What can we learn from 'Bat Signal 2: The Biggest Investment Ever'?
Lessons in Rich People Organizing
For this week, I am reposting the first part of Billy Wimsatt’s Bat Signal 2 memo. It is a compelling call to action, uniquely targeting and addressing my people, the liberal to left, single digit millionaires in the US. Yes! Billy is modeling some kick ass rich people organizing here and I want all of us to notice, learn from what he’s done and heed his call.
To be more specific, he is…
Using his class position and money story, as a person with wealthy parents, to model the type of bold action that he wants others to take.1
Sharing stats that challenge the reader to notice the immense wealth in this country, and their proximity to it.
Explaining the stakes in an accessible and honest way.
Writing directly about the struggles of his primary audience, to notice their money and class position, and act in alignment with their values. He identifies with their struggles, which gives him credibility when challenging them to act.
Highlighting compelling stories of ‘modest millionaires’, making it look attractive and exciting to take similar action.
Showing readers how to be protagonists, and peer organizers.
Offering a solution grounded in multi-racial, progressive-left grassroots organizing.
Thank you Billy!
One note re Bat Signal 2: It's written with Movement Voter Project as a central reference point, but I know that Billy (and I) are hoping it will inspire people to give via Working Families Party, Groundswell Action Fund, Way to Win, Working America, Solidaire Action, Women Donors Network Action, MPower Change, Black Voters Matter Fund, Battleground New York, Showing Up for Racial Justice, Tides Advocacy, Justice Democrats, numerous state based donor tables like California Donor Table and MOWIN, or whatever set of organizations each donor is most excited to support to make a difference in the 2024 election (there are literally hundreds of aligned organizations and we're all on the same team - we need to expand the pie for all of them!).
Below is an edited excerpt of Billy’s longer Bat Signal 2 memo.
Read to the bottom to help me answer the question I’m left with, and share your own.
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December 21st, 2023
Dear colleagues in progressive politics and philanthropy:
2023 was a drought year for progressive giving. We saw electoral organizations lay off staff, tighten belts, and slash programs — not a great prelude to an existential election year. Last September, I sent out a Bat Signal memo alerting donors to this dangerous trend.
Since then a LOT has happened. The horrifying situation in Israel and Gaza divided the Democratic base. Biden’s polling got worse. Trump went full-throated fascist. The economy improved a bit. And we won big elections that offered hope.
I’ve been heartened listening to donors, dozens of whom decided to make their biggest donations ever. Five of these donors — completely unprompted — contacted my organization to ask for advice on making $1 million donations. If five people, unprompted, contacted one organization to donate $1 million, I wonder what could happen with a little prompting. If hundreds more donors were to step up like this, it would be enough to fund our local progressive electoral organizations like we want them to win.
My goal with Bat Signal 2 is to be hopeful and actionable, to invite donors to reflect on the boldest things we can do to impact the 2024 elections. We are inviting donors and funders to consider that this might be the time to make their biggest donation ever. Existential times call for existential investment.
So I Asked My Parents
I am at the point where I am willing to do almost anything.
This brought me to an embarrassing realization2: I’ve informally coached people for years on how to talk about money with family. But I had never asked my own parents.
In tech, there is a saying: “You have to eat your own dog food.” You have to test things on yourself before you bring them to market. I knew what I had to do.
So I asked. It was humbling. My parents don’t consider themselves wealthy. They are academics who normally donate $50 or $100 to a candidate or cause. But years ago, they bought tech stocks that are now worth a few million dollars. They are proud of these investments - and they don’t want to sell them.
So I talked them through the options, and shared my perspective as a potential inheritor: I told them that if they are saving money for me and the grandkids, it would be an even better investment to allocate a chunk of it now to avoid fascism and climate chaos.
They talked it over. They understood my logic. And now they are excited to make a six-figure contribution — by far their biggest donation ever.
Balance Sheets + History Books
Talking with my parents reminded me how sensitive these conversations can be. Affluent Americans today are the largest, wealthiest group of people who have ever walked the face of the Earth. And part of the nature of having wealth is that it becomes normalized. It distorts our perceptions. It raises our expectations in a never-ending loop of more more more more more. And yet most of the time, most of the wealth itself can feel strangely abstract. We experience it as cold numbers on a balance sheet.
