We need your help to make the next two years great

For the last two years, the Massachusetts Pirate Party has run on a shoestring, but we’ve still accomplished a lot.

We ran two candidates for State Representative and got our first Pirate elected to local office.

We organized a statewide conference; we spoke at Left Forum; we tabled at two Freedom Rallies; and we marched in two Boston Pride Parades, as well as Black Lives Matter protests, the March Against Monsanto, and the Boston Peace Parade.

We taught people to protect their privacy by teaming up with Together Boston, Danger!Awesome, the Somerville Public Library and other groups to put on cryptoparties.  We ran a cryptocorner at the P2P Conference, and monthly cryptoparties in Somerville.  We even helped organize a speaking event for writer, open culture and anti-DRM advocate, Cory Doctorow.

Now we are asking you for your time and money so we can do more in 2016.

We have been frugal with the money we raised, spending $100 less than we took in, and have a cushion that we didn’t have two years ago.  But like any organization, we need money to function, and to meet expenses.  Here is what your contributions do:

• They pay our basic expenses, including $200/year for web and email hosting, $128/year for a PO box, $80-90/year for domain name registration, plus more for services such as spam filtering for blog comments;
• They allow us to attend events.  Registration for the Boston Pride Parade and Freedom Rally costs $500/year, but we believe it’s a worthwhile investment for outreach;
• They allow us to pay for event space (when needed) for cryptoparties and hackathons.

Yet the money we raise and the time our activists donate, comes from a small number of contributors; this isn’t sustainable, and doesn’t live up to our values.  We need your time and money to change that AND expand our work.  Here’s what we’d like to do in 2016:

• We’d like to expand PirateCon, our annual conference.  We spent over $400 on room rental and childcare for PirateCon 2015.  We’d love to move the event to a larger venue that will allow more talks, and provide space for breakout rooms;
• We’d like to invest more in outreach.  We generally spend $200-300/year printing flyers and making buttons. That is sufficient for events, but doesn’t give us much to send to supporters and candidates to distribute locally;
• We’d like to provide seed money for our 2016 candidates.  Being able to give our candidates some money to setup their campaigns would help them get started, and allow them to focus on building their campaigns.

Will you give your time and money so we can do more in 2016?

We are counting on you!