Data

Our Board

Jennifer Willow List

Member, Managing Board, Treasurer
Jenny List is an editor at Hackaday.com and a long time activist, both for union rights and the rights of trans people.

Rebecca Barton

Member, Managing Board,  Secretary
Rebecca has experience working with displaced people and spent time volunteering in the infamous Calais Jungle refugee camp with the project “Caravans for Calais”.
She trained in social work and quietly campaigns for LGBT rights in faith based organisations across the UK.

Objective

Our History

Trans Rescue is the reorganization of TransEmigrate. TransEmigrate was started in 2020 by Misty Hill, with a similar mission to Trans Rescue – to get trans people out of danger.
TransEmigrate never formally incorporated, and operated as a loose collection of activists.
Helping trans people flee is a serious business, and a more formal organizational structure was needed. It’s also an expensive business, and TransEmigrate was funded from GoFundMe’s and out of it’s volunteer’s pockets.
TransEmigrate was, in some sense, a successful experiment. It helped about a dozen people find new lives in safe places, and taught the participants the techniques we will use as Trans Rescue.
In late December 2021 the current board formed Trans Rescue with the intention of creating a stronger organization capable of helping more people escape.

Our Partners

Trans Rescue works with partner organizations in the US, UK, Kenya, Turkey, the Netherlands, and Indonesia.
We work with organizations supporting LGBTI+ people in the immigration and refugee systems of Germany, the US, France, and the Netherlands.
We also work with the immigration systems of these countries. We have a good relationship with COA and IND in the Netherlands, and with the immigration authorities in France.
We also work with a group of very brave individuals who operate inside dangerous countries.
And we work with other organizations that do similar work.

Activities

Target Group

Our primary target group is transgender people. We also will occasionally help larger LGBTI+ people. And we may occasionally move cis people in danger because of a relationship with a transgender person – for example, accepting families of trans people, children of trans people, and we have a single traveller who just fits in the ‘no one else would help him’ category.
But our focus is transgender people.
Our definition of ‘transgender’ is broad. We move people, we don’t decide if they are ‘truly’ transgender.

Raising Funds

Our work requires funds, obviously.
We are just getting established, and our current fundraising has been limited, as this is written, to a few donations from people in our personal network and a loan from one of our board members.
We expect within a few weeks to start to engage in the normal sort of fundraising any charity might engage in.
We are the follow on to a loosely organized activist group, TransEmigrate.TransEmigrate found some success with pleading for funds on GoFundMe via Twitter and Instagram campaigns.
We intend to be more intentional about operating a normal marketing program.
We will drive traffic to our website with social media outreach, and with content marketing programs.
We will attend physical events (as Corona restrictions allow) and seek funds and engagement.
Our board members will network with identified donor communities and seek donations.
We will have an aggressive public speaking program, raising awareness of trans people’s plight, and will participate in speaker’s bureaus.
We will use all these methods to cultivate a mailing list. The list, rather than the events above, will be our expected main source of revenue. In particular, we hope to draw in supporters who will make larger contributions.
We will seek grants from private and public sources. We are currently particularly interested in pursuing a Google Grant. This grant is in the form of free advertising on Google Adwords. This allows us to not only fundraise, but to reach our client population.
We have already received major in-kind donations. We have the use of an office space, furniture, and computers. We’ve had in-kind donations of IT labor., drawings (useful for fund raising, and needed, as our passengers are in danger and we can’t use images),
web and logo design, professional consulting from a psychologist, the same from attorneys and from a psychiatrist.

Fund Management

We will maintain proper accounting, and will retain a professional accountant.
Our accounts will be published on our website.
All donations and other income will be deposited in our Bunq bank account, NL53BUNQ2067331108.
Our work is dangerous. Things go wrong. While an extraction that goes well averages about 2500 EU, we must maintain a generous emergency fund. There are realistic scenarios under which we could be targeted for legal harassment or physical attack by foreign governments.
5% of all income will be placed aside in a savings account for emergencies and long term projects. If this fund exceeds 6 months operating budget, the board will divert the excess to programs and capacity building.
Of the remaining 95%, less than 10% will be spent on fundraising costs. The remainder will be used for programs and capacity building. We currently are operating with low fundraising costs. While we have startup costs in Q1, we expect after this quarter to
spend more than 90% on direct program costs.
Realistically, there will always be more people to get out than we can handle. So if we can get more people out by hiring professional fundraisers or purchasing advertising, we will do so. In that case our percent spend on fundraising will increase, but administrative
and fundraising costs shall not exceed 30% under any circumstance.
Similarly, our major expense is moving passengers. We will maintain a minimum balance, to be decided by the board. We will take on additional passengers only when they can be accommodated. Our board will set an account ‘trip wire’. When the balance
goes above this level, we will move another client.
No board member shall receive payment for services to the foundation. Board members may be reimbursed at cost for direct purchases on behalf of the foundation to the same limits established for purchases direct from the foundation’s account.

Budget

Purchases