Substack Activism, A GiveBackStack Origin Story

How I leverage paid subscriptions and my Substack publication for the benefit of others who can't (yet) participate fully in the Substack revolution

This summer I turned on paid subscriptions for RainMakers & ChangeMakers.

Not for my financial benefit or gain, but rather for the benefit of 35 grassroots organizations in Africa that I featured here over 61 days of art and interviews.

Why? Because the people behind these 35 organizations cannot (yet) do the same for themselves (more on this later).

Leveraging the paid subscription feature on Substack for the benefit of others is not a novel idea; it’s like a Giving Club or Donor Circle. With a Giving Club or Donor Circle, friends get together, agree on a charitable cause and recipient, pool their funds, and start giving. Someone manages the donation process and reports back to the group. They meet monthly to celebrate and learn. They donate again and the cycle continues.

The same concept is happening here, but with a twist. With RainMakers & ChangeMakers, we all contribute via our $5 monthly paid subscriptions into a giving pool. I curate the list of recipient organizations, share their stories with you, pool our collective paid subscriptions, add my contribution (I cover Substack & Stripe fees plus add my own contribution), distribute the funds to each organization monthly, and then provide accountability in the form of ongoing engaging and interesting updates, stories, videos and pictures back to you, the “Substack Supporter Subscriber”.

Will I actually be able to monetize my Substack on behalf of these amazing ChangeMakers and their organizations? Will it be enough to make a difference?

I’m only two months into my experiment. The answer is: I don’t know but I’m hopeful. So far, RainMakers & ChangeMakers has five paid subscribers, four of whom joined Substack just to access and support my content. I’m shooting for 70 so I can send $10 per month to each of the 35 organizations.

Call me crazy (you won’t be the first!), but that’s my goal and I might as well state it up front.

Wondering how far $10 goes for each of these organizations? I asked the question and my friends are answering with video and text answers (the “Ten Dollar Question” post is being updated daily as I receive their answers).

Ultimately, if I can even raise a small amount of support for each of the ChangeMakers I’ve highlighted with this Substack, I’m committed to giving it a go.

The Launch of the GiveBackStack Directory

Early on, when I launched my “paid subscriptions for the benefit of others” mission, I felt alone and a little like an outsider. Naturally, when I feel that way, I start searching on the edges for my people. I remember the day I came up the moniker “GiveBackStack”. It was literally a shower thought moment. In towel and dripping hair, I sat at my dining room table, quickly drew a GiveBackStack logo, and posted a note asking for help in finding my people. While there wasn’t an overwhelming response, there were enough people who answered in the affirmative for me to take the next step. Thanks are due to

Sarah Fay

and

Jen Mayer

specifically for their help!

As a result, a whole new world of writers who donate a portion or all of their paid subscriptions opened up. It seemed important to not keep this to myself. Sharing is caring, after all!

And, so, the GiveBackStack Directory was launched here in August as a special section on RainMakers & ChangeMakers complete with a badge and instructions for getting listed. As of this writing, we are approximately 15 Substack publications strong! You too can be a GiveBackStack; listing instructions are here.

My Substack Activist Story: Why I Give Back

Why am I doing this? The reason is simple. I have a network of friends who work in the climate justice, arts, education, and permaculture activism space who are from Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Ghana, Ethiopia, and Democratic Republic of Congo who want to start up, mantain, and monetize a Substack for themselves, but can’t. At least not easily.

I’ve identified three primary obstacles that prevent them from doing so. Two, to some extent, are within the control of Substack to address. The third obstacle is straight-up poverty and poor wi-fi infrastructure in remote areas of Africa. I’ll share how we are working together to overcome those obstacles.

First, a short explanation of how I even came to know there were obstacles. Halfway through the 61-day RainMakers & ChangeMakers art and storytelling project (launched June 1st and ended July 31st),

Ubuntu

International, a growing movement of community-minded individuals that has a presence on Substack led by Antoinette

Rootsdawtah

, was simultaneously encouraging permaculture practitioners and other community activists in Africa to join Substack, many of whom I was interviewing.

