Open Borders: The Case maintains a small fund of money to use for promotional purposes. It was announced on the Open Borders Action Group here.

How does one contribute to the fund?

Please send money via PayPal to the address annaseropyan@gmail.com. Please use the message that PayPal allows you to send along with the money to provide any information about yourself or suggestions regarding how the money could be used. We’ll take your suggestions into consideration, but none of the restrictions you place on the money will be considered binding by us. We only accept unrestricted donations.

How do we intend to use the money?

We expect an overall spend rate of anywhere between $1 and $50 per week, depending on the nature of opportunities.

• Promoting posts and the page on Facebook. This is the only expense that we’ve had experience with using the fund so far. If the money is spent smartly and slowly, we can get 1-2 page likes per dollar of spend. The amount of money that we can spend smartly this way ranges from $50 to $1000 per year. We’re still trying to get a sense for how much opportunity there is in this space. We experiment carefully with each advertisement, starting with low funding amounts and gradually adding more if the response rate is good.
• Sponsored tweets on Twitter: We haven’t done this yet, and do not yet have a clear idea of how well these would work. However, we intend to investigate this.
• Buying search ads: We haven’t done this yet, and do not yet have a clear idea of how well these would work. However, we intend to investigate this.
• One-off opportunities, such as buying book rights, funding high-impact local events, putting out an advertisement in a local newspaper on migration-related issues: We don’t have experience with spending money this way, but are considering some options. Having cash on hand improves our ability to take quick advantage of opportunities.

How much money do we have and how much more would we like?

• As of October 9, 2015, we have $791.64 in cash. This is sufficient for our current regular expenses (buying Facebook promotions) for at least a few months, and possibly over a year, but insufficient for pursuing one-off opportunities. Also, with the current cash reserves, we’re not comfortable experimenting with search ads and Twitter promotions because of the less proven case for them.
• If our cash reserves were to cross $1000, we would start experimenting with search ads and Twitter promotions and consider more aggressive Facebook promotion strategies.
• If our cash reserves were to cross $2500, we would engage in more aggressive experimentation with search ads, Facebook promotion, and pursuing some one-off opportunities that we have been considering.

What donation amounts are recommended?

We recommend that, for donation amounts greater than $100, you contact us at openborders@googlegroups.com to check about whether we have a sufficient funding need and whether making such a large donation is consistent with your values. The funding situation on this donation page may not be completely up to date, so checking in with us is preferable.

We strongly recommend that you do not make donations in excess of $1000 without first checking in with us. We will have an internal discussion about whether it would be appropriate for us to accept the funds. Your donation will also need to be publicly recorded on this page if it exceeds this amount.