In this video, released in the fall of 2016, Alexei Navalny very openly, with the numbers to back it up, debunks the Kremlin propaganda’s favorite myth about “State Department funding.” He explains in detail how the ACF crowdfunding system works, why regular donations of 500 rubles from ordinary Russians are what guarantee the foundation’s complete independence, and exactly what that money is spent on. At a time when the Justice Ministry was already aggressively strangling independent organizations with absurd “foreign agent” laws, this kind of financial transparency was Alexei Navalny’s best shield against attacks from the authorities.
Text version
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Navalny, you sure do love counting other people's money.
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You go after Putin's daughter and her foundation, but
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then tell us where the money for
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your foundation comes from. Who is financing this
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fight against corruption, and why? I've gotten the
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impression that even in the Kremlin, especially in
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the government, there are two towers (a Russian political metaphor for rival power factions), and one
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tower is working together with American
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intelligence services on behalf of Mr. Navalny.
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There are lots of comments like that under our post
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"How does the foundation
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Innopraktika, owned by the younger
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daughter of Vladimir Putin, make money?" And you know,
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I noticed something: it wasn't just
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some Kremlin trolls asking this,
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but perfectly ordinary people too. They ask a
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reasonable question: well, you're constantly
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criticizing the authorities and denouncing them in the strongest
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terms, doing investigations. But how
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is it that anyone in Russia today isn't afraid to give
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money for that? And anyway, Navalny, do you have the nerve
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to tell us everything?
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So now I'll tell you about the financial side of the FBK's (Anti-Corruption Foundation's)
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fight against corruption, in full
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detail. And by the way, these are very useful
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tips on how to find money, and
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personally I'll be very glad if you
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can use them too somewhere in
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your own city to finance
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some useful project of your own.
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First, let's figure out what exactly we need
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to finance. The Anti-Corruption Foundation is
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an official nonprofit
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organization registered under
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Russian law. We have an office in
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Moscow, near the Avtozavodskaya metro station, and in that
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office people work; all of them, with their names
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and photos, can be seen on our
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website. It's no secret at all. We don't have any secret
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employees. To pay
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salaries and rent, as you understand, we
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need money. We need money, money,
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money, and quite a lot of it—millions of rubles.
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We raise it in the following ways, and
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here is rule number one for anyone
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who wants to raise money: you have to
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just ask people directly, in plain
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language. "People, I'm doing useful work. I
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need money. Give me money." For
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that purpose I have a special
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magic red button, and it appears at the
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end of every one of my posts, and I constantly
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urge everyone to click it as
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often as possible. And besides that button, I also often
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simply write at the end of important
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posts that we need money, that we
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are raising money, and without your money
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there will be no more investigations. And if
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someone liked our investigation,
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we immediately go, "Hey, maybe you can
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give us some money?" That's exactly how
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a post about Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov's dogs
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brought us
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156,000 rubles. A post about my lawsuit against
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Vladimir Putin raised 270,000 rubles, and
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our investigation last year into
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the corrupt family of Prosecutor General
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Chaika was a record-breaker and brought in, in
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the very first day alone, 1.55 million rubles, and then
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the same amount again over the course of the month, even though
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filming the Chaika documentary cost us only
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250,000 rubles. In other words, we exposed the crook Chaika
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with our film and raised
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2.7 million rubles from it. Hollywood.
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[music]
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Second—and you can do this too—
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a substantial amount of money comes to us
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from our monthly mailings. That is,
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once a month we send emails
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to about 160,000 people and tell them:
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over the past month we've done the following
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work, here's our report, give us money
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to keep our organization running. And people
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do give. For example, last month we
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raised 600,000 rubles that way; the
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month before that, 400,000 rubles. The figures vary depending
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on how good
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an email we wrote. Third, and probably
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most important for us, are the so-
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called
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recurring donations. People go to our
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favorite section of the FBK website and tick
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a special box saying they will make us
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regular donations. That means they
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automatically send us a little money every month
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from their account, and that is our
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stable income, and we are constantly
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encouraging everyone to do it,
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because obviously it's easier for us
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to plan our budget if we know
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what amount is guaranteed to come in
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next month. Now let's
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look at the real numbers—they're always
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more interesting. At the time this
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video was released,
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2,844 people were making monthly
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automatic donations to us, and from that
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we were raising about 1 million rubles per
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month. That is our main treasure.
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Another treasure is the 2,079 people
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who donate to us from time
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to time this year, when they
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liked one of my posts, or when
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the current authorities had gotten on their nerves, or they just
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were in a good
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mood. How much money do they send on
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average? I'll tell you that too. The arithmetic
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mean donation size for us
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is 720 rubles, while the so-called median
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donation—those who were good at math
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in school will understand—is 500
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rubles. So as you can see, these are fairly
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small amounts; it's just that thousands of people
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from all over the country send them to us, and that is exactly what gives
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the FBK complete independence. No one can
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dictate to us or give us recommendations about
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what to investigate and what not to, or whom
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We decide for ourselves whom to criticize and whom to stay silent about.
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We have quite few large donors.
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And right now there is only one person
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who sends us 50,000 rubles a month
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rubles; one person sends us every month
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100,000 rubles, and one person every month
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sends 300,000 rubles. Good for them.
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Thank you
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very much. In 2013, we raised
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24 million rubles; in 2014, 32 million rubles; in
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2015, 39 million rubles. And now in
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2016, which still has not
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ended yet, we have already raised 39 million rubles so far.
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This is the money the anti-corruption campaigners live on.
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In the description to this video, there is a link to
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our annual report. It explains in quite a lot of detail
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exactly what we spend the money on. Our top
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three expense categories look like this: 45%
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of the money goes to salaries. The average salary
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for employees at the foundation is 67,000 rubles
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a month. You made me laugh. Another 25% is eaten up by
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office expenses: rent and utilities.
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12% goes to taxes, mainly payroll taxes, which
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we pay very carefully, as a law-
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abiding organization, I should note. By the way,
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it is not only us who publish reports on FBK's activities
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but also the Ministry of Justice, an organization
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that is definitely hostile to us, so you can
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double-check all our figures there as well.
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Many of you probably want to ask
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whether we can use PayPal in our work,
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WebMoney, Bitcoin, and all sorts of other
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cool things. Unfortunately, to our great
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regret, we cannot do that because of
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the idiotic law on foreign agents.
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I think that if we were able to collect
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electronic payments, we would raise
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about 30% more money. But then we would not
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be able to guarantee that every
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kopek came from Russian citizens, and
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right now that is exactly the case. And if you cannot
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be sure of that, it is a direct path to
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the crooks from that very same
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Ministry of Justice rushing in and declaring us a foreign
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agent. And we categorically do not
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want that. So that is basically everything about our
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simple accounting. We are always happy
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to talk about it, because we want
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the Anti-Corruption Foundation to be the most
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transparent and easiest-to-understand organization
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in Russia. If you suddenly just now
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had the thought of becoming one of the
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foundation's donors, then please do not
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push that desire away under any circumstances.
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Instead, find the link in the description, click
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on it, and become sponsors of the fight against
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corruption in Russia. And also
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subscribe to our channel. Here
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we tell the truth.