Get Used to It: Ep. 61, "The Culture of Greed, the Culture of Giving"

what's up [Applause] [Music] so [Music] hi welcome to get used to it i'm sheila cuell your perennial host or hostess uh if we're going to be gender based on the show which we never are today we've got a really wonderful group of people to talk about an issue i don't think i've seen discussed very fully in our community and it it has to do with something a lot of us take for granted and that is philanthropy or maybe that's not even the word for it anymore checkbook activism the fact that we raise and give a lot of money but not all of us do and the question of whether we need to support our own community whether anyone else supports our community why people do it is the subject matter today we're calling the show the culture of greed and the culture of giving i have three wonderful guests first bill melamed who is on the board of directors of the los angeles gay and lesbian center and the board of amfar uh who's a donor and an activist welcome bill thank you nice to be here next alice homme who's a graduate student in history doing her dissertation on uh activism among lesbians of color and she's also a board member of the la lesbian and gay community fund welcome alice and my good and wonderful old friend tori well not old long-standing friend tori osborne who is now the executive director of the liberty hill foundation uh former executive director of ngltf and of the los angeles center um gives the word activism i mean they should call it tourism because of all the work you've done welcome tori thanks um billy i'd like to start with you a donor activist you're a very very very generous member of the community but also generous with your time in terms of going beyond your own sort of contribution mode and raising money making certain that it's directed to various projects but a lot of people think that we're a very rich community but a very selfish community what what is your experience with our community are we rich and selfish are we very generous um what are we doing well i think that the topic of the show sort of applies to our community and the greater community both and the idea of being selfish and rich or generous and selfish seems to be a prevailing problem i think sort of in the philanthropic perspective of people in our country anyway in our community it feels to me like and i think it's probably mirrored in the larger community that there are a number of people who are reliable major donors and then there's another group of people who when friends call on them will write a check for something or will attend a dinner because there's a chic guest or a fun event happening but don't really necessarily make the connect between what they're doing on saturday night in the black tie and what the money is going to and so in a way they're giving but they're doing it for sort of selfish reasons i can have fun on a saturday night i can dress up and so i think you had you there's a dichotomy that isn't easily resolvable between selfish and and rich i mean there are a lot of studies that have been done the gay community has a lot of double uh income dinks thank you uh you know double income no children households and so there's money to be spent and you know is it spent on travel and gym memberships and nice cars or is it spent to some extent on helping others who are in need it seems to me though that fewer a smaller percentage of people in the world um not just in our community are are motivated to to give i mean it's not a culture that's built into children you know your parents say save money save money here's your allowance put it away they rarely say here's your allowance figure out who you're going to give it to and make the world a better place how do you how do you think you came to your understanding that this was an important piece of your life well actually i credit a couple of people to educating me fairly early on in my adult life although my parents and i grew up in a family where my parents were somewhat involved in charity and so that there was some cultural identification for that and frankly i think some of it even is being jewish that tends to be it seems to be a community that is more identified or it's more inbred to promote the idea of philanthropic giving early on sort of as a young adult i crossed paths with tori actually and with david mixner and a few people who really inspired me that if you can devote some of your time and your resources to helping those in need in whatever area it is whether it's aids as that became a threat to this community or poverty issues or education or children's issues or the environment that we're all sort of in this together and if you have the ability whether it's time or money to impact the world and make it a better place you owe it to yourself as part of the world to do that is it your experience that a lot of people in the gay community when they are motivated to give really only want to give to our community and it and if so would that be is that a good thing is that a necessary thing for the community you know how does that fit together i think it's probably again sort of a mixed bag i certainly think over the last 15 years with the rising up of the aids epidemic in crisis it really brought out a huge number of activist donors and people who realized that no one was going to take care of the sick other than our own other than ourselves first and so i think in that area certainly there is an inclination to sort of take care of the community first because as a disenfranchised minority you can't you know the political system fails us other people fail us so if we don't take care of ourselves first who's going to do it i think that there's a mix now with donors or with activists or with givers in terms of frankly less interest in aids just because that's sort of run its donor course unfortunately a little bit but also making a difference in other areas i still think primarily probably the majority of the giving is directed within towards the community why do you think private giving is important i mean i i know you do you do it out of your own generosity and because it's something you can do but i and i don't want to i actually want to ask all the guests to touch on this when when we get to you um there is a notion that all of the money that we raise