“I want to help you but I don’t know how,” Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra sang on her Trayvon Martin tribute “Everybody Knows” back in 2014. Fortuitously, the song led her to Revolutions Per Minute, a nonprofit that quietly has helped musicians turn their good intentions into effective advocacy since 2005, when it was known as Air Traffic Control. Last year, selling “Women Are Powerful and Dangerous” T-shirts with help from RPM, the band raised more than $7,000 in just one week for Third Wave Fund, which benefits LGBTQ youth in need, and Oakland-based girls’ group Radical Monarchs. “RPM really eliminates that hopelessness you can feel sometimes when you’re like, ‘I care, but I don’t know what to do,’” Segarra tells me.
The song that first brought Segarra to RPM now finds a home on the organization’s most visible project to date: Our First 100 Days. Launched on Inauguration Day by Secretly Group’s family of labels and the folks behind last year’s 30 Days, 30 Songs, the subscription compilation benefits groups fighting President Trump’s aggressively regressive policy threats. It consists of a new song per day, through April 29, from a host of indie favorites including Angel Olsen, Will Oldham, Mitski, Toro Y Moi, Jens Lekman, and Waxahatchee, raising almost $100,000 to date from $30 subscriptions as well as charity merch from Courtney Barnett, David Byrne, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Guided by RPM, the team behind Our First 100 Days chose a wide range of beneficiaries that “really speak to the core of what is so totally fucked about the Trump administration,” says Secretly partner Phil Waldorf: pro-choice advocates All Above All, immigrant rights supporters Cosecha, and environmental activists People’s Climate Movement, plus regionally focused political organizers Southerners on New Ground and Hoosier Action.
Essentially, RPM translates artists’ ideas into charitable actions in ways both practical and inspirational. They help musicians and industry groups sort out which political issues matter to them, ultimately connecting them with nonprofits where their donations could be felt and that make sense for their fanbase. On the more technical side, when artists then offer small add-ons to ticket prices or sell custom T-shirts to benefit their causes, RPM handles the back-end, making sure the money gets to the charities. “Artists find something that’s meaningful and matters to them, even if it’s in the most general terms,” explains Steve Ralbovsky, RPM board member (and Canvasback Music founder). “RPM will come back with some options. Pick one, and RPM will sort of do the rest.”
Because not every artist wants to be outspoken about their activism, the organization tailors its approach for each band. “There are some bands that would like to raise money but not engage their fans [politically] too much, and we can work with that,” says Jessica George, who took over as RPM’s executive director last year after 10 years of grassroots nonprofit organizing. “My goal is not to be the most radical. My goal is to meet fans where they’re at, wherever they're at and help them to understand an issue directly. It’s not effective organizing to alienate half of a fanbase.”
RPM may tend to operate under the radar, but Our First 100 Days won’t be the first time it has gotten results. In the past several years alone, RPM has lent its expertise to campaigns from Yoko Ono, My Morning Jacket, Death Cab for Cutie, Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, and CHVRCHES, for causes including the environment, LGBTQ rights, and economic justice. The organization raised more than $450,000 with artists, labels, and managers in 2015, according to IRS filings, while last year Grouplove singlehandedly brought in $40,000 for clean-water providers Charity: water. Currently, the Orwells are raising money for Chicago’s venerable Off the Street Club for boys and girls, Adia Victoria is supporting homeless outreach nonprofit Open Table Nashville, and Alt-J are funding the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
The organization’s growing success should come as little surprise to those who know of them, considering the heavy players involved out the gate. RPM’s first executive director was Erin Potts, who created the Tibetan Freedom Concerts in the 1990s with the Beastie Boys, while its founding board included R.E.M. manager Bertis Downs and Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis. Indeed, the Secretly Group initially came to RPM via its respected reputation, needing help navigating the nonprofit maze well before Trump tried his hand at 100 days. Last year, the label released singles by Kevin Morby and Sharon Van Etten that benefited gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. “We needed someone to help us vet them,” says Waldorf.
Merrill Garbus, the creative force behind tUnE-yArDs, first heard about RPM several years ago from Thao & the Get Down Stay Down. “The fact that an organization exists to help me organize my thoughts, my passions, my questions, and my resources into tangible work is simply a miracle to me,” she says. In 2014, tUnE-yArDs used ticket add-ons to raise some $15,000 for Haitian dance company Rara Tou Limen, whose lessons had informed her album Nikki Nack. In 2015, after a big Sonos TV-commercial payday for Nikki Nack’s “Water Fountain”—a song “about economic exploitation and how poor and non-white communities get screwed by capitalism,” Garbus says—she partnered with RPM to start the Water Fountain fund, benefiting water-related causes.
After the election, one of the first people Garbus called was Jessica George. “Jess and RPM are in this for the long haul, and have been for years,” Garbus says. “They’re setting up strategies for musicians to commit to social justice longterm—both in this current moment of crisis, as well as in a sustainable way that is woven into the everyday of what we do.” The best way for the music community to survive Trump, it turns out, may be with the sort of patience and strategic focus missing from the current administration. Lucky for musicians who want to help but don’t know how, RPM’s vision goes way beyond the first 100 days.