IT'S SICKENING!
I somehow got on to the moveon.org mailing list when they first started up and have never bothered to remove myself. Not sure why. I generally don't read their messages (usually over the top pronouncements about how particular politicians are destroying the country).
In any case, I just received a message from them that I did happen to read and I have to say I found it rather disturbing...
Here's what it said:
Yesterday 6,613 of us contributed $389,900 towards our $3.5 million field organizing plan for the election, smashing our goal of $250,000 for the week. Amazing. This generosity gives us a great deal of hope—and we've got to keep the momentum going. Can we make it to $600,000 by Friday?
A contribution of $100 from 2,100 more of us will get us there. Can you pitch in? You can contribute by credit card or check at the link below—it takes just a minute.
I don't know how you feel about it, but I find the amount of money spent on the political process to be extremely disgusting. Let's be straight, this is not money that is going to actually accomplish something. This is money that is going to be used to fight amongst ourselves so that the winner can accomplish something (which they usually don't). Basically people being uncivil to each other. And political action groups like moveon.org are only the tip of the iceberg. So much more is wasted by the campaigns and politicians themselves in their attempts to get elected. I can't help but wonder if there isn't a better way to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars that are spent on getting people elected each year. Perhaps improving education, or job training programs, or even research and conservation.
A better educated constituency will do more for democracy and civil society than any amount of money spent fighting over political agendas.
I find it absolutely amazing that MoveOn can get more than 6,000 people to contribute $389,000 in one day! And that they have a goal of $3.5 million dollars. What are they going to do with that money? How is it going to help make things better?
So why am I on about this?
During all of 2005 seaturtle.org received 234 donations totalling $47,010. Most of the money raised ($38,279) went directly to organizations in SE Asia as part of the tsunami fund. $4615 was raised for the Marine Turtle Newsletter (not including logo donors) and another $2086 for other external fund-raising efforts like the Africa Fund (which has done very poorly btw). That leaves $2030 in donations given directly to seaturtle.org. Not a lot of money, and seaturtle.org simply would not be possible if it were not for the extremely low overhead (no one gets paid) and small fees charged to conferences using the iConferences service, which brings in about $10,000 a year. Not a lot of money to run an organization on.
I would hope that there is general agreement within the sea turtle community that seaturtle.org makes a large contribution to that community, and with very few resources. I shudder to think how much I could do for sea turtles and sea turtlers with the $389,000 raised by MoveOn yesterday, not to mention $3.5 million.