to do services or to do organizing or whatever we give to is money that really should be allocated by the government i mean the government has a responsibility too aren't we kind of leaving it sort of randomly to whatever the flavor of the month is in terms of private giving i certainly think it's random in terms of what appeals to you so that could be flavor of the month but the the the problem there is that the government's not capable of taking care of everything and you know that can we can go back to why you spend your time in sacramento fighting the battles you fight because certain people in the government don't care about certain sectors or issues and so don't want to allocate government funds you know and then it falls i think to private foundations and individuals to try to rise up to meet the need where it's visible and often it becomes flavor of the month because this is a high profile issue or has attached a celebrity or has some panache or cachet that makes it a more appealing way to get place to give your money and i think one of the things that people in the donor activist community can do is try to come up with some strategies and plans to formulate what are areas of need and where can you make an impactful difference what areas can be handled by private money that government really should or can't do i don't know necessarily that the government has a responsibility to take care of every aspect of everybody's lives now there's different ways that you can also direct your own contributions i mean on the board of the center and am far i mean that's that's a major fundraising operation uh i don't even know what the center's budget is these days but i bet it's gabillions it's about 25 million dollars a year which is quite a growth from the days that tory and i were last involved in the center but you also direct your giving do you not i mean there's another aspect of it i know when we talk about the fund and the foundation the notion is to gather money and make a grant and how do you relate to that because you've done all those things well the the for me the two boards i serve on um sort of allow me to spend my energy raising money from other people that part of me that does that about two issues that are very important to me aids research which is still critical and the center and the gay and lesbian center which provides such a panoply of services from youth to legal to housing to education to counseling to medical services that it becomes by raising money for that one institution i'm able to help you know a lot of different uh clients be served or people in need in terms of my other personal giving and one of the reasons i support touring the liberty hill foundation is to be able to reach out where there are smaller organizations or grassroots organizations and i think that becomes the obligation of foundations and philanthropists who want to be educated and directed where a thousand dollar grant to an organization with a couple of hundred thousand dollar a year budget or less is a huge difference it might mean keeping the office open another month a thousand dollar check to a 25 million dollar a year budgeted organization at the center is useful and those ongoing donors obviously are required to keep the doors open there but the impact and the that you can have with that money is very different alice i don't know your history with uh the fund and even how long it's it's been there but it's interesting a woman who's doing her research on activism of by lesbians of color uh there were a lot of people that would say you know what's the connect here right i think of that all the time myself because i need to write about it but the fund is the los angeles lesbian gay community fund and it's been around for four years now and i came on three years ago and what we've done is give out grants to underserved gay and lesbian organizations in los angeles who whose services are not necessarily seen as benefiting from other philanthropic organizations like we don't get money these organizations that can't get money from uh the california community foundation on their own because they're too small or they're um they're volunteer driven they don't have a board so they don't have 501c3 so there are all these different issues that come up with gay and lesbian organizations that don't fit the profile of getting money from foundations or private corporations so what we've done is i think we've given out about 30 grants in the last four years ranging from like a thousand dollars on up to about 15. and what i find really appealing to about it is this grant making we have a reception every year and we get to see the organizations that uh give the money and they talk about their projects and then they talk about where this money is going to go and they're just thankful because this thousand dollars five thousand dollars they're going to stretch for a whole year for a project that won't get funded elsewhere and with the money we see great impact and one of the organizations that we gave money to in the past few years is being a star and they've always asked for programs to help latino gay men bisexual men and social support mental health things like that and our last gift to them was to help a latina lesbian and bisexual program and they would have never done that and unless we had given them the first two years funding and really think about okay co-gender organizing working with another population so that's that's the great thing about it and what i like to connect my activists work with and things that i study and things that i educate people on i feel like um activism money they all kind of go together in some ways because there's been a fear historically hasn't there been that you know money is such a corrupting yeah especially for women yeah the women say thank you i don't want any and of course the people with money say great right you know we'll keep it all for ourselves right and i think that's what i do i try to tell people that one should be afraid of money and women i think there's a psychological disconnect between what they do in their their volunteer work in their energy that they do give money and they have to deal with money but they're not thinking about it in terms of philanthropy they're not thinking of it in terms of oh i am a donor and i can give money to an