OVD-INFO: Year of folk financing

A year ago, we started an enterprise, in the success of which almost no one believed: we switched to Crowdfunding. We needed to find two million rubles for the work of the OTD-INFO monitoring group in 2016. Turning to friends and like-minded people was not only correct, but also the only decision: in the summer of 2015, due to new idiotic laws against the International Funds of the OTD-Info, almost all sources of financing lost.

And in 2016, we managed to collect two million rubles. But at first everything was seen differently.

The society is in political depression, in the yard - an economic crisis, - friends, colleagues and consultants told us. To collect two million for a human rights project - this was not and will not happen in Russia. Craudfanding for everyday activity, for infrastructure is a utopia. But we believed that our readers would support us: the repressions are only growing, the flow of calls will not run out, and the OVD-Info needs society.

For financing with the help of donations, we decided to choose the most important of what we do. And the most important thing is the uninterrupted operation of the hot line and the monitoring group. It is the team that accepts calls daily, searches and checking the information, and then writes news about the detainees and the arrested, the main property of the project. The professional work of the compact monitoring group allows us to promptly report political persecutions that a variety of people face every day in Russia. The costs of this work are 166 thousand a month or almost two million rubles a year.

Today we can confidently talk about success: almost one and a half thousand people supported us, on average each of them invested a little more than 1300 rubles in our business.

Money is a very important component of any professional activity. But more important money is a sense of demand and need. A message about each donation instantly comes to us in a working chat, and the knowledge that you support us serves to work further for the whole team.

We want to once again thank everyone who helped us in 2016! There would be no us without you. Without your support in the past year, we could not continue to work. But we believed in you, and you are in us, and therefore, the ATS-Info has become stronger, more interesting and stable over the past year. And it was Kraudfunding that helped us to realize what ATD-info is and why it is needed.

OVD-Info is people

OVD-Info is detained and arrested, about whom we write. And also - their relatives and friends who are very important to know what is happening right now with their loved ones. Over five years, we wrote almost eight thousand express novations about more than 12 thousand detentions at protests, collected information about more than 529 political criminal cases and recorded 197 persecution stories .

OVD-Info is our readers. They not only passively read our texts, but also report the information known to them, disseminate our publications on social networks, call the police department, write letters political prisoners.

OVD-Info is journalists who need reliable and operational information about repressions. Over the five years of the existence of the ATS-Info, our colleagues wrote at least 9472 notes based on our information.

OVD-Info is lawyers and lawyers. We do not have money to provide legal assistance to the heroes of our publications, but we always try to quickly provide all the necessary information to human rights activists and lawyers who are ready to urgently go to the police department or protect people who have encountered criminal prosecutions for political reasons.

OVD-Info is almost one and a half thousand like-minded people who support our work with money. Many of them donate money to us regularly. These are those people without whom the work of the OWD-Info would simply not be.

Finally, the OVD-Info is a team of professionals working every day to ensure that our readers quickly learn all the most important about the detainees and arrested, so that journalists use and disseminate this information, and lawyers and lawyers take advantage of this information and helped the heroes of our publications.

OVD-Info is a community. Thank you, dear readers, journalists, lawyers and just people of good will!

Together we make the lives of people who are not afraid to engage in social and political activities in extremely unfavorable conditions, safer.

We cannot stop repression, but we can help specific people. We cannot open the doors to prisons and crests, but we can tell you what is happening inside these places. We cannot instantly defeat evil, but we can shed light on the dark affairs of the political police.

And it’s worth it: we believe that the information releases and protects today, and the analysis of the collected data will change the situation for the better tomorrow!

In 2017, we will continue in the same spirit. We will monitor repression and write about them 365 days a year in 24/7 mode. We will launch many new interesting special projects. And we will continue to believe in you and the demand for our work.

Thank you, friends, stay with us! And Happy New Year to you!

And we still continue to raise funds: it is easy to support us with any amount .

Always yours, the team of ATD-info

PS We report on the consumption of crowdfunding funds every three months. Previous reports can be read here , here and here . The final report for the whole of 2016, including both the work of the monitoring group and the separate special projects implemented with the support of the Memorial PC and the European Commission, will be published in January 2017.