You're listening to a stage talk titled Funding Open Source Research, with the news of USAID shutting down and a decline in monetary opportunities for grassroots movements, many are finding their funding sources cut. Mareike Vitt, fundraiser from the Bellingcat team, joined us on stage to shed a positive light on what researchers and journalists could do to find resources for their work.
This talk was hosted by me, Charlotte Maher, on Thursday the 13th of February 2025 in the Bellingcat Discord server. Hello all, welcome to another stage talk. This week I'm here with my colleague, senior fundraiser, Mareike Vitt. With new administrations coming in in 2024 and a struggling economic climate in many areas of the world, sourcing sustainable funding for open source research and journalism efforts has become more and more difficult, unfortunately.
But funding that independent and transparent research is now more important than ever. Mareike's been keeping Bellingcat's lights on for a long time. She's the reason I have a salary. Today, she's going to run us through basic funding models and share how Bellingcat has stayed afloat. We're also going to speak about ways that you might start up your own Bellingcat's or, as the previous stage talk speaker suggested, Mike Yambo, fund open source research skillsets within your established newsroom.
There'll be plenty of time to ask your own questions to Mareike. As we talk, please put your questions in the chat and I'll make sure to ask them as we move into the Q&A section. Okay, Mareike, the floor is yours. I'm going to mute myself and please put your questions in the chat as she talks. Thank you, Charley. You can hear me alright, right? Okay. Hello everyone and why quite nice to see so many of you. I mean, I see many icons. This is my first stage talk, but I'm excited.
Yeah, I'd love to talk to you guys about fundraising and first of all, thanking you guys for being part of the Bellingcat community and taking the time to sit with me here tonight or this morning wherever you're joining from. And yeah, tune in a bit about fundraising.
I'd love to share this with you a little bit in general about what fundraising is and also fundraising of journalism or public interest information, you know, that kind of area, how it looked like and how we did that a little bit at Bellingcat. There is no Holy Grail. I can already tell you that and it's a lot about, you know, meeting the right people, bringing the right people together like you guys are part of the community.
So I think I can only present you some insights and hope, yeah, the whole landscape, which is currently changing a lot will change to a good direction again. In any case, yeah, feel free to ask questions. There's a sort of like Q&A at the end, but I'm also happy to interrupt if there's like some sort of understanding questions in between. What is fundraising? So fundraising, I would say how I was explained it is marketing for the good cause.
So if you imagine a company who is of course doing marketing and doing loads of things to try to sell their product, it's essentially the same thing what you do in an NGO so that you try to sell the work your NGO is doing. So in this case, Bellingcat. But I know many of you are maybe interested to try to find funds for yourself or for your own work or for your own company or organization. So that's essentially what you will do.
You have to sell what you're doing and sonic means, I mean, what you would like to achieve with your work. So you're not selling a product or service in that case, but you're selling Impact, which is of course, you know, something you want to change in society or, you know, a policy change or any kind of work that you're trying to do to make an impact somewhere in the world.
And I think that's essentially what you're trying to understand, what you have to make people understand and to come across. Yeah, because what people need to know is that people are in general averse to losing. So they don't like to give money away. And at best, of course, they get a product or service in return. In this case, they don't get anything. I mean, you give money away and then you trust the organization that they do the work they tell you what they will do. So this is exactly it.
And that's what you have to keep in mind. What you need to keep in mind for fundraising. There are two things that are most important. You have to build trust and you have to build trust upfront, meaning when you talk to somebody, for example, a donor or a funder, you have to build trust in advance. So you tell them what you want to do. And then they have to trust you when giving money that you actually will do what you tell you do and that you will achieve what you want to achieve.
And of course, you have to tell them the impact what you want to do. So for people who don't see the slides right now, those are the two things. And under trust, for example, one of the most important things is transparency. That means you have to let them know who you are and show them various areas, for example, of your organization, of your work, when they have questions and that you're ready to answer these questions.
Authenticity is the most important thing because, as you can imagine, being many, many good investigators here, I think, at some point, people will find out anyways if you lied or if you twisted the reality a little bit, let's say. So authenticity is important that you have a good idea of what you can promise you would like to achieve and what you actually can't.
Something else is important that not only people have to rely on what you say, but also that maybe you have neutral voices who talk about your work or you have so-called testimonials. That means if you, for example, if you're working in a university, maybe you have a professor who is talking about your work and says, hey, this guy really knows the stuff and he has a good idea.
Or if you're an organization that you have, for example, other funders who talk about your work or other organizations in the similar field and say, hey, that link has an awesome job and if you want, they support them, right? So that other people who also have a standing are actually, you know, supporting you and say, look, I think you should support this work.
Public acknowledgement in general, so of course media or any kind of other public spaces that are acknowledging your achievements at some point can only help you make your case. Accountability is something that you can create already upfront. That means you can show if you're already in business maybe as an organization for one or two years, you can show how you spent the money that has been entrusted in trusting you.
Or you can, you know, create impact reports, some sort of KPI, so-called key performance indicators. So that means that what you set about to do maybe one or two years ago and what you've achieved that you can show, for example, in numbers or in any kind of impact story what you've achieved. This only helps you make your case again. And of course acknowledgement of donors and engagement of their trust. That means that you're very fast in thanking them.