organization and support them they women of color lesbians of color have been always giving money and giving time and energy but they don't see it as you know in a philanthropic way because perhaps they just think rich gay white men do that and i don't do that because philanthropy is means big money yeah it means quite a big check for me yeah so that's i mean i've gotten a lot out of the three years uh working with this fund and like over nine years ago i started getting on these boards for different organizations and i think that's how i got in touch with fundraising and being a board member also means giving up some of your own money to the organization like i had no idea that that's what one did and so it was this you know learning experience you know if you're on a board there's certain things that you do as a board member and there are board responsibilities and since i was a student have been for a while now there was always like the sliding scale but i felt like i also needed to invest not only my time and energy but my money behind the organization and behind the issue so in one way or another either i donated money myself or i was able to raise funds from other people who would you know match what i was supposed to give it's also easier that for organizations that provide services to kind of make up an emotional pitch for what they do and they have people with whom you can connect etc but i'm not sure whether the fund itself also funds organizing or activism i mean certainly as an activist there's a reason why you're interested in this fund and i does the fund it funds a whole range of um of issues from social service from having people we do arts and culture we do activist work we just gave some money to project 10 for their active voice having young high school students go to youth lobby day in sacramento so we fund things like that um we're not prevented from you know engaging in political work that is very much a part of what we're doing and that's our philosophy behind the fund in some ways to give money to a wide range because no one would give money for a political you know organizing in some ways except for liberty hill that's what you do but most foundations don't do that so yeah we have given money in those pro for those projects do you find many women who are involved in um in boards like this or in foundation or giving like this women of color oh yeah i mean i have close friends who are part of the ellie women's foundation and california endowment and i know program officers i'm you know i have ties with people who are at that level i don't think of myself at that level but they're working in these same organizations that i work with and it's very interesting to see i think younger a younger generation see these women who were working in the 70s and 80s and who helped start l.a women's foundation who helped start other organizations and they're moving into the philanthropy world which i find very interesting because they started off doing activist work doing community-based work and now they're program officers now they're um you know heading certain foundations and i talk to them about that because it's an interest of mine and they talk about this is where they feel they can make another kind of impact because money makes the world go around in some ways and it can help the organization and the issues that they're still you know committed to does it help in the uh organizations not identified as gay and lesbian to sensitize them to our issues when gay and lesbian people you know as you indicated women have move into these other arenas i mean do you find that there's more interest or sensitivity to our issues i told you because we're there yeah because the gay and lesbian community fund is really the only queer organization that i'm a part of in that active way my other community work is with either gender-based or race-based or ethnic-based organizations and in those groups you know i'm talking constantly about queer issues that's my work that's a part of me and they know that i come in with that um interconnected um philosophy way of life i'm not i cannot you know not be queer or a lesbian in front of them so and they know that my work is about that and they ask me so what is it that what is it that you're doing what is it that um how can my issue you know what i do help you and what i'm able to do is make those connections that if it's an asian american women's organization asian american lesbian issues are a part of that already if it's a i volunteer for the asian pacific aids intervention team you know it's a the only asian american aid service agency here in los angeles and in some ways they think okay what you know what should we do about co-gender issues because they're more concerned about you know asian american gay men or men who have sex with men and how aids affects them and i tell them no you need to you need to really look at gender issues so we're able to make connections between things that people think are desperate um and i i mean i liked what you asked bill about the gay community and how it's perceived and i think it's the community is so diverse that it's percy only certain people get perceived as being able to give a lot of money um gay men of color or people of color who are queer aren't within that realm of that stereotype in some way so right well tory transition has been i mean this is part of your story of transition too spent a lot of your time in the queer community and organizing and now here you are the executive director of liberty hill foundation you should probably since everybody's mentioned liberty hill and this is a national show you should probably say a little bit about what it does but also about what the connection is between the work you're doing now and the work you were doing yeah it's a through line that that i'm not sure is immediately apparent but liberty hill is a foundation of public charity that funds mostly community organizing and all of it is social change organizing progressive work mostly small seed grants five to twenty five thousand dollars lots of economic racial social justice organizing over the last couple of decades in l.a county our area is la county we're part of a network of national foundations that do social change work and we're part of a kind of growing alternative philanthropy movement the