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 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 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. 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.

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:

Rush a $5 donation >>

Rush a $10 donation >>

Rush a $25 donation >>

Donate another amount >>

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! If you can chip in $5 to help fund us, in moments of rapid response and longer-term moments, please do!