On MLK Day: Reflections on Collective Wisdom and Courage

This winter my family and I have been re-watching the seminal 1980’s documentary series Eyes on the Prize about the birth and struggles of the American civil rights movement. It’s gotten me thinking not only about the collective courage and wisdom of the participants and leaders of that sustained struggle, but also about the lessons of that movement for all of us who are concerned with funding social change.

I’ve been especially struck, in that documentary, by the fascinating “you are there” footage of internal meetings between Martin Luther King and his inner circle of strategists. It’s clear that they are aware that this is a long-term struggle with critical actions along the way, and that they are plotting out the chess moves several steps down the line. Patience – and impatience – seem equally compelling and necessary to ultimate success.

So, too, with building a funding strategy. Change moves slowly, human relationships build incrementally, and some of the most important qualities for a fundraising coordinator are far-sightedness and patience – and a burning hunger for a seemingly impossible goal. 


The second notable factor the documentary is bringing home for me is the critical relationship between the masses of individual actions taken by large groups of people, and the success of significant social change strategies.

In other words, how tactics developed by a few are brought alive through thousands of personal decisions to achieve maximal impact.


Well, so what? Activists for social change have absorbed these lessons many times over in the decades since.

But there are lessons here for all of us, human rights advocates and social safety net providers alike, on how to create, structure and sustain grassroots funding for nonprofit causes.

One lesson has to do with the way the civil rights movement was financed – it was a mixture of thousands of participant contributions, often small and usually given through church collections, and larger donations from sympathetic outsiders. And backed up by internal community in-kind support – sharing resources (such as food, transportation, shelter) so that many had less but all had some.

Well, none of that should be a surprise – Fundraising 101 pounds home the notion that a variety of donors, from inside and outside the cause, are necessary with a range of amounts and substances to build a diverse and sustainable base of support.

But there’s something more, about how the leaders of this movement worked through each other and through other people, that holds a critical message for grassroots fundraisers – that we have to trust, and build, structures that involve tens, hundreds, thousands of others in supporting our causes. No matter how skilled we may be, we can’t do it ourselves.

Another, deeper set of lessons comes from my family’s most profound take-away from this documentary: the extraordinary courage of these people – both leaders and “foot soldiers” – in confronting the entrenched power of institutionalized racism in this country, again and again and again.

At the risk of seeming terribly prosaic, the process of fund diversification takes guts, too.

There’s something about asking someone for money – to invest in your cause – that involves taking a personal stand. Explaining your deeply-held values and asking someone to extend themselves to put their money on your line. It involves exposing your innermost core, and for many, it’s terrifying.

Why else do so many otherwise committed people avoid individual donor fundraising?

Mired in the day to day, and worried about the survivability of our organizations through the current economic conditions, it’s hard to place our work in the pantheon of history.

Perhaps there’s a deeper way to do so than this, but it strikes me that achieving the right balance between patience and impatience…far-reaching vision and everyday actions…being rooted in core values and extending oneself into vulnerable territory…is a fundamental legacy to stand on.