women's funds alice mentioned the l.a women's foundation the ethnic funds there's a growing set of foundations that have come small funds targeted to building and empowering within ethnic and racial minorities women's community and the gay and lesbian funds are part of that uh although for the most part they've been housed at more mainstream organizations liberty hill is in the process of actually talking to the gay and lesbian fund about them becoming a part of liberty hill foundation which i think would be a kind of a neat uh focus for us um the liberty hill is uh i mean i think for me the through line is that we're an activist foundation that what we're about is building a social change movement or social change movements or empowering people whether it's on the level of a local campaign against for affordable housing or against a slum lord or whether it's funding an organization that's working with um kind of you know welfare recipients trying to to figure out what to do in this new era or whether it's funding fringe benefits which is this this wonderful innovative theater group that works in elementary schools including i might say catholic elementary schools on issues of homophobia and kids do these little plays called cootie shots where they go and they do these really short five to seven minute plays with the kids and they talk about homophobia because it starts in elementary school and that's the kind of you know innovative risk-taking cutting-edge philanthropy that liberty hill and some of these alternative funds are able to do that that including the gay and lesbian fund that's responsive kind of to the grassroots needs for some fresh solutions things that start up i mean all good ideas you know i think wasn't margaret mead who said that you know democracy runs on a few people with a good idea and what we do is we fund it at the right time so for me it's an extension of activism i mean our time our our human resources and our money is all that we've got and i actually i was thinking listening to these guys talk i remember after years and years of doing activist work i mean i didn't call it volunteerism because that itself felt too kind of mainstream and and stuffy it was activism and it was street organizing you know in the 60s and 70s after years and years of doing it and being on boards or being on staff being kind of a professional activist i remember when i identified as a donor and it was a turning point i was always writing checks they might have been ten dollar checks but again there was this sort of class divide you weren't really a donor unless you were writing thousand dollar checks and this is what i think these alter this alternative philanthropy movement the gay and lesbian fund the liberty hill uh and and this sort of new invigoration of and claiming a philanthropy and mind you it's very timely there's a 10 trillion dollar transfer of wealth that's going to go on basically to our generation we spent a couple of decades here among us the four of us but over the next 10 to 20 years right as many of us are reaching our highest income earning potential and there's a responsibility particularly with government devolution particularly with the growing gap between rich and poor we've seen an upward transfer of wealth over the last 15 years in this country that's quite extraordinary you know the top one percent went from owning 17 of the wealth to almost 45 of the wealth since 1980 and and so there's a kind of i think a moral obligation to give back in lots of the traditional ways again whether it's activism whether it's volunteering in those old soup kitchens that need you more than ever or whether it's writing checks and and for me i i i use this as an example this moment when i realized wait a minute i'm not just an activist whether professional or volunteer i'm a donor and there's a kind of a populist a democratization i think of philanthropy that is going on and again i think it's mirrored in the larger community where more and more people are recognizing that part of what you give back and sort of be you know being of service or giving to the community or leaving your legacy whether it's big bucks or little bucks is recognizing your responsibility to write checks but isn't it true as a matter of fact when you and i were talking about this show before didn't you tell me that the it's not the richest people that are giving the highest percentage of their income or even the most money it's sort of folks who are doing well like you and me not complaining but sort of carrying much more of a burden in this uh in this giving why do you think that is there's two things that people need to know there's a lot of stereotypes flying around i mean one of them that's true is over sixty percent of 63 percent of philanthropy in this country comes from people who make fifty thousand dollars or less that cuts against what we think of um i mean fifty thousand dollars is certainly not poor but it's not wealthy either in this culture uh um second of all compared to your total whether it's your income or your net worth poor people and middle income people give a far greater proportion um than wealthy people do and uh so even though more and more wealth as we said was being concentrated at the top and so this the original thing you talked about with the show sort of how do you create a culture of giving out of a culture of greed um and i i don't think you were talking about gay people being greedy i think you're talking about a culture that's fairly broadcast right materialistic and individualistic and doesn't instill in people um the kind of values that billy learned from his his mentors on this about you know part of what is meaningful it's not just some altruistic thing it feels great to help build something and all we've got is our talent and our money it feels great to give people say that it's you know it sounds like a truism it's true so the ques i think the interesting question is how do we all help build this culture of giving how do we you know spread the word how do we model the behavior bill melamed is a model of somebody who i mean when i first met him he was on the board of the women's building was the only man on the board of the la women's building and i thought that was kind of cool but he models a donor who was also an activist he models a donor who also