192 Converting Resources to the Cause consistently declined over time, this deprived Syrians of the “brain gain” (Kapur 2010) needed to supplement the underequipped resistance. 6.2.3 From Resource Shortages to Professionalization A decline in fungible resource conversion among anti-regime Syrians in the United States and Britain caused many informal groups to die off after volunteers and donors became exhausted. I found that organizations without the financial backing of a board or wealthy donors to pay for one or two full-time staff by 2014 had since closed or become comatose. At the same time, organizers responded strategically to these hurdles by channeling remaining resources into the formation of formal, professionalized organizations that specialized in addressing a specific dimension of the rebellion or relief effort. This professionalization enabled some activists to withstand unfavorable conditions by switching from a self- or community-sustained emergency response to long-term advocacy focused on a particular area of need. The legal accreditation that came with formalization also enabled activists to solicit funding from sources outside of the Syrian diaspora, such as by NGOs, which counteracted resource depletion and fears that informal remittances would become associated with support for terrorism (see Chapter 7). At the same time, formalization imposed regulations and constraints on activists’ work, which limited their abilities to adapt creatively and spontaneously9 to needs on the ground. Respondents attested that the formalization process required donors to divert some portion of their contributions to the maintenance of diaspora organizations themselves. Haytham, director of Manchester’s Rethink Rebuild Society, described how his organization’s survival depended on the commitment of wealthy private donors to pay for staff salaries. From January 2012, we had an office for our British Syrian Community of Manchester. At that time, I was doing my PhD. I opened this office daily for three hours in the evening time and it stayed like that for one year. At that time, the money came job by job. Let’s say that, okay, we need the coach to London [to hold a protest], we need one thousand pounds. After I finished my PhD, I told them, look, I have to find a job or continue with you for any amount of money just to live on. [The donors] said we need you, so stay with us. Two years ago, we started to make it more systematic. So now people are paying, let’s say, a regular payment of twenty pounds a month, and we have some businessman paying more to cover the cost of the office, employees, some activities. Now we are five people after a long journey. We moved here to this proper office one year ago. 9 On creativity in the Arab Spring, see Bamyeh (2014); on the importance of spontaneity in social movements, see Snow and Moss (2014). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press