YouthAction In Critical Need

NOTE: This organization is fantastic. I've given six years of my life to supporting YouthAction, please consider this letter carefully.

Dear Friends:

YouthAction needs your help.

For twenty years YouthAction has provided young people across the country with the tools they need to address their issues and their concerns. For twenty years YouthAction has worked in partnership with youth of color; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender young people; and low-income youth ages 13-19 to organize around issues of environmental racism, gender liberation, education, juvenile incarceration, police brutality, and many other issues that they have identified as impacting their lives and well-being. We want to continue to support the community organizing efforts of grassroots, youth-led, youth-run projects in some of the most underserved and under resourced communities in the

United States

. But due to the radical change in the funding climate in the last two years, YouthAction is facing a funding crisis.

In the last two years several of our major institutional supporters have either stopped funding youth organizing, or we are no longer eligible for funding due to their own internal rules concerning how long they may fund any organization. For a year we have been able to rely on our savings and on the generous gifts of smaller foundations to continue doing our critical work. We have faced some challenging staffing situations that have limited our ability to leverage new funds. And, we changed our internal staff structure to better reflect the needs of our staff, which was an organizational development challenge as well. We have reduced our full time staff from five to two. Now we are turning to you. Without your help, YouthAction faces a very grim future. Without community support, YouthAction will shut its doors on April 15, 2006.

In September 2005, the Funder’s Collaborative on Youth Organizer (a coalition of foundations such as the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, and Surdna Foundation) released its eighth occasional papers series on youth organizing. This paper focused on youth organizing in the Southwest. As a key national organization working to support and promote youth organizing efforts, YouthAction played a critical role in linking the paper’s author to resources and information concerning youth organizing in the region.  In the conclusion and recommendations section of the report, one of the key recommendations listed was, “Support regionally-based networking and movement-building.” The recommendation continues by saying:

Youth organizing groups in the Southwest have already taken enormous initiative in conducting trainings, strategy sessions, staff exchanges, and coordinated campaigns across the region, especially between groups in New Mexico and Texas. Organizations such as SNEEJ and Youth Action in particular have made long-standing commitments to this networking and movement-building work, and deserve further support. (www.fcyo.org).

We are turning to you, our community, because we know that you believe in the strength, promise, and power of young people. We know that you understand that youth organizing is the single best way for youth to realize their own capabilities and their own ability to create real, lasting, sustainable change in their families, schools, neighborhoods, cities, and states. We are asking you to ask yourself this question: Is it worth it?

Is it worth it to give a gift of $50, $100, $500, or $1000 dollars if it means that LGBT young people in Utah, African-American young people in Mississippi, and native young people in New Mexico are provided training on community organizing, grass roots fundraising, and campaign strategies?

Is it worth it to give a gift to YouthAction if it helps ensure that youth projects in New Orleans are connected with youth organizing projects in Tucson and Durham so that they know that they are not working in isolation, so that they are able to learn from and grow from the experiences and lessons of other young people engaged in community building efforts?

Is it worth it to give up one night of drinks at your favorite club, one dinner out a week for a month, or one night at the movies (with snacks!) each month for a year if it means that you are giving a gift to an organization that has been a leader in the youth community for two decades and is doing radical work with young people every day?

It is worth it. Help us reach our goal of raising $75,000. Help keep YouthAction alive and strong.

Please give a gift to YouthAction today.

Yours,

W. Brandon

Lacy

Campos

Interim Executive Director

P.S. You can give your gift of $50, $100, $500, or $1000 on-line today through our website at www.youthaction.net. YouthAction is a registered 501c3, and your gift is tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable by law.