gets out there and does the work it's as i say it's this kind of um we need to make accessible models it's not the old style philanthropy which is you know sort of blue-haired ladies writing big checks to high art you know like the opera this is about all of us more middle and low income people actually support and mostly it's things like the church that there's their churches or synagogues that they're supporting but um and i also i want to say something about the gay community first of all women and people of color or people of modern low income need to own their donor identity as we were talking about earlier i think that's really important it's important not to create not to constantly replicate this kind of divide between gay men and the rest of us and second of all you know i think we have seen extraordinary times of generosity and of a culture of giving as i think i called it you know in the early part of the aids epidemic when you really saw people whether it was those lesbians giving blood for gay men they barely ever talked to you know or whether it was people building an entire system of health care because the government was genocidally negligent well you talked about the devolution of government which is a you know it's an interesting word and i think that that ties to what you just said if i'm not mistaken that is there sort of in two ways we would fault the government and have to fill the gaps one is they have abdicated that which they might have done in the past about social welfare and the second is they never touched our community right in any way to to help us and that's not an unusual thing i mean we identify health issues in communities of color we identify toxic school sites something liberty hill knows about and they say oh you know never mind or it's not there or right but you know i want to make the point that that billy made earlier which is that even if we restored activist government which we would all i think be in agreement that the government has been pushed by the far right in this country to take away the safety net and to actually abdicate its responsibility even to those communities it did serve before if not well but i also have to say that it's never going to be enough there's always going to be a private responsibility there's always going to be a responsibility of corporations and i wish they would step up more of private foundations and of individuals the government is never going to do it all so even if we went back to having better or let's hope they were better this time around more government programs there's still going to be a significant role for individuals especially in this next 20 or 30 years with this transfer of wealth when people are gonna and you know when you say transfer wealth you mean by inheritance yes by inheritance to the baby boomer generation it comes into 10 billion dollars and it's the largest transfer of wealth in the history of humanity and it's at the time when we are who have actually been affected by the 60s the first generation coming into money that's been affected by the 60s it's going to be an interesting thing to see if there is more activist giving if there is more straight people giving to gay stuff if there is more um more creativity and more collaboration and more of all the things that we know that work um so you know the other the last thing that i wanted to say is something we really believe in at liberty hill is is uh is the responsibility of donors to kind of be educated on issues and to and really touched on this to really know what you're giving to you know to do that investigate you have a more active a more informed donor community now and i think we're going to see more and more of this where evaluation of grant making is more important where where you know how much of the dollars is going to fundraising and all those kind of traditional questions what's the real efficacy what's the bang for the buck and those are significant questions and and i think they're good questions for donors to ask about gay and lesbian programs well and it can help too when we think i know when i write a check to the gay and lesbian whatever that i think i know that it's going for services that are were described in their little brochure when i give money though to a foundation where i need to know like the women's foundation or the you know or liberty hill then i i see that it goes to lots of different things but i don't know what it's going to go to next year so to some extent it's kind of a leap of faith about approach especially i think in empowerment um work like community organizing at public education yeah you got to it's but it's like any other organization you're believing in you're investing in vision leadership a certain amount of fiscal responsibility a sense it's going to be a going concern the money money's well spent that there's some internal evaluation process but you're you're you're believing in the people that are that are doing the good work and for foundations like liberty hill it's kind of a a one-stop shop for johnny apple seeing democracy or something i mean we do a lot of different funding of a lot of different groups and it's um and the seeds that we plant come into fruition some may wither but they they grow the organizations that come on the radar screen of larger foundations or donors down the line now who who else does this kind of work i mean i know we're we're la based and we talk about our you know organizations in la but i know that there are there are great um centers of uh activism and uh advocacy that do this kind of work as well do the in terms of building a culture well i know that every place there would be organizations to give to directly there will be centers and there are you know aids organizations etc but what about the foundations there's there's very few social change oriented foundations a network of 14 foundations across the country most major cities have them the funding exchange they're you know haymarket in boston and vanguard in san francisco and north star new york bred roses in philadelphia there isn't one in washington d.c and the women's funds there's a network of women's funds and what about gay and lesbian and the gay and lesbian fundings there's 20 funds housed in community foundations and then there's some independent stonewall in new york horizons in