So if somebody has given you some money, you should actually, you know, pick up the phone or send an email saying, hey, I've seen this, it's awesome. And if you have questions, please always reach out to us. So that's all of this is building trust. The other part is impact. So what I said in terms of accountability is that you need to be able to somehow measure your work and the impact it makes.
There can be any kind of targets that you set up front in terms of I want to train, I don't know, 10 people or 20 or 30 or I would like to have two collaborations about an investigation in this field. I would like to publish 10 articles this year, something like that. And then of course that you measure if you've achieved these targets. And if not, that you actually explain and have a good reason why this wasn't possible.
Because of course you can only plan, you know, to this extent and you know, reality sometimes comes in between. Something that is often asked is the sort of theory of change. So a vision of your impact, that means that you have an idea about the society of the part of society or the problem that you actually want to solve or at least that you would like to help solving and how you want to go about it.
So that's really some sort of text that is very concise in terms of, okay, that's the problem, that's my solution. And I think that's how I want to go about it and how I want to evaluate how this happens. And then you have to report your achievements. Either you publish on social media, you create a report, for example, merely here, our social media editor next to Charley has made a nice video about our achievements last year.
So you also think about the audience you want to target and the funder requirements or donors and think about, hey, I think probably they're more interested in a video, so let's make a video or I have to write report because those are the requirements that have been written in the contract that I have established with a funder. So all of this you need to be deep in mind and of course keep the deadlines when people ask you to do so.
Traceability is something that of course shows the impact that, because impact is a very difficult sometimes to trace. Sometimes it only happens in a couple of years or you don't even know if something changed. So it's difficult to measure even, but if you have stories or if you have examples of what your work has achieved, you should always mention it and then offer links or various possibilities for the donor to actually look for themselves.
Effectivity and efficiency is often asked from donors or funders. So they want to know what you can achieve with a couple of bucks that they give to you. Or even larger amounts because it's all about some sort of economic understanding, hey, if I give you 100,000, what can you do with it compared to maybe another organization in the field who would give me another impact story. But it's essentially very often some sort of productivity check that they do upfront with you.
But not everyone, but be aware that these questions might be asked. And now we're coming to big trends in the fundraising landscape. And I think all of you know what is going on in the US. And it's essentially changing, I would say the entire sector. So you really have to be aware that US aid currently changes, of course, many possibilities to be funded.
It has a secondary effect on basically all of the organizations because the organizations who've received US aid, of course, need to go for other sources to fill the gaps. And that means other foundations, other institutions that have been funding are going to be overrun or probably are already with applications. But also you and me, anybody is going to be asked probably more and more in terms of, hey, do you want to chip in with a couple of bucks because we have a big gap?
My message basically is be aware that the competition is going to be fierce the next probably month and years to come, whatever is happening with this current situation. But in general, what we've seen of a Bellingcat is a declining in cooperation or support. Co-operational support means that people or institutions like foundations, for example, give you money and essentially trust you to spend it in the best way you think is best for your impactive religion.
It's a huge trust and it's very good for us, for example, as Bandicoot, because we then can plan and change our strategy according to market conditions and we don't have to check in with the funder all the time. That's of course the other part is your model project funding. That's the other way around. So you basically tell them upfront, do you want to do? How you want to spend the money? And this is written essentially in a contract or an agreement, so you have to stick to this one.
And if you are diverting with, for example, the project you're planning or if you're changing any kind of spending budgets, then you have to check in with the funder if they're okay with it. Very often they are, but you have truly probably should have a good reason why you're changing it. In general, I think you all know as well as I do, there is a crisis in local media and it's only got to be worse with USA developments. As I said, there are many, many organizations going for the same funds.
And especially we've seen in the last years a decline in journalism funding. It's very often going in the direction of democracy, strengthening activities or human rights. I mean, those are causes who are now no less important. But if you're, for example, in the journalism area, it's going to be more difficult to find funds for your work. And there is in general fund funders, of course, a more focus on impact on impact tracking and a strategic deployment of funds.
That means what I just said before on the slide, before is you need to have a good idea of what you want to do, how you track it, how you measure it, and how you got to be reporting about it to your funders. You can't make too many big promises, but at least you should have a good idea and then be able to follow up to the funder, which again, builds trust. If you say what you're going to report on, they will only continue to support you.
And there's of course a good request to have a strong government and professional structures. That means, for example, brass root organizations or initiatives as maybe some of you are, it's difficult to find funds because they want to see a step just track records. That's how it's called. What have you been doing in the lab? Yes. And what have you achieved? And at some point you got to start. So people have to trust you that you got to start and that you're going to do what you say you did.
But the problem is it's building the trust upfront. So I think in general, especially currently, not an easy moment to start, maybe your own organization or your own outlet, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out. Because all of you for sure will do and have been doing a good work. What I also wanted to show you in terms of target groups. So fundraising in general can be categorized in these four target groups. That means individual giving, which is one of the biggest.
