My name is Manel Tomás. I’m CitizenGO’s Director of Operations. Our President Ignacio Arsuaga and myself have written to you a few times this year about CitizenGO’s budget, and, unfortunately, I am sending this email with some bad news about CitizenGO’s 2022 fundraising.

I know that these emails are never nice to receive, so I want to promise you two things at the very top.

1. Unlike many other organizations, CitizenGO does not believe in manufacturing crises or manipulating our members into donating to us by lying about the true state of our finances. I assure you that I will not be doing that in this email.
2. Last week, I promised that you would not hear from me again for the rest of the year if we succeeded in closing our 2022 budget gap. Unfortunately, we were unable to meet our critical goal. I am making one last 2022 promise to you that you will not hear from me again for the rest of the year if this email succeeds in closing our budget gap!

Here is the bottom line: As of this writing, CitizenGO still needs to raise $90,000 before the end of this month (only 24 hours!). I'll provide more details below, but first I want to ask if you can chip in now to help close our budget gap?

Let me give you a peek behind the curtain of CitizenGO's budget.

We often tell you that CitizenGO is funded primarily by small-dollar grassroots donations from people like you. But to be more specific, 98% of our 2022 budget was set to come from people like you, receiving emails like this and chipping in what they could.

This has been a core tenet of CitizenGO's mission since our founding in 2013, because it ensures that we can remain fiercely independent and responsible to only our members, not the whims of a single large donor who writes us a check.

But over the last year, we have seen a dramatic drop in our grassroots fundraising. It's been particularly surprising that this happened during a year when we’ve seen a redoubling of attacks against our pro-life and pro-family values, which historically have been times of increased energy and giving.

And it's not just us—donations to other prolife and profamily organizations have been on the decline across the board.

I'm concerned by that trend not just for CitizenGO, but because radical pro-abortion groups, fanatic LGBTQ+ organizations, and haters of Christian values are entering 2023 with tens of millions of dollars in the bank—ready to fund candidates, ballot measures, and terrifying totalitarian policies.

The good news is that CitizenGO has never needed to match these groups dollar-for-dollar. For almost 10 years we have been nimble, innovative, and frugal—but given how hard it has been to meet our fundraising goals this year, I'm concerned that we are not going to have the money we need to fight back.

So I'm asking. Can you dig deep and chip in to help us close the gap?

You may be wondering what CitizenGO will do with that extra $90,000 next year if we manage to reach our goal.

The short answer is: a lot!

Some of that money will be put toward research and development of new techniques to identify, energize, and mobilize young people and profamily voters.

Some will be put in our reserves so that when crises happen—as they did past summer when our directors of campaigns in Africa and the UK, Ann Kioko and Caroline Farrow, were under terrible personal attacks for bravely standing up for life and family—we are able to immediately dive in and do whatever is needed to fight back.

Some will be used to help fund small, underfunded but critically important organizations doing direct service work on the ground, in front of abortion centers, to save babies' lives; or battling back to avoid our children being groomed and brainwashed at schools in gender ideology.

And some will be used to ensure that CitizenGO is able to continue paying our incredible, hardworking staff the fair wages that we believe every single worker deserves.

I know that you've been asked for a lot this year, and I am so grateful for all that you have done. I just need to ask you one more time if you can chip in and help keep CitizenGO strong in 2023.