san francisco there's some independent affiliate historically the national lesbian advocacy foundation or whatever they call themselves foundation there's the legacy fund uh which raises money also for lesbian most of these funds are very small um they're still fairly incipient the gay and lesbian this moving to a culture of giving is a is it's not new in the sen and aids really galvanized it but it's not new in the sense of a configuration of donors around individual projects but it's new as a kind of philanthropic movement right but this becomes something we're talking about here in terms of i think the idea that you it's easy to say to somebody i want you to write a check for the center or for this aids organization or for this theater company but to say to somebody i want you to give money to this foundation and the mon trust them or understand that that money is then going to go to things you believe in a lot of people first of all are selfish and either want the personal recognition or want the control well why should i give a thousand or five thousand or fifty thousand dollars to a foundation when i can pick the five or ten things that i'm going to write five thousand dollar checks to and get my name on a building or get my name here or really you know serve my friends or do things that are really specifically important to me and it becomes that sort of next step in the education for a donor to say okay there are foundations that can give seed grants that can reach out to really disenfranchised groups within our own community the fringes of a fringe community and that that help you won't know about that organization but your money can make a huge difference or there's donor advice to camps right so a donor advised account is a donor puts their own money into i can do that since i've just done that with liberty hill which is making a significant gift to liberty hill foundation a portion of which goes directly to liberty hill for their administrative expenses and running and growing the foundation and then the money sits there under my control as the donor to work with liberty hill and make a grant to either an organization that i want to make a grant to or that liberty hill comes to me and says here's something we couldn't fund they came to us with a request for money and we didn't have money in this fund or in our general account so perhaps you'd like to fund this and it's a way of educating me as a donor about organizations and issues i may not be familiar with and also a way obviously from which brings me sort of this article i found in the new york times which is about the americans giving claude rosenberg who had done this great study about americans giving money and you know with appreciated stock and that we have to educate people that you give not on what you make but what you have and especially i mean bill gates is the classic example now i think everybody in the philanthropic community would like to take him and his computer system and you know push him off the seattle bridge because here is a man who with the stock market and whatever has made more money than anybody in the history of this country and probably proportionately gives less than almost anybody in the history of this country and now only gives money because he's really being dragged through the mud about not giving money but how does he give money by giving computers which will use microsoft programming to schools and to libraries so it becomes self-serving philanthropy which is sort of unattractive to me but so you know there there's a whole it's that whole thing i mean if you have if bill gates were on the cover of newsweek not because he was being sued by the justice department an antitrust or not because he was the richest man in the world but because he gave 3 billion or 10 billion dollars to fund a hundred different charitable programs across the country or whatever i'm not even speaking eloquently about it because the amount of money is so ridiculous how much money does one man need and in the economy that we're in this country there are a lot of even junior bill gates who are making money hand over fist that they couldn't spend in their lifetime so it all becomes about ego mine is bigger so to speak well but it's funny the way people grow up feeling either empathetic and sometimes then or or you know if they have a savior publicly or republicans or democrats well you know they're we can't say that money has not been given by republicans no absolutely not i mean this this would not be historically accurate um and and we didn't want to say oh well there shouldn't be an opera that those blue haired ladies among which i'll probably count myself in a very few years um made the music centers and the theaters and you know disney this and that and that's all important too but for our community um not that we don't need our cultural places because the the center has certainly you know opened an arena in which a lot of this can go on but to me the thing that has always been ignored really the thing you were talking about allison that that you tori you and bill have been involved in really your whole lives which is much more about social change work and that is not the thing that attracts the big bucks people government is afraid of being involved in an organization that's doing social change because they're going to fund somebody to turn around and sue us or something you know a lot of fear about that do you find more difficulty raising money for social change kinds of things than you know for saving lives and i don't want to put that down either but you don't i mean it's different from services yeah but maybe it's just the circle of the networks that i work in the majority of people that i known they're committed to social change they're committed to a progressive movement they would wholeheartedly give their money to liberty hill and believe in the vision and i think we earlier we talked about why people need to give to private foundations and we talked about educating the donor base and you know a lot of women give to the l.a women's foundation because they know that it helps women and it's about women's issues a lot of people get a lot of lesbians give and bisexual women probably give to australia because it's about helping our own and they're educated on the issues because they know that these