How We Them Media is funded.
The community is over 700 people. $1,000 a month covers what it takes to keep filming: wages for the two people on payroll, Gift and Bayo, plus the tools and the payment rails that get money to Nigeria. Supporters cover $159 of that. Maceo covers the other $841 himself. Every dollar and every tier is published below, and the tracker moves when the number moves.
We take no advertising and run no paywall. The work is paid for by monthly supporters through Fractured Atlas, our fiscal sponsor, and by bounties that fund specific stories. This page shows the model, the current total, and what each level covers.
Before you contribute, we would love to know who you are. What stories matter to you. What you want to understand. That conversation happens on the newsletter now. Join in, and reply to any dispatch. We read every one.
Join the newsletter →A dollar a month is a real contribution and we mean that. A thousand people at a dollar gets us the whole way to the goal on this page, and that is a better outcome than a handful of large gifts. It means a thousand people with a stake in what gets filmed.
Give what makes sense for you. The tiers below say what comes with each level, but nothing about them is a minimum.
Manual tracker · next milestone $250/mo · founding roll closes at $1,000/mo
The next $91 a month covers the team’s tools. Motion Array, Adobe, Claude and CapCut: the subscriptions the editors work in every day, every month, whether or not the money is there. Nineteen people at five dollars a month gets us there.
Join before we hit $1,000/mo and you are a Founding Supporter · named on this page for good
Most of our supporters are at $5 a month, and that is the plan working. Small and many beats large and few, every time, because it leaves more people with a real stake in what gets filmed. A dollar a month counts. If a dollar is what works for you, give a dollar and bring a friend.
This is the same community that put $560 behind the Pizza Day bounty, twenty-three people, no ad budget, just people who wanted the work to keep happening.
- The dispatch · newsletter with research updates and release notes
- Access to Discord community
- WhatsApp group. Direct connection with team.
- Your name on the supporter roll on this site
- Submit investigation requests. Your questions shape our work.
- All public content, no paywall, ever
- Everything in Supporter tier
- A dollar a day. One Sustainer covers a real line item: a tool, a payment rail, a day of somebody’s wages.
- Your name in the end credits of every video we release
- Private supporter channel in Discord
- Early access to releases before they go public
- Vote on which bounties run each month
- Everything in Sustainer tier
- Monthly Zoom coffee hour with the team
- Quarterly townhall (direct voice on upcoming projects)
- Priority voice on investigation requests
- The next page opens on a one-time $25. That is its default, not ours.
- Switch the toggle to Monthly.
- Type your amount. A dollar counts. Most people are at five.
No ads and no paywall, ever. Tax-deductible in the US through Fractured Atlas. Cancel any time, in two clicks, with no email to anybody.
A one-time gift of any size funds the work directly. Same button, same place. Choose “one time” instead of monthly on the Fractured Atlas page.
Send any token to our ENS name on Optimism. No platform in the middle, no fee taken out, it lands with us. Not tax-deductible.
Fourteen people became monthly supporters before this model proved itself. They are our Founding Supporters, permanently credited as the people who backed community-made media when it was an idea and a spreadsheet. Every supporter who joins while we are still short of the $1,000/mo goal joins this cohort. When we hit the goal, the founding roll closes and stays on this page for good.
Founding roll · 14 members · names published as each supporter opts in
Not everyone has five dollars. Everybody has a street.
The other way to back this is to make some of it. Ask somebody a question where you live, get them to answer their own question on camera, then post it to X and tag @WeThemMediaHQ. It goes up on our channel with your name and your city on it. We are going for 150 of them by 4 November, and during a campaign like that an interview is worth as much to us as a subscription.
How One Question works →The Weekly Connect is our community townhall, every Wednesday at noon New York time. It is where the week’s street interviews get played and argued about, and where the team says what it is actually working on. Everyone who backs this is invited, and so is everyone who does not. Come and see what the money makes before you decide anything.
$1,000 a month is the number. It covers wages for Gift and Bayo, the tools, and the fees that come with moving money to Nigeria. Past that, this stops running on one person’s savings and starts running on the people who watch it.
The work happens either way. Reporters are filing, the catalog is going up, and we post seven days a week whether the number moves or not. Support decides how much of it we can pay for, not whether it gets made.
Why are you asking for support?
I am bootstrapping this. Support buys me the time to work on it fully and to grow the team. I am asking for the runway it takes to get We Them Media established as a platform and to release everything we have already filmed, which is years of it.
What happens when you hit the funding goals?
At $2,500 a month we run at full capacity. At $5,000 a month we go further: more investigations, more community projects funded, more contributors paid. Each number on the ladder buys a specific thing, and we say which.
Can I contribute one time instead of monthly?
Yes. One-time gifts go through Fractured Atlas in USD, or you can send any token to wethemmedia.eth on Optimism. Monthly supporters get direct community access and a voice in what we investigate, so we lead with monthly, but one-time works.
I am interested but not ready to contribute yet. Can I follow along?
Join the Discord. We post updates, share research, and build community there. No financial commitment required. Join the Discord.
Is my donation tax-deductible?
Yes. We are a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a 501(c)(3), so anything given through them is deductible in the US.
Let's build this together.
This is already happening. Videos have shipped from eight countries, contributors have been paid, and the catalog is public. We post seven days a week on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and X, so you can watch us work before you decide. What we are short on is the money to keep the cameras out.
Your money pays the people filming. Your questions go on the board and get asked on the street. You will see what happened to both.
Come get involved.
Fractured Atlas · USD, tax-deductible, funds day-to-day operations now. Cancel anytime.
wethemmedia.eth · any token, on Optimism. Direct, no platform fee, not tax-deductible.