And I'm pretty sure all of you have maybe already donated a couple of bucks to add some calls, right? Maybe some children's village or some environmental cause. So essentially, you've already been a donor then. That means maybe an organization has contacted you or you have found an organization yourself and you gave a couple of bucks. That's a so-called one-off donation. For example, via an online form. What you also can do is a so-called recurring donation.
So you say, I'm going to give you maybe five bucks every month or maybe 10 bucks a year. And it's a sort of commitment you give to the organization. It's not a contract. You can always stop it. You just have to, for example, send an email and say, hey guys, my financial situation changed. I need to stop it. It's not a contract. So you can always stop it because it's voluntarily. But if you do, then the organization has some sort of better possibility to plan ahead.
So if you know, oh, we have, I don't know, 100 donors who give us or committed to maybe give us five donors a month, that's quite some money that you can plan with. And the likelihood that all of them will stop it is not that high. So it's a bit more of a sustainable planning that you can do as an organization. Then you have the possibility of crowdfunding.
So of course, there are many platforms or pages which you can create and where you can, for example, ask for your course and say, hey guys, I would, for example, like to build a tool for open source research. And I think it will cost me, I don't know, X amount because I need to spend this amount of hours or I need to buy a subscription.
So it's especially for crowdfunding is good to have a very clear idea of the cost you have so that you can tell people with, I don't know, 5000 euros, I can do loads of work. So help me to fund this. Then there's something called peer-to-peer, which is, for example, if you, oh, let's say, let's go for half a marathon.
So I want to run half a marathon and I would like to raise some funds with it so you can create your own small subpage and say with every kilometer that I run, I'm going to ask my friend, family or whoever posted on social media, do you want to chip in for all of the kilometers that I run? That's peer-to-peer. You have email campaigns. This is something for people to do with MailChimp so you can send around if you have the so-called mailing list.
You can send around the email and say, hey, guys, we're planning this project. Do you want to chip in? Important here is that you need to have the consent of people so you cannot just, you know, troll and spam people. You need to have the consent that it's okay that you send them this message. Then there are so-called direct mail campaigns that's more for organizations because they are quite expensive.
So you have, for example, small flyers or a small package that you brigade and that you send to the list of addresses that you have, which are sometimes already donors or potential donors, organizations sometimes buy addresses for this. So this is something you can do.
The same or very expensive possibility is also door-to-door or face-to-face, which is, for example, if you're in a city and sometimes they're like the small booths of an organization and people are coming towards you and say, hey, have you known from, you know, X organization, do you want to chip in with a couple of bucks? That's door-to-door or face-to-face. Very expensive because you need to pay these promoters.
Then you have major gifts in cash that means people who have a bit more of possibilities in terms of resources sometimes decide to give you maybe a thousand euros or more or they even give you a commitment and say, hey, look, I'm going to support you for two or three years with a hundred thousand per year. I mean, this is a lot of trust that it's a lot of money you can get. But for this, you also need to check who is this person? What do they want to influence their work, for example?
So at Bellingcat, we have a so-called diligence process where we check these questions upfront and if we think it's okay, then we accept the money. We have donor advice funds that's very typical for the US. So that means, for example, a bank very often has a department who is taking care of people who have a bit more money, but not always that much money. And they say, okay, I don't want to do all of this administration work. Here you have, I don't know, 10,000 euros per year.
Please spend it to these organizations. And then the donor advice fund actually transfers the money to us as an organization and also does the entire communication around it so that the donor essentially is face uncontacted. Then you have major gifts, non-cash. Then, for example, that a person decides, I'm going to give you maybe or I'm going to make you the beneficiary of my life insurance or I have stocks that I'm going to transfer over to you.
All of this I think requires a bit more of financial knowledge and how you want to create the relationship with your donor, but I think it doesn't mean that you shouldn't go about it. It's just a bit more carefulness that you shouldn't. And then I think that's the highest possibility of an individual is a legacy giver, so a person who is including you or the organization in the will.
So when the person dies, that for example the house or a special amount of funds will get transferred to you because the person when he or she is gone cannot check if you spend the money correctly. So that's really, really a high trust that the person gives to you. Then you have the next target group, which is organizations.
Those can be private foundations or family offices, but that's very often a bit more of a richer family, for example, who has a foundation or family office who is administering their funds and they are basically deciding where the funds should go. Then you have charitable foundations. So those can be, for example, from a company or it can be any kind of funder who has set up this foundation, but maybe already died.
And the foundation is still keeping on working for the good cause that has been decided to support. And those of course, they very often have open calls or they look around for organizations or individuals they would like to support and they give you a grant, which is essentially an agreement, or they give you a fellowship that's very often for individuals and say, we're going to accompany you for a couple of months, you get a salary or a specific amount of money for your work.
And at the end, we would like to see what you've been achieving with it. Then you have public foundations or political foundations that can be, for example, an institution that has been funded by governments or they are basically transferring or administering government funds, or for example, from a political party. You have to pay attention, for example, with these because sometimes there are of course political agendas behind it. So you need to check if you want to be associated with that.