issues and these organizations wouldn't get funded elsewhere so that's that kind of comes back to the point that you made of we need to take care of our own um but when i hear about that i i wonder about who is this like how do we define the own because who is this community that we're talking about because so many people you know intersect in different ways to the gay and lesbian community either by race or you know transgender bisexual income level all these different things so it's it's a tough decision because in some ways if you don't have all that much money you really want to make sure your money goes somewhere that has the most impact um in the way that you're committed to and i've been you know i've been with an organization that got money from liberty hill so you know i've kind of been on both ends giving money out and and getting money so it's it's kind of a tough thing for me when i think about it um but i think everyone here has said it's about educating the donor base i'm sorry yeah really um making sure that people understand and they are invested in the mission of the foundation or the mission of the fund so you know you feel good that your money is going to go and make an impact somewhere you're not just writing a check because you want you know a tax deduction on your on your income taxes or something i mean that's a good byproduct but it's not only for that but it's also it becomes sort of again cultural this is a new community there have been gay and lesbian people for as long as there have been people but that we have risen up as a community and identified ourselves to the public world has really since stonewalled in the last 30 years that we have said here we are a group of people who have this in common now the unfortunate or fortunate thing that makes this community so vibrant in some ways is that that's all we have in common and there are a lot of other elements race socioeconomic issue location gender but you go back to the blue herons ladies who support primarily arts organizations that has been a tradition amongst the blue haired of the blue haired's mothers and the blue haired mother's mother well and you you know the metropolitan opera you know is a hundred is a hundred and some years old and so there is a culture of giving there about arts organizations and certain things in that that is new to this because it's a new community and we're still feeling our way sometimes in the most basic social political issues and trying to come up with a unified identity so the way that we raise money within the community is i go to my friends and i say i mean here's the perfect you know i either go to my friends and say come to this dinner because i'm on the board or elizabeth taylor is going to be there or they're honoring tori osborne or whatever and yes it's putting on a tuxedo and as much as we all sort of complain oh god i don't want to go to another black tie event the truth is you like it you dress up you go hang out with your friends you have a cocktail you see people it's social and it's easy to get somebody to write a 250 500 hour check to come sit at my table we'll have a good time and that's why for example uh and liberty hill is honoring him dan pilata has been so successful with the creation of the concept of the aids rides because you take people first of all it's a vital issue in this community but then you get somebody who says wait i'm spending a week of my life on a bicycle in a tent now you're going to write me a check to support me on that or you're not my friend and so there's a really basic personal connection to fundraising obviously that's the way money is raised you know obviously i hear guilt actually that's why people do get money sometimes it's true i mean that's that is an impact whether it's a personal uh uh guilt or a personal sort of a sense of obligation you know certainly direct mail and the other sort of generic non-personal methods telemarketing stuff raise some money but the truth is in any organization most of that money is raised to get names on your donor list and to pay for itself it's not about and we hear love when people give us money i mean historically or in a family uh even a family with no money like mine it was sort of like well you care for me because you're caring for me and i think i i am totally pissed at people who won't give me money in my campaign i mean i don't say oh you're off my list you mean there's somebody in america who hasn't written sheila check i i mean i don't understand it but also if because you ask for money too and the thing is i was just reading a study before i came over here study after study it's not the only one this happened to be a study of lesbian giving and study after study no matter what the group is uh concludes with the huge grandiose conclusion that most people who don't give don't give because they're not asked but tori will laugh at this because you know i was on the board of the center previously seven or eight years ago when tory was the executive director and now i'm back on the board and i've just rejoined the board and from the culture of board members and boards is the fund you know the obligation that a board has nowadays to be a fundraising board in major organizations you know we've grown up from the board is worrying about you know what color the paper clips are to how are we going to raise the 25 million dollars next year and we still have these conversations in these trainings and i sat at my first board meeting and there was a discussion about people of color and women and the reality is there are those stereotypes and the perception money comes from where money is and money comes because people ask and we're scheduling our next board retreat and a part of the board retreat is going to be devoted to fund-raising role-playing and i thought deja vu does it you know it's it becomes constantly educating again it comes back to the sort of nascent state that this community is in in so many ways well people don't like rejection either and our community has experienced a lot of rejection and you know it's hard to ask for money people tell me i never had this problem because i always was with 501c3 as an actor you never were afraid of rejection or you wouldn't have had the earlier career you had well i don't know if i could say i was never afraid of rejection well you