Frequently Asked Questions
Donations
How much money do we need?
There isn’t really a possible limit that would be enough. If we could bring in trillions of dollars a year those trillions could easily be put back out to any number of efforts working to address issues of climate, environment, equity, etc. Even within our little Roaring Fork Valley billions could be spent to make a better, stronger, healthier, more economically robust, equitable community.
The great part is that we are investing in our community. Every dollar that you donate is going to benefit our community in a myriad of ways. A dollar spend trying to reduce or prepare for the impacts of climate change could equal hundreds or thousands of dollars saved compared to waiting to deal with it later. Funding invested in keeping wealth circulating in our community instead of being extracted by wealthy investors can mean more wealth coming back to each of us with a stronger and more sustainable economy. Supporting this effort is building a better future for all of us and hopefully one where we all reap the rewards of a better and healthier world, a stronger economy, and more wealth for everyone below the 99%.
How much money should I give?
This is a tough one to answer. In reality if everyone gave us half their paycheck we could do an unbelievable amount to try to address these issues. Of course for most that wouldn’t be practical and we don’t expect to see much support from the kind of people who would afford to do that.
The first question is should you donate. A good rule of thumb is that if you are receiving any kind of financial assistance or if you are close to needing financial assistance of any kind you probably shouldn’t be donating. Taking money from one support system to go through another just creates efficiency loss.
If you can give something we believe what you give should be proportional to income/net worth.
Unfortunately since our goal is to level the playing field and bring more equity to the world we don’t expect to see much support from the hundred millionaires or billionaires as they rely on these systems to maintain their wealth. They tend to only support charity that does not threaten those systems.
We have come up with a couple ways of looking at it that we think create some reasonable goals. If you are someone who has voted or would vote in favor of a carbon tax, climate change and environmental tax, or a tax to address social, economic, and racial equity and justice then you could think of your donation in a similar way. If we could get 10% of the population donating 2% to 5% of their paycheck we could do huge things to start addressing these issues.
Another way of looking at it is time is money and money is time. For those willing and able to volunteer we welcome any contribution to efforts. With that said it is often more efficient for someone trained and doing that work every day to do the work. Donating a couple hours of your paycheck means you can do the work you are good at and most valuable doing, and that money can go towards paying someone else to work to create that positive change in our world.
Both of these systems are a nice way to create a more equitable scale. Those who make more should support more. In the end it is up to you. If these things are critically important to you then please by all means donate more. If all you can justify is a couple bucks it’s better than nothing and if we got enough people donating a couple bucks we could accomplish a lot. Whatever you choose to do, remember that our goal is to use those dollars in ways that will ultimately come back to benefit you, your family, and your community. We hope to build systems that keep more dollars coming back to you and your community and less dollars being extracted from our community.