Then there are charitable associations and so-called service clubs. Those are, for example, many of you might know, for example, Lions Club. So those are basically clubs or associations of people who are coming together for a joint cause they would like to support either with donating themselves or maybe organizing events where they raise funds for the good cause. For example, baking cakes or any kind of social event where you can raise funds.
So all of this, of course, a target group in terms of, hey, if they decide to support you, it's very nice because they also raise awareness for your work at the same time. The next target group are companies. So they, of course, can also donate to you either as the company itself or via their employees, which is very often done with so-called payroll giving.
That means that you as an employee can set up a payroll plan to say, hey, I give this amount of my salary per month or, I don't know, how many cents per month to an organization and the company deducts it immediately from your salary and transfers it to you, the organization you would like to support. Very often organizations also do so-called matching gift campaigns. That means then they chose you as an organization and they're going to do, for example, social media campaign.
Very often it's around Christmas and they say, hey, we're going to raise funds for Bellingat and we would like to match every dollar that has been donated. So if you then as a normal person donate, I don't know, $10, the company matches $10 to it so that the organization gets $20. It's of course a very nice awareness raising and also advertising possibility for the company themselves. The company can also give you in-kind donations.
That means, for example, if you need a subscription for your work, they can say, hey, you know what, you don't have to pay, we give it to you for free or we give you a loose discount or they can offer you a service that you might need. For example, if you need a legal advice on an article that you're writing, which can be very expensive, they can say, you know what, either you only have to pay a very small amount or we give it to you for free because we like your work.
That is essentially a donation, even though there's no cash flowing, but they can get a certificate for that as well. And the last part is a corporation or sponsoring and this is something you have to pay attention to. It's not a donation. So for example, it's not hex deductible, neither for the organization nor for the company. So if for example, somebody says, I'm going to sponsor you.
For example, a typical sponsor case is when a company has the logo on the T-shirt from the soccer team, right? That's sponsoring. So they get basically public awareness because the people are running around with the T-shirt and the logo on it and they're paying money for this. So it's sort of exchange of service and not a real donation. So if you go for sponsoring, you have to pay attention that it's a bit different in terms of taxes than a normal donation.
And the last target group are public institutions, which can be for example, national governments. So they very often have ministries or government agencies who are basically transferring money to organizations who are doing work that they think are important for their agendas or for any kind of societal change they are targeting.
And yeah, and those are most of the time, of course, very big amounts, but they also have quite large or very, very specific conditions that you have to meet or many long page applications that you have to fill in. And if you get it, it's quite a safety, I would say for you, but it's also quite the work in terms of reporting. The same goes for supergovernmental support, for example, from the European Union or European Commission.
They often have open calls that you can apply for, but if you will get the application forms, they are also quite some work that you have to do. If you get it, you're quite lucky. Yeah, those are the different target groups. And maybe to end with the general part, I've included some links here for you guys and I'm relatively sure maybe Charley will share them afterwards. There are two big specific sites, for example, that I can recommend for you to check out.
One is called Funds for NGOs, where basically this platform most of the time summarizes loads of different calls in the field, not only for journalism, but for any kind of social cause that you might want to support or that you will work in. And they also have a newsletter that you cannot subscribe to. They have an overview of different calls for individuals. They have a specific area for funds for the US right now and I'm pretty sure that's a quite frequently used website right now.
And they also have sample proposals that you can have a look at, that you have an idea if I need to actually write a proposal to an organization or a foundation that I hope will support me. And those maybe give you some guidance how you have to go about it. The other website is a bit more specific to media development, Journalism, Funding, Public Interest Information, which is called Global Foreign for Media Development.
They also have an overview of current funding opportunities, but they also have, and this is something I can recommend, a really, really extensive fundraising guide. So you can see many different parts of fundraising, how you engage donors, how you write a proposal. Yeah, loads of different resources that you can use. And in general, what I would suggest is that you know how to do a so-called infamous elevate bit.
So if you have an opportunity to meet a donor or a funder that you are able to quickly present and summarize what you would like to do if you are supported, the impact you want to achieve, and that it's a bit of sticky information that people can think about it afterwards and will contact you maybe again. Yeah, and there are different other resources, for example, how to write a grant. There are different classes you can participate in, summer for free.
And for sure, I would always do this desk research of your environment. So if you, for example, want to start an organization or if you were looking for funds for your work, you should know a little bit your peers. Are there maybe other people doing the same work or something similar? And compared to them, what would be your unique selling proposition? That's a marketing term that means what is very unique about you and why should people support you rather than the others?
Yeah, and that's basically, that was the general part. And how do we do it at Bellingcat? Basically, Bellingcat has also been a grassroots initiative 10 years ago. And I think it still is somehow with you as a community, right? I mean, so many people are helping do the work that I do every day.
But how it was funded was really also at the beginning that Eliot Higgins, our founder, was able to convince quite some people in terms of, first of all, a crowdfunding campaign, but also some other foundations who said, okay, we think your theory of change that he wrote at that time is convincing and we're going to trust that you were able to implement this.
So, Bellingcat also went from grassroots or crowdfunding campaigns to over to other grants who were luckily actually multi-year grants from foundations. Many of them are actually core funding. So that means, especially for an organization who is still sort of shaping up and has to organize itself and try to find their way. Core funding is of course gold because that's how you can, yeah, that you know you can use the money the way you seem fit.