What if we could turn some of the numbers on our balance sheets into pages in future generations’ history books?
It had never occurred to me before talking this through with my own parents that they could probably give away a million dollars without it making any significant difference in their standard of living.
The good news: My parents are not alone. There are millions of people like them who could do exactly the same thing: Make donations of six figures or more without significantly compromising their own standard of living.
Millions of Modest Millionaires
Consider this: In America, we currently have over twenty-three million “millionaire” households (18% of the population). About five million households have $5 million or more (3.6% of the population). That’s right – about one in thirty Americans lives in a household with $5 million or more in assets.
Data: Federal Reserve, 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). Analyzed by DQYDJ.
Over two million households – one in seventy – are decamillionaires with $10 million or more. And roughly sixty-four thousand are centimillionaires with $100 million or more. The number of millionaires in the U.S. has tripled in the past two decades. The growth in household wealth in just the past few years alone is staggering.
In short, there are a lot of people like my parents who can easily afford to donate a lot more money than they are giving.
There are so many newly-wealthy people in this country. Who are they? They are mostly older – though not all. They are mostly white – though not all. Most of them are not used to the concept of seeing themselves as wealthy. They don’t feel wealthy and, like my parents, they are resistant to the idea that they are; it violates their sense of identity. My mom grew up in the Depression saving every paper clip. Basically, their lifelong mental image of themselves as middle-class regular people has not kept pace with the rising net wealth printed on their balance sheets.
A huge percentage of them are our people: They vote for Democrats. They have liberal values. They are viscerally disgusted by Donald Trump. They read the news and think about politics on at least a semi-regular basis. They want to do something. They just don’t see themselves as protagonists in the movie. At least not yet.
From Spectator to Protagonist
It may be that this subtle but significant shift in perception – from disempowered spectator to powerhouse protagonist – is the most important thing we need to figure out how to catalyze in ourselves and others in our spheres of influence. How do we do that?
Perhaps it’s helpful to remember the fictional story from which we borrow the “Bat Signal.” In the movies, Batman is the alter ego of a reclusive, wealthy liberal philanthropist named Bruce Wayne, who responds to calls for help from the public when evildoers attack his beloved Gotham City.
So the metaphor is especially apt: we are sending up a Bat Signal to all benevolent left-of-center people with wealth to heed the call and do heroic things to save our country in the face of diabolical foes and a grave national emergency.
Ideally, we need to very quickly organize a critical mass of people who are willing to go from spectator to protagonist and make their biggest donation ever – be it $10,000, $100,000, $1 million, or $10 million.
I think we can figure this out.
You Are Probably Surrounded By Wealthy People
Remember those stats above about how many wealthy people there are?
Well, if you live in a relatively liberal, affluent community in or near a major metropolitan area or college town, and you associate with other liberal, college-educated people, the percentages of wealthy people in your circles are dramatically higher.
Chances are good that you are surrounded by relatively wealthy people, who in many cases are much wealthier than you realize. They may think of themselves as middle- to upper-middle-class. But like my parents, under the right circumstances, they have the capacity to make a very large donation to something they understand as deeply connected to their immediate self-interest: the wellbeing of themselves and their beloved children and grandchildren.
It’s not that we don’t have the money (we do). It’s not that we don’t understand the problem (we do). It’s not that we don’t have the desire to do what’s right (we do). We just haven’t connected all of the dots together yet to see clearly that:
We actually do have enough money to make a major investment.
By making the biggest philanthropic and political investment of our lives, we can make a major difference in the course of world history.
We should think of changing the world in the same mental bucket that we use to pay for our kids’ college education, or to buy a second home, or life insurance – as an investment in our own happiness and well-being and in the well-being of our family, our community, and the people we love and would do anything for.
That is why the act of creating a giving plan is such a transformational exercise. It allows us to ask ourselves (and our spouses, financial advisors, or other relevant stakeholders) the question: How much money do I truly need to save and invest? How much money do I want to pass along to my children or others? How much money can I donate to make the world a better place? And how much of my giving is actually in others’ best interest to do now vs. later vs. after I’m gone?
