[Carfreeliving] TLC as a membership organization

[Dave Snyder]

I understand that several folks were eager to see my answer to Joel's 
question. So I asked the question at our board meeting tonight so I 
could give a good answer, sanitized somewhat of my frustration at my 
inability to create a single administrative structure with multiple 
banners. I'll add the "backstory" at the end of this note.

TLC was created to fund the tax-exempt activities of sustainable 
transportation organizations, and continue to fund Walk SF, SFBC Bike 
Ed Fund, and the San Jose-Guerrero Coalition. TLC receives individual 
contributions and foundation grants for TLC's programs, as well as 
those of the other nonprofits. We need members because we work on 
important initiatives of the alternative transportation movement 
which are not addressed by any of the existing transportation reform 
groups: Rescue Muni, Walk SF, or the SFBC. That is, the intersection 
of urban design, environment, and transportation; land use and zoning 
and policy and planning changes that actively reduce incentives to 
car use. We work on many of the same issues as  SPUR, but with a more 
explicit focus on environmental sustainability and social justice.

Members support our advocacy efforts financially and in spirit. 
Foundation funders look to a membership base to ascertain whether the 
organization is publicly supported. (Hence, your membership dollars 
are in effect matched several times over by foundations.) Members 
also give us numbers of people to rely on for grassroots activism. 
We've already found that useful with our efforts to create a livable 
downtown through parking restrictions in the new zoning. However, the 
SFBC will always have the largest database and hopefully will share 
their membership base with us and support our efforts with direct 
outreach to their members when we need them.

Now, the back story...

You said, correctly, "I thought the idea was to have it be a funds 
dispersing and support org for the membership orgs." The idea -- it 
was Terry Miller's idea and he put in the long hours and creativity 
in creating the structure for the IRS' approval -- was to have a 
single 501c3 that received tax deductible donations from major donors 
and foundations and dispersed that money to various satellite 501c4 
lobbying groups per the board's and donors' discretion: the SFBC, 
Walk SF, Rescue Muni, and whomever else. The problem came when I took 
over TLC and turned it into a big-picture advocacy organization 
instead of a big-picture, background funding organization. In Terry's 
model, the work that TLC is doing should be done by one of those 
satellite organizations, and the corporation known as TLC should 
become the background organization that Terry envisioned. In reality, 
because TLC is getting so well known as the big picture advocacy 
organization, the SFBC Board and Leah Shahum no longer want it to 
serve as its fiscal sponsor, so they're creating another 501c3 to 
serve as its fiscal sponsor. Since TLC can legally do all the 
lobbying we need to do as a 501c3 organization (we spend less than 
20% of our budget on lobbying), we're not going to create that 
background organization. TLC is in fact fiscally sponsoring the SFBC 
(though the SFBC will soon opt out), Walk SF, and the San 
Jose/Guerrero Coalition. In sum, the two differences between Terry's 
model and the reality today is that the SFBC will have its own fiscal 
sponsor instead of TLC and that TLC's advocacy and education is done 
"in-house" instead of contracted out to a 501c4. Does this make sense?