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Hi, John -- I am so proud to see us as an organization moving away from class privilege patterns of isolation and individualism and into strong relationships and interdependence. We are making this shift together.
Resource Generation's membership-dues program is a critical way we support our work and practice interdependence year-round.
Being a membership organization means we are accountable to and funded by our base (folks who are 18-35 with access to class privilege and/or wealth) -- each one of us as individuals counts towards the collective power of the whole. This year we reached 700 dues-paying members, the largest we’ve ever been as an organization.
Four years ago when we set the goal of having 800 dues-paying members by the end of 2020, it meant doubling our membership size, and we had some doubts about whether or not we could reach this goal. Today we’re on track to reach this goal an entire year early.
It's that momentum and power of the collective that has moved me most this year. From the personal level of seeing how the staff came together to move important work forward while I was away, to the macro level of seeing how RG as an organization and community fits into broader social justice movements, there are so many examples of our collective leadership and resilience:
- I was supported to take a three-month sabbatical and I watched from a distance as RGers and staff took on a powerful collaboration with the Movement for Black Lives on the National Black Mama’s Day Bailout, blasting past our goal and raising over $60,000 in a few weeks.
- Coming back from my break to be with the team at our Transformative Leadership Institute in June, where a group of 40 member leaders representing all of our 15 chapters from around the country learned and practiced new skills in telling their stories as spokespeople, building successful campaigns, cross-class relationship building, and transformative fundraising.
- In July at the Center for Popular Democracy’s People’s Convention with a delegation of Resource Generation members, surrounded by a multiracial crowd of over 1,800 poor and working-class people all building power in their local communities, I felt connection, possibility, the feeling of being part of something bigger than myself, and pride in showing up with Resource Generation as part of a larger movement.
Building our membership means mobilizing more money for social justice movements, more opportunities to build authentic cross-class campaigns with our partners, and more visibility as young people with class privilege and access to wealth who reject the status quo and instead are organizing for the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power.
Level up your interdependence during our fall membership-drive by:
Join us so that we all can continue to show up fully and powerfully alongside poor and working-class led movements to end racial capitalism in our lifetimes.
Onward,
Iimay Ho
Executive Director
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