While this is totally fucked up, my guess that their thinking is that if Hillary is the nominee any money spent on youth organizing would be a complete waste.

The post says there are five comments, but I only see two.

How many voters did the League register last cycle?

Two points.

One - investing in youth organizing should be a prioroity for progressives. I agree with that. Using the LYV as an example of a major funder making a startegically questionable decision is useful as it puts a face to the problem.

However, I'm not sure that a retreat from funding single-constituency organizations is necessarily an abandonment of the entire youth constituency. It could be that funders are making decisions to support funding of organizations that have been extremely successful in involving young people as a matter of course in their general work. This point brings me to

Two - The largest single registrant of young voters (18-29) in 2006 was Project Vote, with over 220,000 applications from young people submitted across 20 states. Does it make sense to invest in a small organization with limited impact in your targeted constituency just because they are totally dedicated to that one constituency when there is a large organization with major impact in the same constituency?

Now, before I get flamed let me say that (1) LYV sounds like it does top-notch work on a shoestring budget and that if they had major funding could do major work and (2) I think there IS value to having a range of organizations doing real organizing out there and there IS value to having youth organizations that are run by youth.

But I think there is a larger strategic debate to have about investment of scare resources and impact on targeted constituency. It's not a simple argument and ultimately it comes down to a tug-of-war over $$$, which, despite the deep pockets of the DA, is still a smaller chest for progressives than it is for conservatives.

One thing to note: Two of the founding members of the DA, the Rappoports, are MAJOR supporters of youth development and youth organizing initiatives, so I expect that there are still deep-pocketed donors our there for youth organizing.

And finally, no organization should depend on one single donor for 1/3 of its budget. That's a recipe for disaster when that donor changes priorities. Like now.

Anyway, any debate about funding priorities for the progressive movement is one worth having, to ensure that its overall strategic goals are getting the $$ they need. So thanks for this diary.

Mike,

I fundamentally agree with most of your points, espeically the idea of the return to citizen particpation and civic engagemetn as a way of life, not just seeing elections as static once every 24 month events.

So let me point out a couple of things on that related to Project Vote, which I know a fair amount about.

First, PV actively works with its field partners to ensure that its voter engagement activities are connected to on-going campaigns that are related to salient issues in the voters' lives. That way participation is moved beyond just voting into winning public policies (like raising the minimum wage) and holding elected officials accountable.

We're on the same page on this and I just wanted you to know that Project Vote is as well.

Second, Rock the Vote has been moribund since 2004. They are barely registering anybody, let along 220,000 in a mid-term cycle. In 2005-06 PV was the largest non-partisan VR group in the US with over 547,000 applications submitted. In fact, that was the largest mid-term voter registration program ever in US history. Rock The Vote, once a monster in the registration arena, has a long way to go to build their program up again.

Regarding the Rappoports. I knew they were involved in the start-up talks regarding the DA and were part of the original planning team. I didn't realize that they were now very much separate from the DA and investing all their time (and $) in Skyline. Interesting to know.