Raise Funds
The passion and determination of activists alone is not enough to support a movement. When planning collective action, it will also make sense to think about how your efforts will be financed, and by whom. As University of Michigan students soon realized, it would take quite a bit of funding to support the demonstrations they intended to carry out as well as the on-campus organizations themselves.
In social movement theory it is often assumed that a movement requires an outside benefactor to sponsor the collective and its actions (McAdam 1985, p. 25). With the advent of crowd-sourcing funds, financial support today looks much different for social movements. However, fundraising is still one of the greatest hurdles fledgling movements must overcome.
Pictured below, the Student Peace Union set up a “Peace Shop” to help raise funds for the Ann Arbor chapter. They sold buttons, posters, leaflets, and more. The article, also featured below, gets at the complications that arise when planning a large-scale campus action. The journalist, a University of Michigan student, interviewed professors involved in the teach-in. Readers will note the professors’ uncertainty about funding. During planning meetings many of the involved faculty encouraged postponement due to lack of funds.
