Dear Simeon,
Just over a year ago I was working from a coffee shop and Positive Money was just a vague concept. We didn’t even have a website or a name. We’ve come a long way in just 14 months - in fact last week we were even invited to host an event in Parliament. We’re now one of the few groups that’s actually giving accurate information about the nature of the financial crisis. We have solutions that would work, whereas the authorities obviously don’t. Our plans could end this recession and stop the costs being passed back onto ordinary people.
We rarely ask for money, but right now we have to.
Over the last year 75% of our funding has come from charitable trusts who have had the vision to see that changing the money system is essential to tackling almost any other problem in the world. But those trusts get much of their money from investments in the stock market, so if there’s chaos in the stock markets - as there has been - then the trusts have less money to give to projects like Positive Money. We can’t rely on the same trusts being able to fund us over the next 12 months, and many of the other trusts out there are still more focussed on tackling symptoms than the roots of the problem.
How We Can Keep the Campaign Going...
But there’s a pretty simple solution. If everyone receiving this email could give £3 monthly, then we’d be able to get more people working on the campaign and support an extra 6 volunteers with their expenses. We’d be able to take advantage of many of the media opportunities that we’re currently missing due to lack of time, or to meet some of the 214 charities that need to understand that they’ll only reduce poverty and debt by changing the monetary system, or roll out the meetups to more cities across the country. We’d be able to re-educate MPs and the Treasury on how the monetary system really works, so that they’re no longer trying to fix the economy using a textbook model of banking that went out of date 30 years ago. We’d be able to turn the Where Does Money Come From? book into a 1 hour video for those that don’t have time to read the whole book, as well as a 10 minute briefing video for busy politicians. If we could do this, the campaign would grow 3 times faster and we’d be successful much sooner.
More modestly, to continue the work we’re doing with our current resources we need to raise £6,000 a month. If that sounds like a lot, consider the fact that charities like Shelter, ActionAid and even The Dog’s Trust each spend over £3million a month, while Oxfam spends over £24 million a month. Another campaign recently asked for £30,000 a month just to put adverts on the tube! This is all good work, but until we fix the root cause - the monetary system - it’s simply tackling the symptoms rather than the problem. Across society, we’re spending less than a penny dealing with the roots of the problem for every pound spend on tackling the symptoms. Positive Money is one of the few campaigns actually going to the roots.
£3 a month spent on addressing the root of the problem could be worth many times that spent on tackling the symptoms.
Poverty and inequality, whether in the UK or globally, are rooted in the money system. The environmental crisis is being accelerated by way the banks invest our money, and driven by the attempts of millions to get out of the debt that the current system forces upon them. Medical research to tackle malaria and AIDs could be adequately funded if we reclaim the power to create money from the banking sector and stop that newly-created money being wasted on speculation and property bubbles. Until we fix the money system, we’re not going to fix anything else - it’s that simple.
So if you can afford to give £3 a month (10p a day) please consider doing so. If you can afford to give more, then we’ll be able to grow the campaign faster and be successful in fixing the monetary system sooner. (The average monthly donation so far is £9.19).
You might have some questions, so here’s some more information for anyone who is interested:
By splitting the cost between the 6,000 people who receive this email, we can pull together the resources to really make this happen. Please consider helping out if you can.
Ben
PS. This email isn’t going to the 140 people who currently donate an average of £9 a month to the campaign, or those that have already made substantial one-off donations. If you donate, unlike some charities or campaigns we don’t keep constantly asking for more.
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