And then it went over to project funding more and more. So that means we also as Bellingcat have to see how to structure our work and how to plan our work, which is of course, you cannot plan an instigation, but we can plan maybe which kind of topics who would like to cover it in the upcoming years. So for example, we now have a human rights team or we have an online ideologies team and we say, okay, those are topics or topic areas we commit to for the upcoming years.
So that a funder has a better idea in terms of where you want to go and what you want to achieve. And that's basically what, yeah, what you agree on. And the outlook, what I would like to do and that's also why I wanted to do the state job for many, many months already is I think Bellingcat is a community organization and it should also be funded more and more from the community because we still have a big part of rents which is covering our work, which of course is nice and it's important.
But I think you as a community and many others worldwide, you're also able to support us, for example, in this way and you also have an idea of what Bellingcat is, what you want to do with it. And so essentially it should be from the community with the community for the community. So that's a little bit the outlook on fundraising. What I wanted to share with you is in general a little bit how Bellingcat is currently funded. This is the figures from 2023.
The figures from 2024 will be published in May. So we really have around 50% of our entire budget is funded from non-profit organizations. That can be, for example, foundations like private foundations or public foundations. One or two are, for example, secret housing trust in the UK or Wellspring, which is unfortunately winding down in the US very soon. Those are basically funds or foundations that have been set up at some point, for example, by some trustees with a specific cause in mind.
And they have so-called grant managers who are, for example, opening calls or who are choosing organizations they think are contributing to the cause that has been established for this foundation. Then we generate our own income with trainings. Maybe some of you have been part of these trainings where, for example, a week long our trainers show you different tools and methodologies from open source research and you pay for that.
So that is part of our income and it actually is a good and stable income, which helps us to plan ahead as well. We have two lotteries, the Dutch Postcode Lottery and the Swedish Postcode Lottery, who have chosen us as well for a couple of years to support us. We have 30% from individuals, meaning that can be anyone. It can be a major donor, but it can be loads of small donors or people like you and me who give a couple of bucks worldwide.
So we have loads of people worldwide who give a couple of cents, dollars, whatever they can afford. And that is a part that I would like to make bigger in total because I think you're all part of the community and that's essential. We have some companies in 2023, it was 9% of the total budget. That also includes in-kind donations. We only get 1% from governments. We don't take money from national governments, so this is only from the EU that you can see here.
Because as you know, Bellingcat has investigated governments before and we will in the future. So it's better not to take money from one specific but from a conglomerate of governments, for example, like the EU. And we actually had 1% from legacy, so from people who entrusted us with the funds or the estate that they created in life and when they died, it was entrusted to us. So that's really nice. A couple of years ago, we actually did a market survey which was launched.
It was sent to thousands of people, viewed as a community and many, many others. We asked you what do you think where we should get money from? And it's a very nice mirror of how we are funded and where we want to go also in the future. So a big part is actually crowdsourced by many individuals, so like the community for the community. It's 25% from the survey. At the second part, a major individual donations, so that can be any kind of major gifts, cash or non-cash.
So I think essentially individuals should be a big part of our donors. Own income generated is 20%, so it's roughly the amount that we generate ourselves currently. Grants from governments say 8%, so I think it's okay to take money, but we should keep it in a limited way and I think that's especially what we're going to do. Grants and donations from foundations are 20% and I think that's more and more in the direction where we would like to go rather than half of our entire budget.
And corporate donations and in kind are 8%. So that's a little bit of a very diverse funding pullers that the survey showed from representatives from the community. And yeah, I think it's a good indicator of how many can or should be sell-up future. That's one thing that I would like to share with you are our non-negotiables.
I've said it before, we're not taking funds from a government, but we also have other principles that are guiding, especially my work every day, but also a general help and a set-up. So we don't take funds to commission an investigation. That means if there is a person who says, I think, I don't know, this government or this company does weird work, you should investigate them and I'm going to fund this for the company.
We're not going to accept that because that would be essentially commissioning an investigation. It's always a fine line when you apply for a grant. That's why we always say, for example, we're going to commit to a topic area rather than a specific investigation. We give the funder an idea of potential parts that we're investigating, but we're not committing to it. Just to give you an example, if we say to a funder, you can support our human rights team.
We give examples of potential conflicts that we might look into or other kind of human rights violation areas, but we're not saying we're going to specifically investigate this incident last week in a specific country. Because first of all, we don't know if this investigation might come to a good publication, but it also would be commissioning too much of an investigation. It's a fine line that you also need to keep in mind in terms of independence, how you are going about your work.
Then we don't accept funds that jeopardize our reputation and, as I said, our independence. Our editor team needs to be independent in terms of what is published, when it's published, how it's published. We also need to always pay attention to our reputation.
That means what I said that we have a due diligence team who is checking any kind of donation that is a potential donation that somebody who says, I want to give you 5,000 euros or the equivalent currency or who has just transferred it, miraculously 5,000 euros. We're going to check this person, company, organization, if they are actually fitting to our reputation and to our principles. We don't accept funds that try to influence or alter our work.
