An end of year fundraising appeal about Tiny Tim, low wages, & unpredictable schedules

It's the end of the year, which means half of your email inbox & Facebook feed is earnest end-of-year fundraising appeals from groups you barely remember ever getting involved with. Many of them feature images of People Directly Affected By The Issue, and take credit for things which they may or may not have had anything to do with, and which may or may not have even happened.

The other half of your is probably from some combination of Cecile Richards, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton.

<TRY INSERTING PICTURE OF TINY TIM WITH DONATE LINK HERE. INCLUDE CAPTION ABOUT HIS FATHER’S LOW WAGES & UNPREDICTABLE SCHEDULE AND HOW IT IMPACTS HIS FAMILY’S OPPORTUNITIES.>

A lot of consultants do a lot of testing to figure out the wording of their subject lines and whether or not to include a Star Wars reference and even the colors of the donate links, but basically it all boils down to this: they want your money.

We want your money too. Of course we do, we have a movement to build and an organization to run!

Here's a few reasons why you should contribute to Working Washington:

  1. Who else is going to do it? You can't get a corporate sponsorship for a worker organizing campaign, and foundations with billion-dollar endowments don't usually love the idea of taking on the roots of income inequality.
     
  2. The bad guys hate us. Within a month of when we launched our campaign in Yakima, the right-wing nonsense crew started holding events to try and counter our efforts there. When workers spoke in favor of higher wages before the Olympia City Council, staff from the right-wing Freedom Foundation showed up to testify on the other side. And when we fight for higher wages at the state level, the most conservative representatives try to pick fights with us on twitter and in official speeches. We take that all as a vote of confidence.
     
  3. We get stuff done. Seattle fast food workers are getting a raise to $13/hour on January 1st, on the way to $15/hour on January 1, 2017. Starbucks baristas have launched a campaign for secure schedules. We're expanding our movement across the state, we have a chance to win new worker rights laws in the city of Olympia, and we have high hopes to win another big breakthrough campaign for workers in Seattle. (No joke, this stuff is real.)

And maybe the best reason of all to support Working Washington today: your contribution is nottax deductible. Because of course the Federal tax code doesn't give a discount for people contributing to campaigns that build worker power to take on corporations & politicians... and win. (And second of all, do you actually itemize your deductions anyway?)

So give us some  money! Your support is all we got, and in the long run, a base of grassroots funding is the only way to sustain a winning movement for workers in our state.