Donors and Funding

How is your norm entrepreneur funded and what impact has this had on the campaign you are studying?

I'm following a few norm entrepreneurs so this is a bit of a tricky question. NOCIRC has been funded over time by both members and private donors, but according to my source at NOCIRC it is the generosity of a few wealthy individuals that has really kept the organization going and provided the means to maintain the website, send out publicity materials and throw conferences.

Intact America is more mainstream and professional partly because a private donor has provided a large grant for staff and website upkeep. Yet I have had a difficult time discerning the precise funding structure of the organization. They do not publicize this on the website, and my request for information from the executive director has been met with equivocation.

My guess is that one impact of being funded primarily by one or two private individuals it that it the organization's credibility with different constituencies is affected by the identity of the donor. This may account for some NGO's heightened desire to keep their sources of income confidential.

As James Ron noted in class, there is a hierarchy of moral authority among NGOs between those who take large sums of money from single sources and those who raise money in many small quantities from the grassroots; there is also a hierarchy of moral authority between those who spend their money primarily on movement activities versus those who spend their money on institutional development such as a website and professional staff. The latter will have more credibility with policy gatekeepers but a price is paid for this level of professionalism. In the anti-circumcision movement, different organizations play both roles and appear to have a high degree of common identity, so they may be able to get the best of both worlds over time.