Indivisibles,

Wow!

Last week, during our #DefundHate Week of Action, Indivisibles across the
country pressured MoCs to cut funding for ICE & CBP. It was a massive
success: Local groups nationwide hosted more than 190 events and rallies
-- that’s the highest number of events we’ve ever had during a week of
action like this. Our Legislative Director, Mary, heard from congressional
offices that their phones were ringing OFF THE HOOK. (Check out our
[ [link removed] ]Twitter to see some great shots of groups’ events!)

As the week’s activities wrap up, we want to give you a little visibility
into the organizing, policy, and communications work that goes into
building a Week of Action and activating Indivisibles nationwide. We’re
sharing this as part of our policy of transparency about what we’re up to,
and also (full transparency) because we’re hoping you’ll be able to
[ [link removed] ]chip in to support our work.

Here’s a quick overview of a few of the pieces of staff work that go into
creating and supporting a Week of Action:

📘 Policy Research and Writing: On something planned in advance like this,
our policy and communications teams generally spend about two weeks
researching and developing the most effective calls to action,
coordinating with partner organizations, and then drafting language and
recording scripts to make sure everything is as easy-to-understand as
possible.^1 This particular one we’ve been planning much longer than that,
as a part of the #DefundHate coalition.

🎨 Graphic Design: It takes a full day of work from a graphic designer to
get the layouts, graphics, social media posts, and more ready to promote
our work. For #DefundHate our graphic designers also designed and shipped
out over 5,000 signs, buttons, and stickers to groups hosting events (more
on that below.)

💾 Web Development: Once the design and content are ready, our web
developers spend another day loading the content onto our website and
making sure the resources are accessible and readable on all kinds of
devices (particularly phones, which are what most folks have with them
when they’re actually talking to MoCs).

📬 Emails, Texts, and Social Media: After all the resources are created,
our web and social media teams get to work getting them in front of you:
generally we spend about a half day of work loading emails, social media,
and text messages to ensure as many Indivisibles as possible get all the
information you need. And on the backend, organizers keep an eye on the
replies, making sure we’re responding to problems and questions as they
inevitably crop up.

💪 People power! And of course, at the core of all our work are the
Indivisibles and organizers who actually put their hands up to ask hard
questions, take to the streets, and contact their MoCs. Every time we
launch a campaign, you’re the ones who turn all the work above into real,
long-lasting change. We can’t do it without you!

Whew. That’s a lot even before Indivisibles start picking up phones! We
work hard to make sure that everything we send out to you is timely,
accurate, and most importantly effective at achieving our collective
goals. And we’re investing in good staff and cutting-edge tools to make
sure we achieve all of those goals. [ [link removed] ]Can you chip in $5 or more to help
us? Support from grassroots Indivisibles is our largest single source of
revenue, and we’re counting on you to help fund our work!

Still not sure exactly how all that work relates to your $5? (This is the
“theory of change” part). Here’s some information on a few of the direct
costs associated with a Week of Action. This isn’t every cost we have, but
it should give you an idea!

💰 Text Messaging: It costs $6,000 to send a text message to our entire SMS
list (we sent three related to #DefundHate). Text messaging is one of the
most effective ways to ask Indivisibles to take action, but it’s also
expensive!

📬 Website Hosting: It costs roughly $1,000 to pay for a month of website
hosting. Having a reliable website with minimal downtime is crucial to our
work. If you’ve been around a while, you may remember when the traffic to
the original Indivisible Guide google doc crashed the page -- we never
want that to happen again.

🗺️ Event Mapping Tool: Our event mapping tool helps groups and
Indivisibles organize and connect with each other (which was crucial in a
week like this one when we had more events than ever before). It costs
roughly $6,000 to keep it up and running for a month.

📬 Emails: Emails (like this one) are the backbone of our advocacy program,
as they are for most organizations. We pay a flat fee for access to our
mass emailing tool, and it costs $7,656 per month to keep it up and
running.

👕 Merchandise: For events like a Week of Action, where visibility is
important, we provide merchandise like stickers, buttons, and signs to our
groups, free of charge. For the #DefundHate week, 160 groups requested
merchandise, which cost us $12,000.

Here’s the truth: We need people reading this email to click and donate.
Grassroots gifts are our biggest single source of funding, but only about
1 in every 100 people reading each email end up giving. We really need you
to be one of that select group, because we have to hit our budget goals in
order to stay on track with the ambitious plans we’ve set in motion this
year and to continue providing resources like these.

[ [link removed] ]Can we count on you now to fund Indivisible Project, our advocacy weeks
of action, and all of our crucial work? Follow this link to add your
donation today.

If you've saved your information with ActBlue Express Lane, your donation
to Indivisible Project will go through immediately:

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Every contribution, from $5 to $500, makes this work possible. Thank you
for being part of it, today and every day.

To many more record-breaking weeks of action, in solidarity,
Indivisible Team

^1 Sometimes, of course, we have rapid-response moments when we need to
get something out a lot faster than two weeks later. Usually what we do
then is get the most important ask up quickly… and our teams work late
nights! [ [link removed] ]If you can chip in $5 to help fund us, in moments of rapid
response and longer-term moments, please do!

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