Six Degrees of Separation: A Teacher in the Midwest
Back in 2022, a local MVP volunteer team in Massachusetts organized a house party and sent invitations to their friends. A couple of their friends were expats living in Europe who got very excited and sent a very compelling email to their friends in New York. One of those friends sent it to another friend who sent it to his family. And that person’s mom, a retired elementary school teacher in the Midwest, was inspired to make a $1,000 donation. The Midwestern retired teacher – who was literally six degrees removed from MVP – then got added to our mailing list and started reading our monthly newsletters.
A few weeks ago, out of the blue, she wrote me a note after reading our “Bat Signal” memo and watching Trump’s scary polls and statements. She said she’d like to talk about making a larger contribution. We got on Zoom. She said in a very even-keeled way: “This is an existential situation. We believe in your work. And we want to give you a million dollars.”
There is so much hidden wealth in America – so many people you would never guess who have the potential to give major donations. We are all connected to way more people than we know. The volunteers in Massachusetts, and the first five people in the forwarded email chain, had no idea their simple act of forwarding an email to friends would lead to a million dollars.
Every single one of us is more connected and influential than we can imagine.
The “Delay Gap”
Many affluent people have the genuine intention to give away large sums of money and be very generous at an undefined date in the future. I recently learned that there is a term for this phenomenon among high-end philanthropy professionals: the “delay gap.”
Having talked it through with my parents, I understand in a much more personal way now why Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) are so popular: they’re a way to avoid capital gains on appreciated stocks without having to make a decision right away about what to do with the money (which is why $234 billion is just sitting around in DAFs while the world burns. Shout out to #HalfMyDAF for working to address this).
Of the 240 Giving Pledge signatories who have all publicly pledged to give away at least half of their wealth in their lifetimes, almost every one has grown significantly wealthier since they made the pledge.
What are they waiting for? Apparently, for a very special unspecified date in the future on which to make good on their promise.
But ask yourself: With climate chaos upon us and MAGA breathing down our necks, what day in the future is likely to be more strategic, better-timed, or more consequential than the next few months – which are the last few months when we can still give money early enough to make an outsized impact on the 2024 election?
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That’s where I’ll stop today. Read the hopeful conclusion to the Bat Signal 2 memo here or an abridged version recently published in Blue Tent.
What do you think?!
What new thoughts or questions does it inspire?
Two strategic/organizing questions I’m left with…
Does Billy’s focus on the single-digit, ‘modest millionaires’ work to also move wealthier people, with tens of millions and more? Or does that $10mill+ segment of the wealthy need a different strategy, messenger and message?
As Billy mentions, the primary audience for this letter is majority white, over 65 and living in Blue states or cities. Billy does a great job speaking to this set of folks. How do we develop memos and messages specifically for other segments of the progressive rich? For people of color with wealth, tech wealth, new wealth, female wealth holders, lgbtqi+ wealth holders, red state progressives. This memo is a great starting place, and I want to see and learn from more versions. (Ooh! Just found this All by April effort, as one great example of a call to action for a different but related audience.)
I’d love to hear your reflections and feedback, and, if you found this interesting or useful, please like below.
For anyone reading this who is not wealthy or have wealthy parents, you might be wondering what you can do to support this type of peer agitation and organizing. My suggestion is to encourage the wealthy people you know to get involved in organizations where they can learn how to tell their class and money story, and leverage it for good. Organizations like Solidaire, Women Donors Network, Patriotic Millionaires, Donors of Color Network, Hand in Hand and Resource Generation all can help wealthy people develop these skills. I’m sure there are many other groups, consultants and individuals that can help as well, maybe you’re one of them. People with wealth need training and community to be able to effectively organize their peers in ways that are supportive of larger progressive efforts.
Wonderful backstory on this from Billy: “The core narrative and idea behind Bat Signal 2 was unexpectedly inspired by a breakout session at the Solidaire retreat in New Mexico (!!). Strange but true - I wandered into Morgan Curtis's magical session on "How much to give?" and found myself in a 1:1 talking about my parents' money... My 1:1 buddy was awesome and gently encouraged me to set a personal goal to try to talk with my parents about the idea of selling some of their Apple and Tesla stocks (instead of waiting to pass them on to me and my kids as inheritance) at some point within the next six months. That was my goal. A month or so later, I was talking with my parents, and I got up the courage to bring it up.”