dollars, which will cause DSA to hit emergency reserves in November.
Whereas: DSA members have proven that we are capable of raising substantial funds at monthly rates that would fill a similarly large deficit, (e.g the Recommitment Drive, which raised $80,000 every four weeks on average), and our solidarity dues drive efforts continue to yield results and participation from members that suggest significant still untapped resources that DSA members are highly motivated to contribute if we systematically organize to ask.
Whereas: DSA has devoted limited resources to fundraising during the current budget crisis.
Whereas: Many NPC members have engaged in limited to no fundraising efforts on behalf of the organization.
Whereas: Massive organizational cuts such as laying off 40% of DSA’s workers will cause more damage to our organizing, fundraising, and recruiting efforts this year than running at a manageable deficit would. Our staff capacity is critical to leveling up member-led organizing activity across all of DSA that allows us to respond quickly and most proactively to external events, which is most likely to motivate, grow, and retain DSA’s membership.
Whereas: Socialism is worth the effort.
Resolved: DSA will launch a fundraising priority campaign effective immediately to operationalize the 2024 fundraising goals, emphasizing the ongoing solidarity dues drive.
DSA will set a national fundraising target of $250,000 in annual income per 3 months (~200 solidarity dues drive phonebank hours at current rates).
Any shortfall at the end of each quarter will be filled by equivalent spending cuts, which will be agreed to through iterative versions of the Consensus Budget process, which will include all spending items.
Further, if those cuts include layoffs or cuts to personnel costs, there will be an automatic right for staff to recall their jobs, if they want them, if fundraising thresholds are hit in the next two quarters.
DSA will link fundraising goals to and potential cuts together in order to reach a deficit of $500,000 (387 phonebank hours) at most.
Resolved: The Fundraising Priority Campaign will involve significant redistribution of organizational resources (comms, organizing staff hours, agenda time in NPC meetings) to be coordinated by the co-chairs, the Fundraising committee, the Growth & Development Committee, and the Directors.
Resolved: NPC members will also be expected to contribute meaningfully to the campaign and will be expected to spend 6 hours a month fundraising on Solidarity Dues Phonebanks, (or, as applicable, recruitment phonebanks and/or recommitment phonebanks) which alone would be enough to cover the 200 phonebank hours required to raise $250,000 every quarter. (6 hours a month times 3 times 18 equals 324 total hours/quarter). NPC members will publicly report to membership the number of hours they spend directly fundraising each month.
Resolved: The campaign could also involve the creation of national infrastructure that can be easily either joined by chapters, or spun off into independent chapter campaigns, modeled on our No Money For Massacres, DSA 100K, and other comparable national pushes that have mobilized members to great success.
An NPC member failing to surpass the 6-hour floor for one month will have their voting rights suspended; failing to surpass this minimum for two months will be considered a resignation of the position.
(HOWEVER this should not be construed to imply a “fundraising hours debt”--only reaching, e.g, 3 hours does not imply that a member has to surpass a 9-hour threshold the next month in order to restore voting rights/avoid resignation,)
(AND ADDITIONALLY it should be clarified that voting privilege suspension and resignation is based on hours put in, and not total dollar amount raised.)
Resolved: The fundraising committee will solicit advice and counsel from DSA members who work as professional fundraisers, many of whom have offered to help the organization during the current crisis.
Resolved: DSA will relentlessly promote the campaign for solidarity dues phonebanks, making clear to all members the importance of participating in them
Resolved: DSA will work with the directors to divert at least 25% of all staff time for the next three months across the organization to fundraising and supporting the solidarity dues drive.
Possible examples of what this work could look like include:
The Comms Department collaborating with the Chairs of Growth & Development, Fundraising, and Comms Committees to develop a priority focus on solidarity dues, recruitment, and fundraising
The Organizing Department can engage with chapters in listwork / fundraising trainings, training members in coordinated fundraising skills such as peer-to-peer organizing, phonebank logistics and turnout, list cutting, canvass script writing, etc. that are highly transferable across different types of campaigns and local organizing efforts
Data & Tech Department can hone logistic tools to enhance our fundraising systems on the back end.
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We fully believe in DSA member’s ability to overcome this without the devastating measures that have so far been proposed. We have already seen that 1.5 weeks of promotion kicked off by our March of Solidarity increased Sunday Solidarity Dues phonebank turnout by nearly 1000%. And this is just a small effort by one group of DSA members. We will make sure it’s only the beginning.
