December 3, 2024

Movement’s growing really fast. Do you remember when Movement was just an idea 12 months ago? Today, we can announce that we hired our first person! Welcome to the team, Michelle Scarr! She’ll be helping with basically everything – running campaigns, fundraising, growing the organization. But that’s a limited contract. We still don’t have the money to hire someone year-round. This region needs Movement to be huge. At Burnaby Council a few weeks ago, we came up against a large organized effort to prevent bus lanes on Hastings. Council’s decision was a compromise. If we hadn’t been there, and mobilized over 100 e-mails, it’s likely the bus lanes would have been turned down completely.There are more of these fights coming. Whether you care about buses on Broadway or King George Blvd, you need a big organized group to make progress on transit. Same goes for the $600 million budget deficit. When was the last time you heard of a budget deficit in the ministry that builds highways? Politicians know that highway supporters are vocal and organized, and so they fund it properly. We’ll make sure they do that for transit. We need your donations to grow. We have so many incredible volunteers and the media loves covering us. We’ve been in the news at least 50 times this year. Things are going great but money is what’s missing. Take a look at our counterpart Move Minnesota: they spend around $1.4 million USD per year, and over 10 staff representing a state with 1/10th of the transit usage as TransLink alone. There are dozens of groups with similar budgets. When transit riders fight, we win. In July, we worked with Vision Zero Vancouver to get Vancouver to expand and speed up their bus lane efforts. It passed unanimously. Remember that Minnesota group I was talking about? They leveraged their $1.4m/year budget to convince the state to provide $450m/year to public transit. Our fundraising efforts are finally starting to work.  Check out some of the people who are making Movement happen:

• Lush – yes, the soap company
• PCI Developments
• Unifor, the union representing most bus drivers at TransLink
• Reece Martin, YouTuber and transit expert
• Jay Pitter, placemaker, author, and lecturer
• Dr. Kay Teschke, professor in UBC’s Faculty of Medicine
• Sarah Richardson, Sustainability Coordinator, who posted on LinkedIn:

“Movement is doing great work on behalf of transit users across Metro Van – please consider showing your support by donating to this vital work!”

Sarah Richardson

We have some things to give you, as a token of gratitude!

It’s never been a better time to give Movement money. Why? We have things to give you! Read on.

1 year of Transit App Royale Thanks to the kind folks at Transit App for giving us 10 memberships to give our supporters! It unlocks useful features from one of the coolest transit apps around.

Lush Bath Bombs Lush has given us so many bath bombs!! We would love to give you some.  You could gift them to family and friends! Please take many. (Vancouver pickup only)

Movement Clothes! We have: A few black t-shirts (various sizes) Some sample hoodies that weren’t quite perfect (M and L) (Don’t worry – we’re still working on a store to sell the real ones) Vancouver pickup only

A generous tax credit! If you donate to our project at Small Change Fund, the feds will give you back a bunch of money! Here are some examples of what you could get back: $10/month or $120: $25 credit (21%) $25/month or $300: $85 credit (28%) $100/month or $1200: $498 credit (41%)

How does this all work?

• Transit Royale or bath bombs:
  • Give at least $30 (or a $10 monthly donation) via PayPal, or send an e-transfer to hello@movementyvr.ca
  • Include a note saying what you want.
• Shirts and sample hoodies
  • Give at least $50 (or a $15 monthly donation) via PayPal, or send an e-transfer to hello@movementyvr.ca
  • Include a note saying what you want.
• A generous tax credit
  • Give any amount to our project at the Small Change Fund! They’ll send a tax receipt:
    • Monthly donation to Small Change Fund
    • One-time donation to Small Change Fund

Other things to know:

• If we run out of the thing you want, we can send you a refund of your donation, or offer something different.
• We cannot give any gifts for charitable donations that get a tax refund.
• If the thing requires pickup, it will likely be in Downtown Vancouver.