To Spend Out, We Need to Build Up
By Mia Reilly, Director of Engagement Strategy
The power and potential of capital in the hands of community
I’m so pleased to share my conversation with Mariko Miki in this next episode of the Make Shift Happen Conversation Series. Mariko is the co-executive director of If/When/How, an organization that provides wrap-around legal services for anyone facing criminalization for pregnancy, abortion, or birth, while working to stop criminalization from happening to others in the future.
Like most organizations in the abortion movement, If/When/How operates within a funding ecosystem where private foundations provide the vast majority of support. This is a fragile system, and one that is only becoming more precarious: several key reproductive health funders, including Tara Health, are spending out in the coming years.
In our conversation, Mariko offered an image that captures what organizations are facing between the current legal and political landscape and shifting funder ecosystem:
"We're trying to fly the plane and build it and then also build the airport you need to land at the same time."
The plane is the urgent, daily work—answering crisis calls, posting bail, defending rights in court. The airport is everything organizations need to sustain themselves beyond philanthropic funding.
We know leaders like Mariko are in this position because most of philanthropy hasn’t moved beyond its origin as a shelter for accumulated wealth to be dispensed by a select few. By design, as Ruth and Erika talked about recently, most funders hold on to 95% of their assets and make the 5% they give away so conditional that nonprofits struggle to have the flexibility and resources to build the infrastructure they need for true autonomy.
But we as a field, and especially those of us spending out, also need to grapple with what it means to not just move money out of our bank accounts, as Glen and Elise recently discussed, but to support the infrastructure for communities to steward and regeneratively grow that capital for themselves.
What if building the future didn't have to be so hard?
Across our Make Shift Happen Conversation Series, movement leaders are showing us there’s another way to do this:
In one possible future—not so far from today—If/When/How has everything it needs. They have partnerships with bail funds in every state, staff who have the long-term stability to grow their careers in the field, relationships with wealth managers who understand movement money, and the financial systems to weather any storm. None of their work is dependent on the next grant cycle or the perpetual existence of a small group of funders. They've built their airport.
In this future, spend out foundations and others paying out beyond the 5% have freed trillions of dollars previously held in philanthropic endowments, partnering with movement leaders to develop the systems and structures to govern and steward these dollars. Not toward maximizing returns for a single organization to exist in perpetuity, but to power a movement, a network of care that responds to the needs and dynamism of our communities.
As a field, and especially those of us spending out, we have an opportunity to help realize this future. Mariko offers a practical way forward: building financial infrastructure for our movements to grow and steward their own funds.
This critical infrastructure not only makes more money available, it fundamentally shifts power to organizations like If/When/How so they have what they need to realize their vision: a future where every one of us has the power and support to make decisions about our bodies, families, and communities, without barriers, coercion, or punishment, in safety and with dignity.
If/When/How defends and furthers reproductive justice in courts, capitols, and communities, helping people decide if, when, and how to build their families without barriers or punishment. Learn more about If/When/How and consider supporting their critical work here.
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