By H. Caleb Simmons
Progressive political organizer, writer, and entrepreneur
via Huff Post IMPACT
Young people have always used political organization and activism to push social justice and political change. Unfortunately, increasingly scarce funding for youth organizations since the recession has made millennial advocacy and organizing harder on all levels. Large foundation funding accounts for over 70 percent of all youth organizations' budgets, but only a handful of older, usually multigenerational organizations, are funded on a consistent basis. Alternative solutions to large donor giving need to be found to enable more youth organizations on every level -- local, state, national, and global -- to operate on a level playing field.
The Funders' Collaborative on Youth Organizing, a funding and infrastructure-building organization for youth organizations run by young people from diverse backgrounds in rural, metropolitan, and other settings, has been working on this for ten years. FCYO funds such youth organizations on the local level on up, helping them build social movements to help young people live better. Eric Braxton, the organization's Executive Director, believes more organizations should adopt this model, because "...attempts to create youth advisory structures can result in tokenization rather than helping young people develop the collective power to address the roots of inequity." Instead, he says, "we have found that the most effective way for young people to achieve lasting change is to build powerful organizations that cooperate as part of a broader social movement."
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