John,

I'm Yohanna, SumOfUs's managing director. I don't usually email, but I'm writing to you today because I have an important—but unfortunate—message to share.

I just heard from our finance director, who oversees SumOfUs's budgets, and after closing the books for the month of November, I'm worried.

Last month a technical bug caused a third of all credit card transactions to fail, costing us hundreds of thousands. If we don't catch up fast, we'll have to consider scaling back our campaign plan for the next 6 months. That means the incredibly important annual general meetings of corporations might happen without our voices in the room, and our life-saving community work could have to pause, too.

Would you give a donation now to help us close this gap?

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John, I want to assure you that despite recent fundraising challenges, SumOfUs remains in a financially stable position, and we have the resources to carry out our core functions.

But in this moment, when so many are living close to the line, vulnerable to exploitation from corporate actors, we need to go above and beyond to protect vulnerable communities. That's why we are planning on more shareholder resolutions, more campaign actions, and more sophisticated messaging.

We also have to beef up our technical capacity, so this kind of devastating mistake doesn't happen again.

But if we don't have the funds, we won't be able to keep these new strategies running through the end of the year into next year, and we won't be able to invest in our infrastructure to protect us going forward.

Can you help make sure we end the year strong and ready to fight hard in 2023?

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I want to close by acknowledging that we are living through an economically precarious moment.

The cost of food and housing across the world is still quite high. Because SumOfUs is a member-funded organization that depends largely on small donations from people, not institutions and corporations, we know we’ve already been facing a decline in donations everywhere. If you are not currently in a position to give, I understand, and I thank you deeply for all you have done to propel this incredible movement forward.

However, if you are in a position to give—any amount—there couldn't be a more important moment to chip in.

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P.S. John, especially if you tried to give in the past couple of months and weren’t able to, we could really use you trying again now!