Dear John,
RG’s spring membership and redistribution pledge drive (April 17-May 31) is coming soon! This is the first large national coordinated swath of programming and organizing that RG is up to in 2023, amidst so much more on its way. This year, RG is launching a national campaign, hosting an in-person organizing summit, bringing back an in-person MMMC (Making Money Make Change), running two cohorts of high net wealth praxis, hosting a series on Transforming Philanthropy, launching an Internationalism Summer School, and creating a series on traditions of giving across cultures. Our ongoing local basebuilding and leadership development work continues through 19 chapters.
What makes this all possible is our 1100 dues-paying members showing up together and funding movements as well as the collective organizing project of RG! 95% of RG’s budget is from member dues; dues are a form of accountability to RG and a commitment to deepening and growing our community. Dues sustain RG’s operations and equitably compensate our cross-class, multiracial, intergenerational staff who organize with and support our members to build on decades of embedded knowledge. This leads to politicized, redistribution-oriented donors in movements who, on average, redistribute 16x more after participating in RG spaces.
Being 95% member funded also means that our members’ donor practices directly impact the resilience of our internal resource mobilization strategy. Last year, we faced a budget deficit and raised 25% of our budget in December. This isn’t sustainable for our work or for movements. This year, we’re adapting by asking members to move dues by the end of the Spring drive (by May 31st), and to move 5-10% of their overall giving to RG.
As part of the spring drive, working groups and chapters are coordinating on leadership development and training spaces, coworking spaces, and relationship building: RG Michigan is hosting a transformative fundraising training, RG Minnesota is doing an in-person drive event with food, music, and money-moving coworking, RG NYC is doing a money moving cafe, and a dozen other chapters and working groups are or will be coordinating on targeted basebuilding and resource mobilization efforts.