were able to say that you're able to handle it kill myself when i lost a part which is you know a broad way away from that but well you know because you manage artists and you know some handle rejection well and some don't but they stay in the business it's the same with people i think who ask for money for organizations or boards i have to say to people okay it may be easy for me but i really need to get that it's not easy for you and i say this to new candidates you can learn it i mean you may have learned it earlier or it may have come more easily to you because you were an actor and and bill may have had it modeled in his family or had friends but i can remember becoming going from being an activist executive director to being a fundraising executive director and i mean i had to practice and practice and practice it was just like learning how to public speak my guide was just like learning how to ride a bicycle i mean you have to practice it at learning to ask for money is a skill there's it's an art it's a science it's a skill but anybody can learn it right and as much as tori said you know deja vu when i'm talking about the board it becomes a responsibility of being on a board and so you have to take the time to be trained to be educated to learn how to ask for money to be able to say to somebody look i'm doing this and it's important and i need you to give this kind of money and i know you're capable of it and here's why and you have to take the responsibility not just if your staff or board or on the board of a fund to ask for money but you i would argue that part of the social responsibility part of helping to leave the world in a better place than when you came into it is to become a donor and to own that phrase whether it's a twenty five dollar a year amount that you can give or whether it's 25 000 and that becomes i think really the core of this whole conversation which is the idea of leaving the world a better place there are some people who choose through public service as a politician than an elected official as an activist as a donor as a board member as a donor that you have whether you've learned it seen it or just are it that you have some obligation here in this short time on this little spinning thing to try to make it a little better than how you left it and not to rape the environment and destroy the planet and and step all over the people around you on the way to the top because you're going to end up in a box no matter who you are and in the long run it's a raise you end up in a tie you know and so there is a there's a an educational process that hopefully can occur of either and some people you know it's a question of personal responsibility some people just won't have it won't see it don't want to be bothered well you haven't tried it but also i think people like this way of participating and that's the goes to this question of if they just get asked i mean i know from non-profit work and from political fundraising that people feel they are investing in something and they can be asked to invest in making the world a better place simply by supporting it because people may not have the time to show up and do a hotline or you know volunteer really may not have the time if we have money and we have time we have a little money i have a lot more you say you can participate in this change you can participate in social change and i think people are happy to do it right i'm open to any way people can give and if it's time if it's money if it's you know material goods they want to give a computer to an organization and you know i'm not going to say no to someone who wants to give money to me unless maybe it's like coors or something um and you know i think that's an issue that the gay and lesbian community um is grappling with too you know private pro like corporations who have homophobic practices or who have done you know bad things in the past with about race about uh gays and lesbians but gay and lesbian institutions still take their money and i think you know that that is it's an old moral dilemma that every empowered community that needs money goes through and i think it's an ongoing conversation it ain't going to go anywhere no i mean i think you attempt if you're involved in an organization hopefully you try to bring some responsibility back to the donor some responsibility in your investment practices some responsibility in your financial practices and some responsibility in the your fund taking practices um i i think you know it's interesting there's sort of a thread that ties the three of us together and also you because you're on the advisory board of the liberty hill foundation um and alice is on the board of the gay lesbian and gay community fund of la which is in negotiations with liberty hill to become a part to come you know become a fund of liberty hill and when i was having breakfast with my friend billy melamed one morning and mentioned this to him he said well if the fun comes to liberty hill i want to give a check for 25 000 and it's i mean i didn't even ask him he offered it it's that kind of leadership that sort of that makes it all you know happen alice's leadership for three years giving money raising money and doing the grant making work the work that i'm doing as an activist at a foundation bringing together gay and lesbian issues with other economic and social justice issues and the kind of leadership of an activist donor that makes it happen at a critical time seeding a new project in a new organization just what we were talking about well it's perfect timing because we're just about out of time something like 30 seconds left i think this is a really fascinating and good issue for our community and i don't maybe i'm wrong but i had not really heard this really explored very much we talk in our own circles but um it is the the real i guess the mother's milk that would be a sexist thing to say it's the harvey milk it's the harvey milk of our movement and uh and certainly you are as well i thank you very much alice and bill and tori for being with us and i guess the uh we rarely leave you with a message other than you know take care of yourself and do good and goodbye but in this case i think i think it's write a check write another check because if you do you can get used to it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you