How does it work if you donate on Firestarter?

Once Firestarter has launched, how will it work when you donate to a campaign? Here is an overview of how donating on Firestarter is going to work. We’ll walk you through the process and give you a more in depth view of how the donations to the platform itself will work.

On Firestarter you can donate on a campaign page. You can reach a campaign page from the homepage, where there will be an overview of all the current campaigns. On the homepage you can also search for specific terms and tags. There will be tags for different topics like climate activism, anti-racist struggle and squatting, but also for different kinds of campaigns, like actions or more long term projects. You can also get there from a direct link you received from the outreach of the campaign itself.

On the campaign page you can find all kinds of information about the campaign, like the financial goal and the current amount raised. Some campaigns might have “stretch goals”, which are additional activities they will undertake when they raise more money than the originally targeted amount. From this page you can easily see the profile of the group running the campaign, what kind of group it is and what sort of campaigns they’ve run before.

On the campaign page there will be a big ‘donate’ button. if you click this it will bring you to a new screen. Here you can select how much you want to donate to the campaign you want to support. Underneath the donate button, there will be a button with a slide function where you can indicate how much you want to give to the platform itself. This will be a percentage of the donation to the campaign. This way you can decide how much you want to give to Firestarter. This contribution will be added to your donation, in the same way that VAT is calculated. Your contribution to Firestarter will not be deducted from the donation to the campaign. If you want to donate €10,- to a campaign, the campaign will receive €10,-. People who are running a campaign can also keep an eye on the amount they’ve raised so far, knowing there won’t be any unforeseen extra charges added at the end. If you choose to give 10% to the platform, which would be €1,-, you will pay €11,- in total. €10,- of this will go to the campaign you want to support and €1,- to Firestarter. This slider will start at 10%, you can adjust this upwards or downwards for your desired percentage. At the start we will have a minimum of 5%, to make sure we can keep the platform in the air.

When finishing your donation you will need to choose your preferred method of payment. Initially Firestarter will use PayPal as a payment method. Besides the amount being donated to the campaign, and the contribution to Firestarter itself, a donation will include transaction costs. These will vary per method of payment, but tend to fall between 7 and 30 cents.

If you aren’t logged in with Firestarter during donating you can always choose to log in or make an account at that moment. This is not mandatory and if you prefer you can donate anonymously. If you do have an account you can easily stay up to date about campaigns you support, or if someone you have supported before starts a new campaign. You also get a good overview of your previous donations on the platform and can be reached by Firestarter for news and future calls for action.

Contributions to Firestarter itself

We want the contributions to Firestarter itself to function as much free choice as possible. This is why we have a slider where you decide for yourself how much you contribute to our platform. In our other work we see that people are generous and react in a positive way to this freedom of choice, especially when it comes to activism and social struggles. This is a fundamental idea behind crowdfunding and we can see that it works! This policy also allows for a grassroots redistribution of resources. Donors who know they have more to spend are more likely to make a bigger contribution to the platform. Donors who have less, know that they can opt out and give a bit less to the platform without it hurting their financial support for the campaign they wish to support.

Contributions to Firestarter will be used to cover the costs of the platform. It’s a lot of work to run a crowdfunding platform and to keep improving it. The costs include hosting, developing software, material costs like printed matter and the wages of the workers.

Because a young platform like Firestarter doesn’t have a lot of financial leeway yet, there will be a minimum for the contributions to the platform itself. Over time we will see if we can be less rigid with this minimum. We are already considering ways to lower the slider to a lower minimum or even to 0% for certain types of actions or for temporary promotions like themed months. Firestarter will not be making any profit. We will be as transparent as possible about our financial policies. If Firestarter receives more money than is needed to pay for our costs, we will use it to expand our services and the functions of the platform. We’re also looking into ways to put this money back into the movement.

We hope this gives you a proper prospect and some more clarity. Let us know if you have any comments or questions!

Which kinds of campaigns will you see on Firestarter?

Firestarter is a crowdfunding platform, aimed at everyone who fights for a world based on freedom and solidarity and for the emancipatory work that will bring us there. The kind of campaigns we are looking for are feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, anti-ableist, queer, activist, anti-capitalist, environmental, fighting for workers, building autonomy and mutual aid, protecting our privacy, building counter power. Besides a diversity in topics we also want to host different forms of campaigns. From short projects or single actions, to workers cooperatives and emancipatory culture and long term projects.

Our policy will reflect the diversity of campaigns. This is after all about money in our movements and the trust of the donors. Even though judicially speaking Firestarter isn’t accountable for what specific campaigns do with their money, we do want to take the responsibility of making sure the money ends up in the right hands. We want the money of our allies to land in the place where it will have as big of an impact as it can. We also want to prevent people taking advantage of the trust that exists in our movements. This is why we are creating a clear policy about what kinds of campaigns we want to host. We will also add campaigns manually, so there will always be someone who personally checks if everything looks alright for a specific campaign.

