Niche market

First a very heart-felt bow of gratitude for your well-wishes and your generous responses to the crows. I did everything I should do: drank plenty of water, took aspirin, went to bed. And woke up feeling fine this morning! What a relief that is. 

Today was a Zoom consultation for Sisters of the Road with someone who advises non-profit organizations embarking on capital campaigns. I know that we are in a time of intense income inequality, mass poverty, and a diminishing middle class. What I heard is that if you want $5 Million to buy and rehabilitate a building to provide services that good government should provide (but doesn’t), 80% of that $5 Million (around $4 Million) will have to come from 10-20 very wealthy people.

The other 20% (or $1 Million) will come from thousands of kind-hearted souls, the poor and the middle class, contributing $3 to $1000, giving with their hearts and/or looking for tax breaks for their charitable donations. 

You aim your campaign at the very rich, those 10-20 people who will decide whether or not your program goes forward. I have no idea who those people might be, what their values are, how they got their money, or why they would give it to a program for houseless people. But it does sort of explain why our National Public Broadcasting is becoming steadily more right-wing every day. They depend for their funding on the very rich, and apparently the very rich lean to the right. I am a moth on the wall, antennae waving in the air, watching. 

Looking for a blip on my afternoon walk, I came across this sign on a door and thought about the Zoom. Eccentric and bold, but will the billionaires back it? Don’t know.