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Intro to Fundraising

Fundraising is a crucial activity in Extinction Rebellion. Without it we cannot make the impact and progress that we need to towards achieving our three demands and building the movement to act on the climate and ecological crisis. Our fundraising team support each other to get results. We are proud of the difference we make to the movement.

Why does XR need money?

Extinction Rebellion UK spends around £1m a year on its basic activities, which include:

  • Supporting a range of volunteers with essential costs, including people who support our movement through their involvement in UK wide teams. These people are essnetial to delivering resources, training, strategies, regional and national coordination, fundraising, etc.

  • Carefully planning a huge array of national and UK-wide, attention-grabbing actions, strategies and campaigns.

  • Creating and safely storing of our wonderfully iconic artful resources.

  • Sharing money with nations and regions, to spend as they need. Some of this will help support local groups with leaflets, posters and other resources.

  • Providing, updating and supporting our communications platforms, meeting tools, email lists and website.

  • Running trainings and talks to spread the news about the climate and ecological emergency and our three demands.

  • Amplification of complementary messages of our allies and partners.

  • Providing financial and budgeting processes.

The more funds we have the more effective we can be in the face of the climate and biodiversity crises. Money helps us work towards achieving our three demands and building this movement of movements.

Please bear in mind that Extinction Rebellion can only ask for donations which will be used to fund legal activities.

Should you raise money for XRUK? Your Region/Nation? Or your Local Group?

Regions and Nations ask XR UK for the level of funding that they need and then hopefully there is enough available to meet those needs.

There are pros and cons to each option:

  • If regions and nations raise their own funds (some areas find this easier than others) then they should need less funding from XR UK. If local groups raise their own funds, then they will need less financial support from individual rebels and from their region or nation.

  • If XR UK holds funding centrally, then it can prioritise budgets across the whole organisation.

  • Fundraising by regions, nations and local groups may reach rebels that fundraising by XR UK cannot.

Fundraising during Outreach

Watch this video showing how to do outreach followed by a fundraising ask.

Importance of our Action Network email lists

Our network of Local and Region/Nation email lists all build one big XRUK email list. As well as using it for emails about actions, training and ways to get involved, this list is very important for fundraising.

Regular donors from our XRUK list provide a steady income for the movement and campaigns, particularly leading up to big actions. The emails also bring in money from one-off donations.

The more people there are on our Action Network mailing list, the more successful our future fundraising will be.

It is important for fundraising that local groups are using Action Network (rather than their own systems like Mailchimp or other systems), so that new sign ups are also added to the overall XRUK list. More information about Action Network is here.

What does the XRUK fundraising team do?

  • Make grant and other funding applications
  • Public fundraising using our email list and social media
  • Support national, regional and local XR groups to fundraise for themselves
  • Engage 'high net worth' individuals as supporters
  • Remain open to new ideas!

As well as the team that works on UK-Wide fundraising for XR, many Regions, Nations, and Local Groups have their own fundraising people or teams. This book should help you to feel more confident in developing these skills!

How to get involved with the XRUK fundraising team

If you have fundraising, data processing or admin experience of any kind, or fundraising is just something that you would like to help with, then please do apply for a Fundraising role (tick the 'Fundraising' box on the left hand menu to see just Fundraising roles.

You can contact us on our Mattermost reception or by emailing fundraising@rebellion.earth

We look forward to hearing from you!

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