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2023 was a huge year for the Resource Generation community. Before the end of the year, we’re highlighting perspectives from the four subsets of our staff organizing team. Today’s highlight is from our Resource Mobilization team (RM)! RM = Julia, Leah, Sahana, & Valeriya. Consider this email series a 2023 annual report teaser trailer ;)
While this perspective is from staff, RG is a membership organization, which means that every single one of our 1100+ members (INCLUDING YOU!) belonging to and building this work is central to our efforts to end wealth hoarding, return stolen land and privatized resources, and interrupt intergenerational lies about money!
Down with that? Then recommit to this collective organizing project by renewing your RG dues or making an additional 2023 membership dues contribution at 10% of your overall giving by the end of this week [[link removed]] ! RG’s budget is 95% member-funded because that is the politically principled and strategic way to resource our cross-class, multiracial, multigenerational staff team of 23 people. When our membership base of 1,100 individuals sustains RG’s mission, vision, and day-to-day organizing, we are extremely powerful.
Julia and Eliza sit in behind the Action Booth table at MMMC [[link removed]]
Q: What are your wins?? What’re you celebrating about your organizing work this year?
A: It’s a long list, ok? So we’re just gonna rattle these babies off:
We raised more than $650K, respectively, during our Spring and Fall Membership and Redistribution Pledge Drives!
We surpassed our $100M RP goal, hitting more than $120M in redistribution to resource movements.
We fostered a strong membership culture, creating and living into a newly created vision. The evening social events and the action booth at Making Money Make Change really embodied that.
We reinstated all member calls and centered transparency in those gatherings and our communications with members about RG’s financial position.
We had 30 members participate in our HNW Praxis programming, where they learned about their money stories, committed to bold redistribution, and had the opportunity to step into leadership. The impact of this programming goes far beyond the numbers, but it’s worth noting that praxis graduates collectively committed to redistributing tens of millions this year! We also relaunched our Family Philanthropy Praxis Program, with eight members joining us to learn how they can step into bolder leadership in their philanthropic vehicles.
We hosted two Transformative Fundraising Trainings nationally, and two chapters hosted them locally.
We’ll let the programming scope talk about this at another time, but we also moved hundreds of participants through our Transforming Philanthropy virtual series!
Q: Talk about how RGers are moving $$!
A: This year, we far surpassed our redistribution goal of $100 million, collectively pledging to redistribute over $120 million to movements. 519 of our constituents signed the pledge, committing to fundraising $12.2 million, investing $10.7 million, and moving nearly $4 million to our national partners, the Center for Popular Democracy and Movement for Black Lives. Again and again, RG members and constituents are responding to the urgent moment we’re in by powerfully funding our movements.
Q: Can you describe the felt sense you have of all of this organizing? Talk about the vibes, please.
A: It’s been an amazing year of organizing, and it’s also been very challenging. RG members and staff are doing such important work, and the organization is almost entirely funded by its people. Most of the time, when we ask members to renew their dues, they appreciate the reminder and act on the invitation to recommit to this membership organization.
What would it be like, and what would it take, for members to avoid needing a reminder to renew their dues? What kind of membership culture would we have if that was the case? We felt glimmers of that this year, at conferences with members, in over 300 one-on-one transformative fundraising conversations we’ve had with our high net wealth members, and from lots of anecdotal evidence that RG is a place of belonging and political rigor.
Q: …sounds like there’s a but there lol. What’s the but?
A: There truly is SO much to celebrate, AND there is still work ahead.
RG is organizing less than 1% of 18-35 year olds in the U.S. economy’s top 10% – young people with wealth and class privilege who are committed to redistribution and repair need to keep thinking like a circle, need to keep welcoming each other into this work, agitating each other to go deeper, and finding a political home together as they work to change the tide of the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in global history. Mind you, that transfer of stolen wealth is underway right now! We’re talking about real, material stakes for billions of peoples’ lives. And that’s not hyperbole when you consider the violence enacted by the U.S. Empire and its privatized assets around the entire planet.
There is a funding drought in our movements. With several hundred thousand dollars still left to raise this year, RG is no stranger to this. We’ve been operating in a budgetary deficit since 2022, even though RG asks our members to pay dues at 5%-10% of their overall redistribution.
We want to rightsize this and put this in context. If all of our $120 million pledge signers funded RG at 10% of their overall redistribution, that would be enough to fund our $3.9 million annual budget three times over! And we know this is only a small portion of our actual membership base’s capacity since only about 30% of our members have signed the pledge.
Q: Hear that. So, in this context, how have you changed as an organizer this year? What have you personally learned? Give us the juicy details.
A: The words “more” and “unapologetic” come to mind. We know what $$ it takes to keep RG organizationally resilient, and we’ve been asking boldly and transparently for our members to meet that need. Until it becomes second nature for folks, we’ve gotta keep asking.
Likewise, we know that movements are still painfully and dramatically underfunded, and we’ve been asking constantly and providing necessary support to members to redistribute their wealth! That is the north star guiding our work, and we are going to continue to do whatever it takes, tinker with our organizing model, and grow our work to get this money back where it belonged in the first place.
So the personal learning really is, ‘keep going, no matter what, keep organizing!’
Q: Yes!!! How can I support RG rn??
A : Continue to powerfully move this work forward! Pay membership dues at 10% of your overall giving, [[link removed]] or with make an additional year-end contribution [[link removed]] !
3 ppl holding ''Join the Wave of Resources + Action'' poster [[link removed]] 4 people in zoom boxes during Drive Phonebanking [[link removed]]
We encourage you to consider joining RG as a dues paying member [[link removed]] , and if you would like to get involved in your local chapter, please fill out this intake form [[link removed]] !
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