That means you cannot prevent being investigated with supporting our work. That means if there's a company, for example, who says, I have maybe some shady business, I don't want to be investigated. If I give Bellingcat the money, they will probably leave me alone. That strategy doesn't work. Of course, if you have, for example, a suggestion what should be investigated, it can always be brought to our attention.
Maybe it aligns with our strategy, but basically Bellingcat always chooses what we want to investigate. As I said, it cannot be commissioned. Very often, funders or, for example, foundations, they also are part of the market and the, for example, public interest information area. They are also very, very knowledgeable. Maybe they have seen trends in society or they have seen things that are interesting to investigate and they can bring this to our attention.
If we investigate this, we will, of course, always decide ourselves. We don't take anonymous donations. That means we always know who is donating to us. We don't always publish, for example, the names. As you can imagine, maybe a person who has a bit more of income. If the name is published on our website, then there are other organizations or people going there and say, hey, you support my calls as well, which, of course, is a legit demand, but the person sometimes have to protect themselves.
Due to privacy reasons, we don't publish private names. We always publish if we can the organization or foundation who is supporting us. We had the cases where, for example, a foundation prefers to remain basically private. They're always known to us, but not published on our website because we have, for example, potential risks for people who are related to Russia as we investigated these areas before.
All of this is something we have to keep in mind to keep the donors safe, but of course, to know we're supporting us and that we keep up our thanks to folks. Our plans for the future are, as I said, we want to make it easier for any kind of person to support us.
That means we're going to launch a new donation form in the coming weeks, which is a bit easier and hopefully has not so many bucks because we have created it ourselves before, the one that is currently on our website, which is, of course, important work that our colleagues do, but it's also a lot of work to maintain a form so that it's working smoothly. We're going to change this in the future.
We're also planning to offer crowdfunding campaigns at some point and also peer-to-peer campaigns, as I said before, that means if, for example, you decide you want to run a marathon and you say, hey, I'm going to dedicate this marathon to Bellingcat, you can do that, hopefully in the next within this year. We're going to set up subpages where you can do this and you can run for the journalistic cost.
That is basically everything from me and I called it the hot share, so please shoot any constant that is an MP of interest to me. Amazing. First and foremost, can I just thank you for going through that for good 40 minutes there. Thank you. Who knew there were so many ways to fund an organisation and how much work you do behind the scenes. Everyone in the chat has been saying how hard you must work, so thank you so much.
I wanted to ask first and foremost, because I think this is quite an interesting question for quite a lot of people, is you mentioned that we have non-negotiables at Bellingcat and that we try to remain transparent about who is donating to our efforts, but how, for example, if you're another organisation or individual and you've set up donation platforms, how do you ensure you know who has contributed to your project? How do Bellingcat keep track of that? That's a very good question.
I mean, basically what we can, and those are the limits of knowing, supporting you. As I said, we have the due diligence team and we do this for the bigger amounts for sure, but, and this is the limits of it, we cannot trace everyone who gives us basically one dollar, because it's just the amount of work that you have to put in to know who is supporting you. Yeah, basically investigating you all know probably how much work it is to investigate someone. It's very difficult to trace every dollar.
So when I say these are the non-negotiables, having said that, it also means we know that there is some part of funds where we don't know where it's coming from, essentially, because you could go to our website, fill in our form and say, I'm not Charlie M, but I'm Peter Smith, and you donate 10 euros. And this is very difficult for me to find out, because you can use a different email address or a sockpuppet account or anything.
I mean, you all know how to go about it when you, for example, want to investigate someone. So that means, but we basically have system in place where we can match information together. And if we see, for example, there's one email address is summing up some funds, we're going to do this effort. But yeah, that means we don't know every dollar exactly who is where it's coming from, but we have enough information that if we want to, we could investigate the person or the organisation behind it.
But we do this effort for the, for the, for the, yeah, 5,000 more amounts just because it's simply a lot of work you have to do if you, if you do this. And 5,000 is often quite a small donation as well. So we do it at quite small money. In regards to, you mentioned that Elliot was quite good at beginning convincing people to donate. If you had any advice for anyone in the audience or listening at home, how do you kind of approach those conversations with donors for the first time?
What are the convincing things you can say that lead to money in your pockets? Yeah, that's a big question because I think everyone of you and everyone of us is unique, right? So you, you have to know what makes you unique as a person, as a researcher or whatever work you're doing. And you have to know how to sell yourself. I mean, it starts already with if you apply for a job, right?
It's this weird moment where you have to sell yourself like, yeah, I'm able to do this and my capabilities are these. But I think essentially, and that's what I mean with authenticity is when you talk about the work that you do, people need to feel that you burn for it. So, and I think that's exactly what you're selling.
So when I talk about Bellingcat, I think, I hope that the donors and funders see that I'm really convinced of what I'm doing here and why am I as a fundraiser actually raising funds for this? And you're basically your own fundraiser. So you would go to the person and say, look, I know it's asking a lot, it's a lot of money, but hey, I really think I can do an impact here. I can make a change here.
