Riseup Networks 2007 Annual Budget

A few comments about the budget

Stipends

We pay several collective members a frighteningly modest stipend. The issue of paid organizing is controversial in the movement as a whole, and within our collective.

The arguments against paying stipends are numerous. The fear is that one's activist work will become more like a job and that stipends will introduce a power dynamic between paid and unpaid collective members. Additionally, some people feel that we should not be accepting donations from amazingly awesome activist groups which are then used to pay individuals.

However, over time, the riseup collective has decided to pay stipends for many reasons. Principally, riseup simply could not function unless some individuals were able to devote significant time towards the project. We need people available on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Some of the work needed to make riseup function requires a level of availability and responsibility that we cannot ask of unpaid volunteers.

On a political level, we conceive of riseup.net as a dual-power project to build lasting alternative infrastructure. We believe the only way to achieve this is through building a sustainable institution that is able to honor the labor of its workers. The stipends we do pay are a pale shadow of what they should be, but it is all we can afford at the moment.

Grants

We are not morally opposed to writing grants, applying for grants, and receiving grants. Currently, we simply do not have the labor to see this process through. If you would like to help us apply for grants, please contact us. One difficulty is that we do not want to change our project areas, and so we would likely only be eligible for funding which sustains our current work, which we have been told are the most difficult grants to acquire.