"The big donations are not really donations. They're deals. And the small donors are just the mugs who pay to be trampled on by the big donors."
As we head towards a world in which every other Twitter feed harbours a link to GoFundMe or similar, there's an uncomfortable sense that charityhas slowly been hijacked by the rising class of the “champagne victim” or "grassroots activist". The “champagne victim” being a well-off individual or business, using emotional pressure and guilt-building tactics to source charitable donations on their own behalf. The "grassroots activist" being a self-styled champion of human rights, whose real concern for the common people persistently hovers around the nil mark.
It's certainly true to say that in some areas, the sob story has begun to replace the transaction as the go-to means of making money online. And in terms of personal economy, why wouldn't it? I mean, why complete ten online surveys for £8, or write a thousand-word blog post for £20, when you can just slap down your victim card and have some charitable soul give you an unconditional £50? And then another. And then another.
Times have changed. We're now used to reaching the bottom of a lazy, half-soaked blog article, only to be told we should be paying for the four minutes we've just wasted reading other people's random, speculative quotes from Twitter. Four minutes we will never get back.
What so many of us don't realise, is that the people tapping us up for these donations are so often getting paid anyway. Some of them have strings of major corporate sponsors. Some of them receive very hefty grants. They may sell their best content from behind a paywall. Why pay them for the clickbait they know no one will buy?…
"We get a much better picture of who really needs the money in our local, offline community than we ever can online. If you're walking a street at 11:30pm and there's someone camping on a deserted pavement, you know that's not bullshit."
We shouldn't dismiss requests for donations. There are people who urgently need financial help. But that's why, when asked for a donation, we should seriously consider what we're paying for, and who's getting the money. To help ensure the cash goes into the right pockets, we should process this range of important issues…
- Is this the most needy recipient of our money? Let's assume we're donating on ethical grounds, since ethics are usually at least part of the justification in a donation request. Is a tech blog bankrolled by the ableist, pirate-protecting, nazi/racism-defending, rights-abusing surveillance-cockroach Cloudflare, really the most deserving cause we could donate to? Does an online encyclopedia that receives £millions in handouts from Big Tech and gets all its content for free, really need our money as much as a domestic abuse victim or homeless citizen needs a shelter? Would it be fairer and more ethical to donate that money to a registered charity?
- Is the party we're paying actually the party who did the work? For example, do the writers get the money when we donate to a big blog? Do all of the developers share the money when we donate for software. Or are we paying a corporation, or a "nonprofit" org's £10 million exec salary bill, while key contributors are working for free?
- Can the person/people who made the greatest contribution be paid directly rather than via the outlet? Aside from allocating the funds more ethically, paying the actual creators directly can also be hugely more rewarding for the donor.
- Is our motivation truly ethically-based, or are we in essence trying to buy something we don't really get?
DOES DONATION-NAGGING WORK?
If you can reach enough people and you have a plausible motivator, donation-baiting/nagging definitely works. And it doesn't matter how much money you already have. If you can make your cause sound sufficiently appealing, there are people who will give you money, without you owing them anything in return.
And this is contagious. As more and more people discover that it's possible to simply ask the right audience for money and receive it, more and more people are doing it - whether they need the dosh or not. Worst of all, the dynamics of background and entitlement ensure that well-off, entitled people are much more effective beggars than poor and vulnerable people. Discomfort in asking for money is a big part of why many poor people are poor in the first place. Comfort in asking for (or demanding) money is a big part of why rich people get rich.
"One might think a “digital rights group” would have someone a little more oppressed and a little less obscenely rich to defend, but time and time again we've seen that it doesn't..."
So the bigger this homespun charity drive gets, the greater the share of the charitable donation pot that more affluent parties will receive. At the expense of those who urgently and critically need help.
We've already become desensitised to the gravity of need. We're now deluged with so many requests for free money - many of which we can see are frivolous, disingenuous or flat-out fraudulent - that the whole thing is looking like wallpaper. It's not overly dramatic to say that the impact of real need has been debased, and its soft cry has been drowned out by the strategised trumpet of entitled desire.
But in order for most people to consider donating, there has to be justification, or at the least a self-serving motivation for the donor. The campaigns that work best tend to have both. That is, a back story that justifies the donation, and a perceived reward for the donor.