And then have good arguments and facts really up your sleeve so that you can shoot this information when it's needed. But I think, I don't know, when they see this twinkle in your eye, and that's why I would always recommend if possible to meet a person in person rather than online. But nevertheless, online, you can also bring about your passion for this. That they see this twinkle in your eye and say, okay, this person is burning for it.
I think that's the first point, and then you have to underline it with good arguments. Yeah. Yeah, sell yourself, but don't oversell yourself, as you said earlier. They'd also sell. Exactly. Because people will know when you're sort of shyly at brides, but it has to be authentic. Yeah. Yeah, you don't want to promise the world. Galen's asked, actually, over your career, what's been the most unusual donation that you've seen or heard about that you can talk about, of course?
Ooh, that's a good question. I've seen a lot. Because I've been a major gift officer for quite some time. So you get the weirdest requests of what people can or should do with thousands of euros they give to you. I think the weirdest one was because I worked for an organization before which had children's orphanages in Latin America, and there was a donor who actually came and said, I would like to create a pool for this village, which is a nice idea, maybe, for your environment.
But these kids almost didn't have anything to eat. The first thing they should get was education. And I think, you know, with this, because it was thousands of dollars you wanted to spend for that, and I think this money can be spent in a much better way for the kids rather than having a pool, because the person only wanted to donate for the pool, not how to fill it with water, constantly clean the water, et cetera. So it's lots of follow-up costs.
Yeah, those would have been follow-up costs for the organization to raise other funds for. So we respectfully declined that donation with the best interest for the kids and for the organization. Yeah. I'm sure if he told the kids a pool was coming, they would have got excited about it. I guess they would have loved it.
And I mean, I think it's always done with the best intention from the donor, but if you then look at the reality for the beneficiaries, then it's sometimes just a big change, and you have to.
And that's also part of fundraising, I think, or the job that I have to do is donor education, that you have to get or transmit a good realistic picture of what the work is about, for example, in a conflict setting, how is open-source research actually done, and that they don't expect miracles from you, but what's actually possible. So you really, yeah, you need to educate and paint a realistic picture of the work you want to do.
Yeah. And then you also, as Carol asked, Bell and Cat works on a global scale, is it more difficult to attract funding for cross-border organizations compared to organizations with a local focus? This will be something that's quite relevant to a lot of people listening. You work across different countries. It is, yeah. And I think it will be, when I was talking about the fundraising trends, it will be in the future more and more again.
And it's a typical thing, right, that people donate, rather for something around the corner or that they can maybe visit themselves or see the impact themselves or even feel the impact themselves because they're part of the society. They're supporting rather than globally, because I think with all the current developments, you know, the horizon and the things people would like to support is limiting more and more to your own home or to your environments.
And that is the same for, for example, foundations. So many of them will probably look more and more for the country they're in or the continent even rather than globally. So I think that's something to keep in mind. For example, with US, I think many, many organizations will fund first and foremost US organizations work individuals rather than global on the global scale.
And then the EU, for example, also looks probably more in terms of, okay, what is other trends in our area rather than globally. So I think especially global causes will be getting difficult. But if you, for example, are part of an organization who is working in different countries, you can nevertheless maybe try to narrow down the impact or the work you do in this specific country and then present this to the organization rather than a global scale.
Yeah. I mean, even in this server, we've seen people talking about the USAID issue and some organizations from Ukraine already talking about difficulty with finding funding in that sense. Let's say you find yourself in the dream situation and you are in front of a donor and you are talking to them. We've talked about how you sell yourself, but what kind of questions do you usually have for funders when they express their interest in funding Bellingcat? Mm-hmm. We're waiting.
That's a little bit different for individual and for organizations, for example. But for an individual, let's say it's a major donor, I'm asking loads of questions about the background. Where does the person coming from? Where is the motivation coming from to support us? How did they get to know Bellingcat? And what are basically or what is the intention he or his team has in supporting Bellingcat? Is it making a change?
Is it public interest information or essentially some sort of specific area or maybe even investigation they would like to see? That's a little bit how you touch upon these principles that I just presented to see if there might be strings attached, so to speak. If it's an organization, you of course ask the question in terms of do you research up front? I mean, what they offer, for example, on the website, what are the causes they're supporting?
But you're going to ask a bit more how they're going about it, how they're going about choosing the organization they collaborate with. What do they expect from the collaboration for reporting standards so that you sort of figure out if this organization is a good partner or if you actually would overburden, for example, Bellingcat or colleagues with loads of reporting requirements that are either possible or very difficult to meet? Or what is their idea of impact?
Meaning how would they like to see us tracing it or reporting about it? Because again, we're not able to promise the will to them and we shouldn't. So we need to be able to narrow down, okay, what is the impact we can trace and we can not guarantee, but we think would happen and are they open of about changes? And are they open how we trace and measure this impact or do they have another idea? Because if this doesn't align, probably this would not be a satisfactory collaboration.
You've got to have shared values and alliance. Ox Tank has asked, what would be the best way to go about getting funding when you have no official background or credibility? Let's say you're just starting out and you're trying to look for those beginning funders. What would be the best way to go about getting that kind of funding? The question is if you are an individual or if you are ready sort of built from sort of an organization.