In this text we will explain what our principles are for which kinds of campaigns we will host. The actual policy will follow, but it will look a lot like the principles described in this text. The first principle is of course that campaigns cannot be commercial or raise money for organisations with a profit motive. They cannot be right wing, conservative, capitalist, reactionary or support oppression of any kind.

Furthermore our other principles are:

• Solidarity not charity and a focus on collective projects above support for individuals.
• Building our movements with attention to the diversity of campaigns.
• We want to support different kinds of projects, so we do not have a one size fits all policy.

Solidarity not charity

At Firestarter we want to encourage solidarity instead of charity. Therefore we prefer to host projects that empower people to stand up for themselves and which support them in their struggles. We want to support campaigns with which people can enhance their own power to overcome structural oppression or other obstacles and dismantle the system or form an autonomous resistance to it. For example, you can think of projects where people continuously support each other or that gives them access to resources they need to organize themselves better. Projects that enable groups to fight the dominant systems.

Projects that focus on supporting individual people with problems are not necessarily the main focus of our platform, because they don’t always fight for structural change. There are of course important exceptions to this. Take for example campaigns to pay for judicial or medical costs that people incurred while taking part in a action. Also individual support to people who are part of communities which are structurally denied access to support or care, like trans health care are important exceptions. Do you think we missed another important exception? Please contact us!

Movement building

We want campaigns that help strengthen our movements. This can be done in different ways. Projects can be continuous, one-off or short-lived. The goals which these projects have can be vastly different, from outreach or actions for a specific goal to supportive structures or projects that create space for our movements. At Firestarter we want to foster grassroots organising. We mainly want to give a platform to projects that have little or no access to institutional money and are busy building counter power. Because of this not every project will be hosted on this platform. There will not be campaigns for electoral elections for example. If a group is also active outside the elections wants to do another project which meets our values this is a completely different story of course.

Diversity of crowdfunding campaigns

We want to host as many different kinds of campaigns on Firestarter as possible. From small actions to projects to continue to run for an undetermined amount of time and from purchasing new buildings to organising workshops. Because of this variety we cannot measure everything the same way. No one size fits all.

If you register a campaign we will ask you a couple of questions which help us process your request. This way we can see if the campaign matches with the goals of Firestarter. For some types of campaigns we can ask additional questions. Furthermore not all questions have the same impact for every campaign. A local neighborhood initiative that wants to act quickly to something that is happening in the area cannot be reviewed the same way as a collective that wants to organize a continuous project for an undetermined amount of time. Especially with long-term projects and campaigns that have wage-earning positions we want to take a good look if the project lives up in practice to the values it claims to fight for. Cooptation is always around the corner and we want to prevent organizations that play an important and permanent role in our movements from reproducing the oppression we are all fighting against.

Generally we pay out projects even if they don't reach the intended goals of the campaign. if a group wants to organize a demonstration, but they only collect €100,- out of the intended €200,- the demonstration will still happen. This is why we want to make it the standard to pay out even in cases where the aimed amount is not reached. For some projects this cannot work however. Take the example of people wanting to buy a building for collective housing or a social centre. It would not be appropriate to still automatically pay out if the intended amount is not reached. This can often mean the building cannot be bought, which means the project will not happen. We will also clearly indicate what the terms and conditions are for every campaign. Both to the organisation running the campaign and to the donors supporting it. This way everybody knows what they can expect.

Campaign Types at Firestarter

Not all campaigns on Firestarter are the same. There are two types of campaigns, we describe them here. The standard campaign type is the Lighter. The other type, Kindling, is an exception you will come across rarely. You can always recognize the campaign type by the icon displayed next to it.

The different types of campaigns vary somewhat. The campaign type is determined after registration; it does not change during the campaign's run.

Campaign Type 1, Lighter

This is the standard campaign on Firestarter; most campaigns you see will fall under this type. This campaign ignites quickly, and donations yield results quickly. You can recognize this campaign by the lighter logo.

Lighter campaigns are always paid out, regardless of whether the crowdfunding target is reached. Donations to campaigns of this type are paid out intermittently. Therefore, donations are not held until the end of the campaign.

Lighter campaigns include events, campaigns, or other projects that are certain to take place, but for which (additional) income is sought through crowdfunding.

Sponsored walks or crowdfunding to supplement a project's other income also fit well under this type of campaign.

Campaign type 2, Kindling

The Kindling campaign type is less common and is recognizable by the symbol of a campfire being lit. It involves saving donations for a longer period of time, until, if enough donations are raised, they can finally be lit like a campfire.

With a Kindling campaign, donations are held by Firestarter until the target amount is reached. Examples of this type of campaign include raising personal funds to secure a mortgage, other large purchases that cannot be broken down into smaller increments, or other projects that the campaign owner will not undertake if there is insufficient financial support.

If the target amount is not reached, the donations to the campaign will be returned to the donors. The contribution to the Firestarter platform and the transaction fees are not refunded.