THE "GRASSROOTS ACTIVIST"
Certain politically-biased blogs encapsulate this. Their back story is that social media has banned various advocates of their cause, and this is thenspun as a media/tech war on free speech. The potential reward is that supporters of said voices get to circumvent the tech platforms and TV stations, access their rabble rousers' rantings directly, and win the supposed war on free speech.
In truth, the blogs are themselves vulnerable to censorship, and can easily be taken down at infrastructure level if they refuse to moderate things that the public majority deem unacceptable. They're also generally not in any way affiliated with the people to whom they're supposedly offering this direct line, and are therefore no more qualified to accomplish the expressed task than the readership themselves.
The above type of donation campaign is basically a scam. But the number of fundraisers essentially running soft protection rackets is now off the chart.
"Bad thing X is happening or might happen. Give us money to prevent it and protect you!"
It's a world full of focus-grouped, copy-and-paste trigger terms like "censorship", "freedom", "security", "surveillance", "cancel culture", "violence", "privacy"… Words the fundraisers know will spark strong emotions, but which are being twisted to fit into places they don't belong. A classic area for these fake, "grassroots activism" campaigns is that of so-called digital rights. A loud and histrionic table-banging show in which various "nonprofits" pitch themselves as a force against censorship and privacy/liberty violations - aiming to convince the public that they actually protect ordinary people from such harms.
But the power of these entities to genuinely change the big picture for the common people is limited to the point of near inconsequence. And as the donation amounts rise, individual donors gain power in dictating the campaigns. The recipients of big donations know that those major donors won't continue to forward their money if they don't get value back in return. That forces the fundraisers to campaign for the wants and whims of the biggest donors and provide that value.
In short, the fundraisers end up serving specific donors who pay them the most, rather than the true public interest. They're corporate lobbyists posing as grassroots activists.
But if the small donors are not really being served, how do the fundraisers convince them that they are?
THE HIJACK
One of the classic tactics is for the fundraisers to hijack an already advanced campaign mounted by real activists, and then claim victory as if they fronted the show. In truth, they're just a cart-hopper that jumped onto a fast-moving bandwagon at the last minute with their fists in the air. Many of their self-cited or implied "achievements" are things that would have happened anyway, without them. But this wagon-hopping/trumpeting trick (and it is a trick) satisfies most small donors that the groups really are serving the people and having an effect.
VICTORY! Both SB 4 and AB 14 have cleared the California legislature and are headed to the governor's desk. Thank you to everyone who supported #broadbandforall. pic.twitter.com/NsvSKQ0bxE
— EFF (@EFF) September 10, 2021
That's the Electronic Frontier Foundation on Twitter, trying to make Broadband For All look like one of their own campaigns. The hashtag #BroadbandForAll dates back at least as far as 2010 and the campaign had true grassroots support throughout the decade. The EFF jumped the cart in 2020 after the campaign became a legislative bill with very high success prospects. Would you have known that from the tweet? Or would you have thought the EFF ran the show from the start? Run the search from:@EFF victory on Twitter and you'll see they play this crafty little number on the regular.
At the coalface, the picture is grim. Digital rights groups are heavily funded by tech companies, some of whom are themselves violators of privacy standards and perpetrators of censorship. And this ironically drives the groups to commonly advocate against the public interest rather than for it.
For example, digital rights groups are anti-copyright, sympathising with Big Tech's quest to steal content by proxy. They're anti-patent for the same reason. They oppose laws that are tougher on counterfeiters - again because it allows Big Tech to make more money. They've campaigned for looser rules on sex-trafficking because… yep, you've guessed - it reduces the responsibility of massive online platforms, and makes their lives much easier.
The notion that a rich tech platform that can afford to do better, should be the one getting the support at the expense of defenceless victims of sex-trafficking, is upside-down in the extreme. But that's how donation-funded "rights advocacy" works. The big donations are not really donations. They're deals. And the small donors are just the mugs who pay to be trampled on by the big donors.
Digital rights groups do present themselves as anti-surveillance, which at first glance looks like strong public interest. But their campaigns against surveillance are very highly selective, and are broadly confined to law enforcement groups and states. They won't bite the hand that feeds them, and the hand that feeds them comprises a glut of surveillance companies. So the message is very much one of…
"We must prevent the police from gaining access to data!!!... But let's not mention the out-of-control, far more dangerous and frequently unlawful privacy oppressions perped by our puppetmasters in Big Tech."
