Will I be kept up to date regarding what happens to my donation?
Whether you donated for a specific campaign, a campaign tactic, or have set up a regular monthly donation to the organisation, we will let you know where your donation has gone. This information will almost always come in one of our emails that reports back to the whole community on the success of a specific campaign, action or tactic. But if you have any questions feel free to drop us a line at donation@wemove.eu.
What happens when you raise more money than you need for a given campaign?
WeMove Europe has very rarely been in this position. If we raised money for a tactic regarding a specific campaign (ex. Newspaper ad) and more money was raised than needed, it would go towards another tactic for that campaign. If we were to be in a position where more money is raised than necessary for a specific campaign, the donation would go towards funding campaigns on a similar topic. If this is not possible, the donation would go towards researching more campaign opportunities or tech development for new campaigning tactics. It is also important to note that donations raised do not determine how much staff capacity is put into winning a campaign.
What happens when you raise money for other organisations and movements?
WeMove Europe works with an incredible network of movements and partners across the continent. There are normally two different scenarios in which we raise money that involve other organisations.
The first is when there is an action that we are running together or contributing to, with partners. It could be buying up billboards across Brussels; organising European-wide polling on an issue we work on; contributing towards a climate march in a specific city; contributing to legal fees of a joint legal action we are taking with partners; etc. In these cases we agree beforehand how much WeMove could contribute to the specific action. We then turn to the community. If more is raised than needed for the action, the excess money goes towards other actions to help win that campaign (maybe instead of taking out one newspaper ad, we could take out two, or instead of “just” polling, we also have money to hire media experts to help distribute the results across Europe, etc.). If we don’t raise enough funds, we still contribute to the action, taking money from the budget we have allocated for that campaign.
The second approach is when there are specific moments where we believe the most valuable impact the WeMove Europe community can have is by raising funds directly for organisations or movements. For example, during the 2016 protests in Poland against a draconian law to fully ban abortion in the country, the WeMove community raised €16,000 for women’s groups in Poland to fight this law and for women’s rights. Another example is when during the harsh winter conditions in 2017, refugees stuck in Greece and Serbia were facing below zero temperatures with no shelter, clothes or food, so the WeMove community raised €70,000 to go to organisations helping people in these countries survive the winter.
After these two incredible experiences, we noticed that around 5% of the money raised went to administrative fees (bank costs, credit card fees, internal and external accounting costs, etc.) which WeMove was spending in order to be able to donate the entire sum of the donations to the organisations. So we decided that with future crowdfunding actions for other organisations and movements, 95% of those donations will go directly to the intended beneficiary, and 5% will be retained so as to cover the administrative fees.
