Report on 2019 financial results

2019 brought a lot of firsts for us. We hired our first employee, and awarded our first academic grant! We began important outreach programs, including a podcast series, and hosted two different in-person panels at Anthro New England and Indy Fur Con. We expanded our compliance activities, registering to fundraise in several states in addition to Massachusetts (our home state). And we began to fundraise in earnest on Patreon – thank you so much to our early backers who helped make these first steps possible!

In 2019, we had a total of $24,679.41 in revenue, of which $18,250 came from major donors, $5,129.95 came from supporters on Patreon, and $1,299.46 came from other sources. Revenue more than doubled from 2018, and we’re especially thankful to our Patreon supporters. While major donors are doing as much as they can, their resources are limited, and our movement can only succeed with help from people like you. Many hands/paws make for light work!

Expenses of $21,061.08 supported significantly increased program activity compared to 2018. While legal and professional services were $8,210.42 (very similar to 2018 legal and professional expenses), they represented a smaller share of our budget. We invested $2,610.33 in office supplies and IT services, and $1,105.46 in employee compensation. Note that for 2019, our employee’s responsibilities are also primarily in IT. These investments are helping make sure that we are scalable, and that our infrastructure is reliable and resilient – we’ve all seen news stories that arise from underinvesting in IT.

We paid $195.00 in corporate taxes and license/registration fees and $314.12 in payroll-related taxes, and $278.83 in banking fees. We also invested $784.09 in marketing, which includes a few different copyright licensing or commissioning activities from artists. Our Patreon banner, as well as some music we licensed in a video, are examples of this.

Finally, we invested a combined $7,562.83 in program services, consisting of $3,562.83 in outreach and education, and a $4,000.00 grant award. Outreach and education expenses helped make our panels possible, helped initiate our podcast activity, and made it possible for us to host other events such as the seminar with Devin Proctor. Meanwhile, our grant award was given to an Oxford-affiliated researcher, Ben Ramanauskas, to capture an opportunity connected to a journal article. Specifically, we became aware of an opportunity that Ben had a substantial amount of research into the legal and ethical considerations of body autonomy, especially under UK law, and he needed help to cross the finish line and publish in a journal. We eagerly helped make it happen, and the results are published in Economic Affairs (February 2020).

Our balance sheet at the end of 2019 consisted of $5,130.95 in cash and no liabilities. Of that amount, $1,512.62 was from retained earnings from 2018, and $3,618.33 was from net income.