Hey RG! I’m here today to talk about my experience fundraising members for RG – but first let me tell you a little bit about my own RG journey, because that’s really where the story begins.
I found RG almost … Continue reading »
In January 2016, RG Philly created a Political Action working group, to discern our role in and take action on local economic and racial justice campaigns. We went through a process of considering where we could have the most impact, … Continue reading »
by Ben Goldstein
Photo courtesy Bread and Roses Giving Project
What does it mean to be accountable to a cross-class, cross-generational and multi-racial group raising money for grassroots organizing as a young white man with access to wealth? This is … Continue reading »
by Dominque Tan and Rachel Gelman, Bay Area RG Chapter leaders
If a group of poor and indigenous people knocked on your door, would you receive them? If they asked whether you would donate your resources to community reparations, would … Continue reading »
By Ellie Poley (member Chicago chapter; former member Seattle chapter)
Introduction
When my wife and I decided to create a bold, radical giving plan, we had to chart our own course because our money comes from monthly paychecks and annual … Continue reading »
by Rachel Adler, RG Member
Every few months, I’ll make up a batch of my famous caramel corn and invite the Philly chapter of Resource Generation to my house for an hour or so on a weekday evening. A few … Continue reading »
by Zak Wear, RG member
Resource Generation’s 2015 Making Money Make Change conference brought me back to my home state of Maryland. I was excited to take the week to see my people, rake mom and dad’s leaves, eat, and … Continue reading »
Farhad Ebrahimi – RG alumni member and long-time major supporter of RG – on strategy and movement-building with his foundation. Lots of juicy nuggets and modeling of social justice values and transparency in philanthropy. This post originally appeared at Medium… Continue reading »
Last year at the 2014 Transformative Leadership Institute, we tried a small experiment that I borrowed from my last job at KFTC. It was called “Each One Reach One” and it was our first official trial of an organized member recruiting members program here at RG. TLI participants greeted the idea with a lot of enthusiasm and it was a fun and great way to gauge where some of our leaders were around building RG power collectively. By the end of the trial, five new members joined and an additional three more joined later on due to an initial ask from one of our leaders.
Why was this project important? Building a dues-paying base of members who fund their own organization is a measure of our power, investment, and commitment to this work. Our movement is built on what each of us can give in time and resources. It’s not a new strategy. As RG’s Program Director Sarah Abbott once said, it’s an age-old strategy cultivated and used by many other leaders before us who have laid the groundwork for this work to happen. At RG, we are really blessed to have a robust and committed membership base and it’s made a lot of phenomenal work possible. However, we have some pretty ambitious goals and to reach them, we’ll need to grow.
Since the Each One Reach One campaign, the staff here at RG have worked to weave language around membership into all of our areas of work . We had some great member leaders reach out and recruit friends and family during the fall campaign and we are seeing our numbers exceed previous years. We exceeded our goal of recruiting 50 new members before the end of the year. Right now we have 332 members and we are on track to growing to 600 strong by 2020.
Two RGers that really dug into base-building and membership recruitment this fall were our Family Philanthropy organizer Iris Brilliant and Western Massachusetts chapter leader Adam Roberts. I caught up with them to ask a few question on their work.
