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The need for the mutual fund model (open)
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The need for the mutual fund model

In the matter of funding their endeavors, WTO/GATT and its workers face a condition familiar to nearly every USA activist: there are virtually no government grants to be had. Foundations are few, and direct corporate grants are rare in the USA--especially for activities that have no bearing, or, worse, have desired negative impact, on the "bottom line" of the donating corporation or corporations in general. If you’re not interested in promoting Absolut-brand vodka, you’re on your own. 
    WTO/GATT has resolved this impasse, as have many activists whose work depends on extensive funding (most notably documentary filmmakers), by going directly to individuals who, for irrational human reasons, are interested in seeing certain projects completed. By incorporating our fundraising strategies into our image and philosophy, and gearing ourselves wholeheartedly to this end, we have stumbled upon some concepts that we hope might be useful to other organizations which, unlike documentary filmmakers and other individual activists, have not yet made a complete transition from their reliance on recently eliminated government grants. 
    Unlike WTO/GATT, some activist organizations may also be able to rely on corporate grants, but even these are not nearly numerous enough in the USA, and do often come with conditions involving promotion of the donating company’s product. (When they do not, the implicit constraints are often just as repressive as explicit ones.) Individuals’ grants generally do not contain such requirements or limits, and may therefore be preferable in some cases.

THE MUTUAL FUND MODEL
In the interest of profiting from the fundraising intelligence that has accumulated in the corporate world, WTO/GATT models its fundraising strategies on those used by publicly owned corporations which borrow enormous amounts of money from individual citizens in the form of shares in the corporations, and which provide "limited liability," or freedom from personal responsibility, to those investors (as well as to their own managers).
    WTO/GATT’s core is its list of project ideas, most of which require funding before they can be accomplished. Until recently, these projects were promoted individually to donors, who could donate any sum towards the sum needed for their accomplishment. Such donors can be seen as purchasing stock in the projects, hoping to see a cultural dividend upon the project’s accomplishment. 
    It takes research, time and expertise for an individual non-professional to successfully play the stock market. More importantly, it often takes insider information, or information privy to only select professional brokers. For this reason, many individuals choose not to make all their stock decisions themselves, instead allowing fund managers and professionals in the field to invest their capital, which is pooled together with that of many other investors to gain more buying leverage.
    Recently, it was made clear to WTO/GATT that there are a great number of potential WTO/GATT donors who are not so taken with any given project that they feel secure investing in its accomplishment. They may not agree wholeheartedly with any specific project, or may not trust that in its accomplishment, it will reflect the intent they impute to the original project description. Or they may like a specific project very much, but may not believe that it can ever be accomplished, and do not enjoy the prospect of their investment sitting idle for what could be years, or even forever.
    To the end of giving these would-be donors a sense of security, of providing them with a simple "calculated risk" strategy, and of assuring them of the relative likelihood that their funds would be used within a reasonable length of time, it was determined to establish a system similar to the "mutual fund" market. In this system, projects with roughly similar intent, risk, or likelihood of accomplishment are grouped into "fund families." There are several flavors of such families, which we have had to design for WTO/GATT’s particular needs.
    WTO/GATT has not discarded the individual-stock purchasing system, and investors with strong feelings about individual projects can still direct their funds to those projects, exclusive of or in tandem with their contributions to "fund families."

FIRST-COME, FIRST-SERVED FUNDS
The "first-come, first-served" variety of mutual fund is reserved for those families all of whose individual projects (stocks) have been unanimously deemed worthy by the WTO/GATT board. A donor to a first-come, first-served "fund family" makes a contribution with the understanding that the first project accomplished will receive it, up to the amount for which the project is funded.
    One representative of this "first-come, first-served" fund type is what we call the "high yield/high risk" family. This group includes expensive, potentially dangerous, and relatively difficult projects, each of which has a high likelihood of waiting years for accomplishment, but all of which have been unanimously deemed worthy of funding, and are likely, when accomplished, to yield very high dividends in the form of published media reports. 
    Investment in this type of mutual fund is advantageous to the donor, who can expect that cultural dividends will be forthcoming in the relatively short term. But it also benefits the workers for the funded projects.: some grouped projects might individually have little chance of being funded, but by being so grouped can partake of the kitty as needed. This first-come, first-served approach effectively funds every project completely, so long as there is always at least the maximum of all project requirements in the "mutual fund" (i.e. if the greatest reward for a project is ten thousand dollars, and that amount is present in the "mutual fund," every project in that group can be assured of recuperating its full reward upon accomplishment, so long as projects are accomplished singly and not serially in a short space of time).

INDIVIDUALLY-ALLOCATED FUNDS
Another flavor of "fund family" is the individually-allocated variety; some of the less-risky, more stable funds fall into this category. In these families, not all projects (sometimes no projects) have met with the unanimous approval of the WTO/GATT board. Rather than attempt to distribute donations to these families according to the original votes, WTO/GATT allows the families’ fund managers to decide, based on their experience with similar projects, how to allocate the families’ funds.
    The advantage this fund has over the "first-come, first-served" variety is that investors may be confident that the managers will select funds entirely on merit. This can prove essential when more than several projects within the fund are accomplished in a short space of time, so that funds are not exhausted by possibly less worthy, but sooner accomplished, projects.

CELEBRITY FUNDS
The latest elaboration of the WTO/GATT mutual fund system is the use of "celebrity fund managers" to handle some of the funds. Management of these funds is based on the judgment and personal taste of people WTO/GATT has judged uniquely qualified for the task by their own staying power in returning high cultural dividends. We have secured the cooperation of several such individuals, and are accepting nominations for more.
    Individuals without the qualifications of these cultural producers may submit themselves for consideration. In these cases, choices are usually made based on the candidate’s ability and willingness to contribute financially to the upkeep of a fund, much as honorary degrees are conferred by universities in exchange for donations, etc. 

OVERVIEW OF FRONT ENDS
Falling into one or more of the above categories--"first-come, first served," individually allocated, and celebrity funds--are groupings of projects presented to the investor with names intended to signal the core features of each fund.
    The High-Yield Fund, described earlier, contains what may be the cream of the crop of WTO/GATT projects, ones that will, upon completion, yield the highest cultural dividends. They may take quite a while to bear fruit, however, even when grouped in a fund.
    The Safety Fund contains a variety of projects selected by the WTO/GATT board because of their quality and diversity. Although they may not yield the great cultural dividends of the High-Yield Fund, they make up for it in stability and reliability.
    Finally, Subject funds contains projects that fall into similar areas of interest. Examples include The Environment Fund and The Intellectual Property Fund. These projects may also be part of the High-Yield Fund or Safety Fund.

AN EYE TO THE FUTURE
WTO/GATT believes that investments in its projects will out-perform most other investments in culture, because each invested dollar goes directly to project producers, without being absorbed in high overhead costs.
    WTO/GATT has approached the task of soliciting many small donors by incorporating the techniques of the corporate world which it attacks. WTO/GATT mutual funds allow the smaller investor to participate in the WTO/GATT system without being the sole financier of a project. WTO/GATT believes that by pooling the money of many small investors, our expert fund managers will be able to return unparalleled cultural dividends with the increased flow of capital.
    It is hoped that these techniques may help other subversive or activist organizations to overcome the hurdles imposed by the increasing scarcity of government subsidies for their activities.

 
 
WTO/GATT projects are not insured by FDIC, nor by any other financial establishment.  Use of the term "mutual funds" is not meant to imply endorsement by or affiliation with any banking or financial institution.


Last updated:
10 February 2001
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