Together, Antoinette and I were not only encouraging but helping (and training) them on how to set up reader accounts on Substack and how to launch their own publications. The hope was that they could join this amazing growing platform to tell their own stories in their own words and their own voices.

We were also hopeful that they would be able to accept paid subscriptions as a way to support their community-based efforts.

We were hopeful, until we realized they couldn’t. We ran into an obstacle we could not overcome. That’s when we scrambled to research the obstacle, stumbled on a few more obstacles, and began to implement alternatives.

Stripe is not available in 50 of 54 African countries

Stripe is the only third-party payment app available for paid subscriptions on Substack. If you can’t set up a Stripe account, you can’t accept paid subscriptions.

While Stripe offers “Stripe Global” to residents of Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, the service is only accessible with a US bank account which for all of the people we are collaborating with in Africa is not only challenging but financially impossible.

There is, however, an alternative. Substack’s “Custom Button” which is available on every Substack post and page offers writers the ability to share a URL such as PayPal or BuyMeACoffee (although those options are also not available to everyone in Africa) to accept one-time donations.

While the Custom Button option is not as ideal as the “set it and forget it” option afforded by Stripe-supported Substack subscriptions, it is a workable solution.

I’m dropping this Custom Button here as an example. Donations to the RainMaker Fund, managed by me, are pooled together with paid subscriptions and get us closer to our goal of raising and donating $350 per month ($10 per month to 35 organizations).

It turns out Stripe isn’t the only problem…

While my GiveBackStack mission is primarily about leveraging my ability to accept paid subscriptions to help my friends in Africa raise money for their community-oriented projects, I found there were other obstacles preventing them from starting and maintaining their own Substack publications.

Obstacle #1: It’s Nearly Impossible to Start and Maintain a Substack Publication Using A Mobile Phone. Writing on Substack requires access to the web-based Substack interface. While it’s possible to access the writer’s dashboard from a mobile phone web browser, it takes forever (have you tried it?) to compose a post and manage all of the settings from a phone. Substack is set up for desktop and laptop web browser interface, period. And, many of my friends do not have access to a laptop. I know nothing about app development, but could the Substack App be improved to include at least the basic components of the Writer’s Dashboard?

Obstacle #2: Publishing on Substack requires regular and consistent access to the internet and a data plan. Even in the cases where a community activist in Africa has access to a laptop, wifi infrastructure particularly in rural areas or in refugee settlements or slums like Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya is unreliable. Wifi availability is intermittent and the data required to stay on Substack long enough to compose a post is cost prohibitive. Let’s be clear: this is an access to resources problem that Substack cannot address. Even so, we’ve been working on a few ways to overcome this obstacle:

• I serve as an “Admin” for other Substack publications. As an Admin, I can help others navigate their settings and compose/publish a post. They send me what they want me to post via What’s App and I post with their permission. I have only offered this to one organization so far.

• Guest posts and/or bylines. I’ve offered guest posts on both of my Substacks, like when I posted a short story by Congolese refugee artist

  AKON DEOGRACE
  . I’ve also done a few “In Their Own Words” posts like this one with
  Elijah Astute
  . I’ve also used the “byline” feature like this one where the post I wrote about Muhindo Mutundi of
  New Talent For the Best Future
  shows up on his organization’s Substack profile post feed.

As a result of these obstacles, my GiveBackStack mission has grown to not only leverage my ability to accept paid subscriptions but to literally leverage my writing platform as well. By doing so, I’m helping my friends in Africa overcome persistent technological and data bundle obstacles in the short-term. These are stop-gap measures and unsustainable solutions. But they are viable for now.

Without Diversity of Voice, We Miss Opportunities for Cross-Cultural Understanding and Relationship Building

These three reasons combined - lack of access to Stripe, technology limitations, and wifi availability + data bundle costs - effectively limit the ability of people in Africa (and likely other parts of the world) to use the Substack platform to share their stories, opinions, experiences. While certainly there are voices from Africa here -

Olusegun Osifuye

and

Allen Matsika

to name two that I really enjoy - millions if not billions of other voices are not here.

This is, of course, not just an issue for folks living in Africa but elsewhere in the world where Stripe is unavailable and resource constraints limit access to technology and data bundles.

I think that the lack of diversity in voice is also an issue for “the rest of us.”