Indeed, a high proportion of digital rights groups' time is spent specifically defending some of the richest tech companies in the world, while the donwtrodden, voiceless and powerless victims of real oppression suffer unnoticed.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation endlessly pops up defending Google. One might think a “digital rights group” would have someone a little more oppressed and a little less obscenely rich to defend, but time and time again we've seen that it doesn't…
The EFF came to Google's aid in a spat with a mobile phone company. It came to Google's aid when the Silicon Valley giant was accused of patent theft. It came to Google's aid in a corporate copyright battle (in which Google was the accused thief). Etc. Etc. If you donate modestly to these digital rights groups, this completely unnecessary aid to the richest of the rich is the area where much of your money will end up being spent. You're helping to pay obscenely rich people's lobbying fees, basically.
Check out an EFF financial statement and you'll see they're rolling in money. If you're donating £20, this game is out of your league.
THE "CHAMPAGNE VICTIM"
A lot of the money thrown into the pockets of "champagne victims" comes from people who know the "victim" is not really needy, but will forward funding regardless because they want to inflate their likeability in the eyes of that specific person. This desire - desperation even - to be liked, is a fundamental motivator across much of the donation scene. It's the primary reason why "champagne victims" succeed.
There are clear disparities between men and women when it comes to their reasons for donating. There are funds whose donors are overwhelmingly male, and funds whose donors are overwhelmingly female. Women are are more likely to give than men on the basis that the recipient(s) of the money is/are genuinely helpless. For example, women are almost three times more likely than men to give to animal welfare charities. Men are more likely to give than women on a transactional basis - real, perceived or imagined. On the basis that they will achieve a desired result for themselves.
One arterial cash stream in the latter is the practice of trying to buy friendship, reputational esteem or love through the medium of donation. It's an overwhelmingly male tactic, and an entire "damsel in distress" scene sprang up around this often highly lucrative lagniappe. This scene - underground in the UK until it was publicised in 2012 by the Channel 4 documentary Sex, Lies and Rinsing Guys - formed the nucleus of what's now become an almost universal licence for higher-status people to beg for free money online, without shame.
"I'm not generous. I wasn't giving £25. I was trying to save £575. But they'll gladly take the free £25 that I imagined was going to buy me a cheap favour."
Playing the damsel in distress for free handouts was a meme that had been finely honed in twentieth century strip clubs, before taking root in the backwaters of the internet. Channel 4's 2012 documentary sparked a surge of mainstream interest in what it described as "rinsing". A revolution of sorts, which, as the trend ballooned, steadily broke down the stigma of asking for free money across many areas of commercial activity.
The trend erupted out of the world of adult chat services, sprawled itself full stretch across the mainstream magazines and newspapers, and then, in sanitised form, crept onto the business blogs - now packaged as widely acceptable fundraising advice. In less than a decade, the trend reached critical mass, and the stigma disappeared.
The "champagne victim" was an inevitable result of this new culture, in which there was suddenly no shame in openly, loudly and repetitively begging on the internet - at any level of status.
But now that the meme has been normalised and relieved of its stigma, the gender roles have evolved. Although men are still the majority donors to "champagne victims", the balance is now much more even. And men are also now major financial recipients. Male entrepreneurs have inserted themselves as middlemen in the male-to-female cash stream, and male champions of male causes have learned to hack men's self-interest for freebies roughly as women were doing it a decade ago. Indeed, many of the female architects of online "rinsing" have now been shunted aside by much bigger and more visible "champagne victims". Snivelly-nosed influencers playing the "cancel culture" card, for example.
As an aside, in the analysis for this I found it fascinating that online privacy appears to be almost an all-male cause at true grass-roots level. Check the individual donors to privacy initiatives and projects, and they're nearly all men. I asked a friend why she thought this might be, and after a short pause she replied:
"Porn."
A woman of few words. But it's surely true that men statistically have a more "private" internet history than women. And there's also the fact that while surveillance is one person's intrusion, it's another person's safety. Men are less in need of the safety provided by monitoring systems, and may feel stifled or restricted by them. Women may more likely feel protected by them. It depends on the circumstance, but on, say, dating apps, I'd guess there's a stark male/female divide in attitudes towards usage monitoring.
