Giving Thought

In episode 48 we talk to Megan Ming Francis, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington, about her recent paper “The Price of Civil Rights: Black Lives, White Funding and Movement Capture” and her wider work on the role of philanthropic funders in supporting the civil rights movement. Including: Is “movement capture” something that reflects a deliberate desire on the part of funders to change the goals or strategic focus of grantees, or is it just an inevitable consequence of the power imbalance in the funder/recipient dynamic? Does the legitimacy that funders are able to offer to radical causes add to the power imbalance? Is the imbalance between funder and grantee particularly striking in the case of the NAACP in the early C20th, given the racial division and the background context of Jim Crow? Can grantees be “victims of their own success” if they make headway on radical causes using novel techniques (as the NAACP did on the issues lynching using legal chall