Without diversity of voice here on Substack, there are fewer chances for readers, the majority of whom are from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, to brush up against, connect with, and get to know people around the world, particularly those who are working in extreme, climate-impacted and war-affected environments, who are doing incredible things in Africa on less than a shoestring budget or none at all.

To me, we are all better off when there is easily accessible diversity of voices, opinions, and experiences in the media we consume. And, it’s a better situation for all when the people who are living the experience, can tell their own stories.

But, when they can’t, we work together. This is what we do. I leverage what I have on their behalf. And, we do it together.

Two Substack Solutions

Here are two ways that I think

Hamish McKenzie

and Substack could make it easier for more people from around the globe, particularly those who lack the same level of resources as the primarily US, UK, and Canadian Substackians, to participate:

1. Offer PayPal (for instance) as a secondary option to Stripe. While PayPal is also not offered everywhere, it may be more accessible to more people in Africa than Stripe.

2. Tweak the Substack app to include more Writer Dashboard features so that people can post without having to use their web browser on their phone.

Do you have other thoughts on how to mitigate or solve these problems?

Despite the challenges, some of my friends from Africa have made it here! Let’s welcome them!

On the flip side, my friends DO have access to the Substack App and they CAN interact via posting, liking, and restacking notes. We are interacting there regularly. Have you seen them here? If not, please seek them out, welcome them and consider interacting!

• Anne Okelo of

  Sustainable Innovations
  not only launched her Substack just a few months ago, but recently celebrated reaching 100 subscribers! Now, if she could only monetize her Substack through paid subscriptions! If you want to help her, you can join me in becoming a paid subscriber to her YouTube channel.

• Elijah Astute
  of GoGreen Social Initiative in Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda has written two posts, one is his poem titled “Peace & Ubuntu” and another is an essay on humanity as a religion.

• Maya Zodo
  of Ghana writes about her love for the Urantia book and Ubuntu.

• Yawenta Shashamane (P.A.C.O)
  of Ethiopia runs the Yawente Children’s Center and uses Substack to talk about their programming as well as highlight Rastafari repatriots like Ras Kella Walla.

• Chipochashe
  , a rural school in Zimbabwe written by Sharleen and Moses Machipisa has shared one post so far and we can’t wait for more describing what it’s like to provide education to very young children in rural Zimbabwe.

• Paul Odiwuor Ogola
  of PermoAfrica Centre in Kenya, a permaculture trainer and practitioner who has trained thousands of people in the design concepts, is also here, practicing notes and posts.

• omito Abraham owuor
  of K5Village in Kenya, also a permaculture practitioner, is also here practicing restacking and commenting.

• And, a handful of others have accounts here such as

  Andre lutula
  ,
  Tesfahun Fitamo
  , and
  Roland
  Van Reenen.

Give A Little, Get A Lot

I am definitely biased. I love the people that I highlighted here for 61 days. Having drawn their likeness and interviewed them, I am definitely attached. But, I think that’s a good thing. And, I hope you think so too. We need more connection in the world. Not less. And, that’s what I hope to provide here.

Substack is home to thousands of socially-conscious, community-minded, and internationally-attuned people. I hope that some of them (perhaps one of them is you?) will find the content and the “give back” mission of RainMakers & ChangeMakers worth the upgrade from free to paid at $5 per month. In return, I offer opportunities for you to broaden your perspective, develop relationships (if you want), and pool your funds with other likeminded people (including me!) to make a significant impact.

Thank you for listening to my GiveBackStack Origin Story!

We are all busy and pulled in a million different directions. In acknowledgement of that, I thank you for taking the time to open this post and read this far. If you have, will you leave a comment? What do you think about the prospects of leveraging paid subscriptions and the Substack writing platform in general for the benefit of others?

I also want to take a moment to give thanks to the people I’ve been talking about here with a lot of “they’s” and “them’s”. Many of you who are reading this post right now are indeed one of those 35+ people. So, time to address you directly:

I see you. I appreciate you. And I value our friendship! Leave me a comment here so we can “hear” your voice here as well!

In closing, as my friend Antoinette and many other friends in Africa say…

We are stronger together!