I think it's from an individual perspective, but it would be interesting to hear both. But as you mentioned, Bellingcat to begin with, when we started to become a plet, if we started in crowdfunding, is that the best route for individuals looking for help at the beginning? I think it's depending on the work you want to do or what you want to achieve. So for example, I think for example, what Elliot did was a crowdfunding campaign to create our first website.
So when I said crowdfunding, if you have a very specific idea of a project from A to Z, what you want to do and probably it's going to cost me, I don't know, 20,000 and it's a limited time frame, then I think a crowdfunding campaign is a very good idea because at the end of the crowdfunding campaign, when it's funded, at some point you need to show this, right? You need to show, hey, we've created a website, you can visit it. Thank you for making this happen, right?
But if it's difficult or you don't have anything to show afterwards, then it's a bit more difficult.
But I think if you are, for example, aiming for an investigation or a sort of continuous work you want to do, or maybe writing a research paper, then I would rather go for a fellowship because that's sort of more, let's say, regular support that organizations give at that moment and where you maybe are reporting in stages or they are also fine with you not reporting on a, for example, website that you've created, but you show you work continuously or they
are supporting you as an individual because they think we would like to invest in you, for example, with training rather than something you want to create yourself. So I think it's really depending on what you need to be funded. And for example, if you are a conglomerate of different people together, right? And do you want to pay these people or will they all do it voluntarily? And do they commit to it?
So it's all about sort of planning and visioning what will be the next month look like if you get this money and what can you show afterwards? Absolutely. I've actually just put in the chat, the original campaign for Bellingcat is still alive on Ground Moses and I'm currently supporting a group of journalists who've just been awarded IJ4U, EU funding, which is the international journalism for EU program, which is another one for freelancers. There's tons of those kinds of programs.
It's for funding cross-border investigative journalism in Europe. There's lots and lots of those existing institutions and programs that individuals could go for if they have an idea for investigation, need funding. I think so. Really? Yes. That's for example also a good idea if you, for example, want to investigate something and you have a very good idea and you also know you can't do it alone or for example, you know a couple of fellow journalists and basically you form a conglomerate.
That's also a very good argument for a funder because I mean, the more brilliant people coming to mind then they're like, hey, this looks very good, like success, right? For then that you can maybe apply it together about them alone. Yeah. And the Discord server is a great place to build that network, so please make use of the channels. And Mareike, I know we're about to go over time, but do you have time for one more question? Of course.
You mentioned all of these different funding models and the temptation to start with is to pick one and kind of zero in on that. Is there any problems to picking one funding model and kind of depending on that? What would be your advice for people who are kind of looking at some of the models you presented today and how they might be able to proceed with one or two models? Yeah. I think, yeah, that's always the tough part when you start, right?
Because if you only have one or two sources relying on, you are very dependent and then, you know, independence and all the principles that I showed to you are difficult.
And honestly, I think conflict of interest and on the way to be independent is, of course, something nice to say when you have different funding sources, but if you're dependent on one, sometimes if you know, for example, the funder would be displeased with what you're doing, you think one more time about it, right, if you do it or not. So in general, I would always recommend to go for many different sources and also use, for example, one source to build something else.
So that means if you say, I want to create a crowdfunding campaign for my own first website, I would include an option to, for the next other possibility to source funders, right, that you say I'm going to include some of the budget in this crowdfunding campaign to create a new donation form or subscribe to some sort of service where you can raise more funds.
So that means that you're basically building already the next source or building up the next source or that, for example, we had core funding grants where we said, yes, we're going to pay some part of it for a fundraiser to actually look for other grants, right? So it's any kind of entrepreneur knows that you need to always have an idea of, okay, if I invest this amount of money, I want to get at least, I don't know, 10 times more of it.
So it's sort of investment for the next step that you should already plan in your mind. Having said that, if you know you're going to do one investigation and it's, you know, there's a limited timeframe and you have one opportunity that this entire thing is funded by one funder, perfect. Go about it, right? Be aware that maybe if the funder decides otherwise, it's also quite risky and it might crumble down because of, I don't know, various reasons. But that's the problem of funding, right?
So that's especially when you're getting started. I mean, not many people know you, but I think that the beauty is, for example, with crowd funding that many different individuals are joining in and chipping in. And all of them don't have a specific influence on you, right? Rather than one big funder and if the person decides otherwise and withdraws the funds, you're basically done. But I think, yeah, those are the pros and cons for you to decide which opportunity you go about it.
But be aware that of course, you know, even if there are no mentioned strings attached, there might be some behind the scenes. Yeah. Okay, thank you so much, Mareike, for this absolute knowledge-fest on funding models. And the conversation is still continuing in the chat. We've still got questions coming in if you want to have a look at that after the talk. But thank you to everyone who's attended as well.
And yeah, thank you so much again, Marika, for your time and for being so transparent on all of this. Hopefully it helps a lot of people fund their work. Thank you for listening to the Stage Talk. If you'd like to catch a Stage Talk live, where you can ask the guest questions, join the Bellingcat Discord server by visiting www.discord.gg slash Bellingcat. The music you've heard is titled Dawn by Newer Self and is courtesy of Artlist.