Dear Indivisibles,

It’s Leah again, Indivisible’s co-founder and co-Executive Director. Usually I email you along with my husband and co-founder, Ezra, in our monthly letters to you, or you might follow me on Twitter.

I’m reaching out today to talk to you a little about Indivisible’s work and fundraising in the era of the coronavirus. I’ll start with talking about some of our priorities this month, then about the changes we’ve made to our tactics and approaches in response to the virus, and then (you guessed it) ask for your support.

What we’ve done in March and what's to come in April

At the end of February, we had a pretty solid plan for what we’d be doing in March here at Indivisible. We were preparing for a few primaries where we’d made endorsements (hooray for Marie Newman!), focusing on taking back the Senate with the Payback Project, looking forward to Super Tuesday, preparing for the general election, including launching Organizing Together 2020 with partner organizations, and thinking about the Supreme Court. Local Indivisible groups were doing a lot of capacity-building work for this fall’s elections, doing recruitment for peer-to-peer texting programs and hosting in-person meetings and planning sessions for 2020.

That all seems like a long time ago, now, when it’s hard to think about much else but the coronavirus. But the truth is, none of those priorities have become any less important. For the foreseeable future, we’ll be trying to juggle both the short term priorities related to the coronavirus with also making sure that we’re not falling behind on the important organizing we need to do as we look toward Election Day. So don’t be surprised if you’re hearing about all kinds of things from us.

How the coronavirus has changed our work

Of course on top of the changes to our messages and strategic priorities that I outlined above, the spread of the coronavirus has had a big impact on the how of our work.

• Office Space: We closed our physical office in Washington, DC, on March 9th (I’m writing to you from a folding table in my apartment), and we’re asking our staff in DC and across the country to social distance and work from home as much as possible.
  
  
• Groups and Organizing: In-person meetings between our organizing team and Indivisible Group Leaders are happening via Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Skype instead, and we’re turning in-person events to virtual ones or rescheduling them. One bright spot: if anything, attendance is growing. Over 800 people attended our National Activist Call on the coronavirus on March 20th. Our training team is also hard at work: we’re dubbing next month “Virtual Activist April” and focusing our trainings on how to keep doing the work and building community without physical proximity.
  
  
• Voter Contact: Person-to-person contact has always been a huge part of Indivisible’s organizing work, and we’re still focused on that, but instead of knocking doors, we’re providing tools for groups to expand their from-home phonebanking and textbanking programs. Our Payback Project textbanking is still going strong: we’re approaching 1 million Payback Project texts sent. And stay tuned -- later this week we’ll be reaching out with a new way of contacting voters called “VoteFWD.”
  
  
• Contacting members of Congress: Contacting members of Congress has always been a high priority for Indivisibles, and that hasn’t changed, though we’ve shifted away from any in-person meetings. We’re pushing people to make calls about the coronavirus relief bills: Indivisibles have made over 20,000 calls and sent nearly 13,000 emails to their members of Congress asking them to take action on the coronavirus. You can click here to find our most updated scripts and asks.
  
  
• Flattening the curve: Outside of our “usual” work, we’re also doing everything we can to flatten the curve and support relief efforts. We’re sharing things like relief organizations you should support and continuing to include handwashing directions in as many messages as we can.

We’re not slowing down our advocacy, but we’re also committed to doing our part to flatten the curve, and we’re asking you to do the same in your life however you can. Feel free to reach out to us if you’d like ideas about how.

What this means for our budget

Here’s what we know: we’re not planning to slow down our work, but some of the changes we outlined above are going to mean unexpected costs. We don’t know all of those costs yet, but here’s some of what we’re looking at right now:

• Spending more on texting and phonebanking tools. Sending more peer-to-peer texts and making more phone calls in lieu of knocking on doors comes with added expenses.
  
  
• Spending less on in-person events and trainings. Right now we’re pausing all of our in-person events, which means spending less on things like booking venues and travel.
  
  
• Spending more on virtual events and trainings. Even though we’re canceling in-person events, we’re not slowing down our training calendar. Indivisible National and some groups are regularly maxing out the capacity of free video-conferencing tools, so we’re investing in paid tools with higher capacity and more features. We’re also spending more on closed caption services and other accessibility features.
  
  
• Many things won’t change! The vast majority of our work goes on, online or off. We’re still funding organizing, hosting a website, sending emails and mass text messages, paying staff, providing support to groups in every congressional district, and a lot more to fund our work to win this year. Some of the details are changing, but our overall goals and work are the same as they’ve always been.

But of course, that’s just the things we have some control over. The big, scary question for Indivisible in the coming months is what we don’t know yet. How will this change our work? How will it change our movement’s ability to do that work, and to help us fund it? The coronavirus is clearly having an economic impact, but we don’t know for how long or how great the impact will be. We’re committed to staying grassroots-funded: that’s always been our model, and always will be. We don’t know yet how hard that could become.

I know for many people in our movement, this is a scary economic time. Many folks have had their work hours cut, or have stopped working entirely, at a time when costs are going up. If you’re worried about your economic security, please don’t give to us right now. Your own situation is your priority, and ours.

But if you have a little to spare, please consider clicking here to make a donation to Indivisible Action, or here to make a monthly gift. Your gift will help us plan for the coming months and give us the flexibility to adjust as the situation changes.

On a more personal note, I want to acknowledge that this pandemic has touched many Indivisibles and their loved ones directly, including those of us here at National. This has been a very difficult time, particularly in the last few days, and it’s going to stay difficult for a long time. As always, if there’s anything we can do to help you and support you, please reach out. We hope that beyond our specific work, the Indivisible movement can provide a safe and socially-distanced support community. Thank you for being a part of this movement with us. Wash your hands, and stay safe.

In solidarity,
Leah