General assembly 7 Dec 4pm CET and update on payments via WISE
Published on December 5, 2022 by Leen Schelfhout
Invitation to the General Assembly
Updates - our Wise account was blocked
Decentralisation will grow resilience
by Xavier Damman 🙏🏽💚
Wise account blocked: we need your help to make collectives more financially resilient
TLDR
- All for Climate is not in a capacity to send money outside of the eurozone via Wise because the account got blocked.
- For European transfers we absolutely prefer regular bank transfers over any other method. They are free and transparent.
- PayPal is still possible, for small amounts, but bank transfers much preferred.
- We need your help to create bridges to unblock some of the collective and become more resilient as a community in the process. We need to decentralise to become more resilient.
What happened?
The Wise account that we use to make international payments has been blocked without any advance notice, since the beginning of November. We have not been able to reactivate the account since then and are still waiting for their response.
Any centralized system can be shut down. As climate movements are increasingly pushing for "system change, not climate change" and for uniting the Global North with the Global South, we can only expect more stress on our shared infrastructure. And it only takes one suspicious transaction to put the entire infrastructure down.
To be more resilient, we need to decentralize and for that, we need you.
How do we decentralize?
Instead of one Wise Account, let’s create dozen (if not hundreds)
If your collective needs to make payments internationally, we invite you to ask one or multiple people in your community to create a personal Wise account.
Whenever you have to pay someone or a company abroad, that person will have to pay with their Wise account and file the invoice/receipt to the collective to be reimbursed (if you start having many of those payments, we recommend you to do a rotation so that it’s not always the same person paying). It’s no different than paying for a zoom account with your credit card and then asking for refund by the collective, the only difference is that you would use Wise instead of a credit card.
If you are someone that used to receive money via Wise for your services to a collective hosted by All for Climate, instead of filing your expense or invoice to the collective directly, you will have to direct it to one of the members of the collective (exactly as if one of those members would knock at your door, ask you for a service, pay you and then would ask to be refunded by the collective).
That way, like the structure of the Internet, we create many pathways to get from A to B and even when one account gets shutdown, there are many more available to reroute.
Instead of one fiscal host, let’s create dozen (if not hundreds)
We are starting with creating a new "All for Climate" legal structure in Uganda. But we invite everyone to follow the lead of Emma, and start such structure in their own region. The more "All for Climate" hosts, the more resilient we will be.
"When life sends you lemon, make lemonade" 🍋
Let’s take this opportunity to become more resilient and involve more people in our respective collectives.
Update to our policy
To reflect this (and since we don’t really have a choice given that our Wise account is still shut down and we have no visibility as of when they will re-open it), we have to stop all international transfers, except if they are possible via PayPal, in very small amounts.
Those collectives need your help
You would love to support initiatives for climate justice but didn’t know how you could help?
You could really help one of those collectives by being a bridge for them. Help them manage their international expenses (we would recommend starting small, build trust first).
Collectives that need bridges asap:
Role of the bridge
A bridge is a member of a collective that facilitates international payments outside of the eurozone. The role of a bridge is to ask the vendor for an invoice or receipt, file it to the collective as an expense to be reimbursed for (on their personal bank account that has an IBAN number), then once they have received the money, send it to the vendor.
That way, the bridge never has to advance any money.
If the vendor requires to be paid immediately, the person acting as a bridge will have to advance the money. Only do that if:
- you know that you will receive a proper invoice/receipt; and
- you know that it will be approved by one of the admins of the collective; and
- you know that there is enough money on the collective balance (that’s why all collectives have a transparent account where anyone can see their current balance at all times).
Thanks to those bridges, collectives can have a global reach and support people all around the world. If you feel like contributing to such a collective, being a bridge is a tremendous contribution.
Role of a host
The role of the host is to create a legal structure (usually a non profit) with a bank account that can receive money on behalf of collectives.
Each collective is an unincorporated partnership. So the host does not take the legal liability for their actions. It is just offering the service of offering a secure place to store material (in this case money) on behalf of the collective. It defines strict rules in a transparent way to comply with the local legal requirements so that the hosted collective knows how they can access their money.
A host is not a bank. It has a purpose (in the case of All for Climate, it’s only for hosting collectives working on climate justice). Expenses have to be related to advance that purpose, and only the administrators of the non profit have direct access to the bank account.
A host is offering an important service to the community in their region. They act as a bridge between foundations, government agencies and companies that want to support climate initiatives but can only send money to a non profit. The host takes a commission to pay for its staff.
If you feel like creating an All for Climate host in your region, please reach out! (discord.allforclimate.earth, [email protected])
Together, we can build a more decentralized and more resilient infrastructure to support climate justice initiatives around the world!
Thank you for being part of this community 🙏
Join us on discord if you have any question (https://discord.allforclimate.earth)