This male/female divide is one of many factors that fundraisers have to consider when deciding how to maximise the effectiveness of their campaigns…
WHAT INFLUENCES THE SUCCESS OF DONATION DRIVES?
One of the core prerequisites in attracting donations is to pitch to the right audience. Audiences that understand and have real empathy with the plight are much more likely to give than audiences that don't. Ironically, this means that people who are currently struggling are more likely to hand over modest individual donations than people who have never faced any kind of hardship. Rich people do give money away - often very large sums - but they tend to do so with strategic motivations rather than empathic motivations. They're not giving. They're buying. Buying reputation. Buying support. Buying silence. Buying their way round resistance…
People can't really have an emotional impetus to donate until they know or can easily imagine what it feels like to be in the position of those they're trying to help. That makes donation quite tribal. Artists are most likely to donate to artists, sufferers or former sufferers are most likely to donate to sufferers, etc. If your audience is not you, has never been you, has no association with you, and is confident it never will be you, motivating that audience with emotional impetus is going to be much more difficult. That leaves two other main motivators: donor self-interest, and associative interest…
"The online environment, in which anyone can make any claim they like, and in which status broadly dictates visibility, does not provide a reliable means for us to identify need. We need to look harder. We need to look deeper."
DONOR SELF-INTEREST
Donor self-interest is a transaction as far as the donor is concerned. The donor is donating, at least in part, because they believe they'll get something back. That could be protection of their rights. It could be a licence to virtue-signal. It could be privileged access to gated content. Or many other things.
ASSOCIATIVE INTEREST
Associative interest is a type of donor self-interest. It's transactional. But with associative interest the donor is focused on trying to build a personal relationship with the party to whom they're donating. That could include the hope of free promotion from an influencer, or even a goal of romantic association.
For the donor, the first thing to be aware of here is that you can't bribe your way around a commercial economy. Some donors think that donating will make them look like such a "nice guy", that the fundraiser will somehow forget their economic boundaries and give the donor what he's after for free. Because he's proved he's "nice" so they like him. It's really an emotional blackmail attempt on the part of the donor. But there's a very strict equation to this…
If you would normally have to pay for the fundraiser's time or activity, you're never going to access it for less than their commercial rate. For example, if influencer X normally charges £600 to Retweet someone's link, he or she is not going to Retweet my link for nothing because I donated £25. As far as Influencer X is concerned, I'm £575 short of my retweet fee. And they're really not so stupid as to be unaware of what I'm trying to do. They know I'm not a nice guy. That I'm not generous. They know I'm the opposite. I wasn't giving £25. I was trying to save £575. But they'll gladly take the free £25 that I imagined was going to buy me a cheap favour.
Indeed, some fundraisers will deliberately create the impression that donors can get unspecified favours in the future. And some donors' optimism knows no bounds. As an onlooker, you can end up wondering who's expoiting whom. Often, the fundraiser and the donor are as bad as each other.
FINDING THE REAL NEED
It's fair to say that the internet is not a good place for finding people with the greatest need. We get a much better picture of who really needs the money in our local, offline community than we ever can online. If you're walking a street at 11:30pm and there's someone camping on a deserted pavement, you know that's not bullshit. That person needs cash, and they need it infinitely more than some elitist-ass "digital rights" group.
And this raises one of the dire concerns about society going increasingly cashless. The people whose needs are the most urgent will receive less and less help.
But we do have power. A supermarket near to me recently tried to push cashless transactions by making it much quicker to pay by card than in cash. They deliberately restricted the cash checkout availability, hugely driving up waiting times, while reducing card payment waiting times to near nil. But a high volume of customers have resisted, and the store has now re-dedicated adequate human resources to the cash checkouts. It doesn't take much effort to protest, provided enough of us do it.
And protest we must. We must avoid being blagged and brainwashed by beggars who have more money than we do. And we must remember that the internet is not even gonna show us the hardship on our doorstep. The online environment, in which anyone can make any claim they like, and in which status broadly dictates visibility, does not provide a reliable means for us to identify need. We need to look harder. We need to look deeper.