March For Our Lives Lays Off Most Employees

One of the silly things about the gun control movement is that everyone on that side of the debate wants to start an organization, but they all seem to try and do the same thing.

March for Our Lives was, at least, a little different in that it focused mostly on younger Americans. Created in the wake of Parkland by Parkland survivors, it made a big splash from the start. It attracted a lot of attention and a lot of money.

Apparently, though, not nearly enough, as the organization just laid off the majority of its full-time staff.

March For Our Lives is slashing its employees and appointing a new leader.

The gun-control group announced it would cut ties with 13 of its 16 full-time staffers last week. It also named a new executive director. Jaclyn Corin, a 24-year-old Parkland survivor and group co-founder, will take the reins as the organization attempts to navigate bumpy terrain in the wake of the 2024 election.

“We are facing financial challenges as an organization, not unlike many nonprofit advocacy organizations in this time,” Corin told The 19th. “I am sure things would look differently with a different outcome of the election, but these are the systems and circumstances in which we have to make adjustments based on the financial situation we find ourselves in. It is incredibly unfortunate that these cuts have to happen.”

The firings are a significant setback for one of America’s most prominent gun-control groups. It likely limits any impact the group might have between now and next year’s midterm elections. It’s also the culmination of the group’s long decline after a meteoric rise.

Now, when I first saw the headline and read this part of the piece, my first thought was DOGE cutting off the NGO pipeline. While money wasn’t supposed to go to gun control groups, what happened a lot of times was that it went through pass-through organizations that took the USAID money and then donated it to anti-gun organizations.

With that largely cut off now, I suspect some of those groups are going to feel the hurt, and that this might be just the first of many taking steps because of that.

And I can’t rule out that playing a role, but it seems they’ve had some issues since before Trump took office and Elon Musk took a chainsaw to government waste, fraud, and abuse.

At the same time, public records show fundraising at its two non-profit entities has declined dramatically in recent years. Its non-political foundation went from revenues of $2.2 million in 2022 to $1.4 million in 2023, putting it more than $300,000 in the red. Its political advocacy arm went from $7 million in 2022 to under $3.5 million the following year. It ran a deficit both years, and neither was anywhere close to the $18.6 million it first raised in 2018.

While public records are not yet available for 2024, Corin’s comments suggest the numbers have only gotten worse.

Corin argues that the organization took on more than it could handle and started running short.

Of course, Michael Bloomberg could probably have covered the losses with his walking-around money, but he didn’t. I’m sure some of those now laid-off employees are thinking about that fact, though.

Basically, though, it seems that they got a massive influx of money and thought that gravy train would run indefinitely. It didn’t, though, and since they’d likely started off by banking on the previous year’s donations, they were ill-prepared for a downturn in contributions.

Yet with the cost of everything going up, people were a lot tighter with their money, which is probably why they got fewer in contributions. Even the wealthy donors were a little more cautious with where they put their money, which likely hurt.

And rather than make adjustments along the way to adapt, they just kept hoping it would change. Now, they’re laying off more than 80 percent of their full-time employees.

Those are likely also the ones who would be partially responsible for raising money, so that’s probably not going to help a whole lot in the long run, either.

It seems that March for Our Lives roared in with fire and fury, but will soon be nothing but ash.