Scott Santens : A Crowdfunded Basic Income Success Story
A little over 13 months ago, Scott Santens set out on a mission that has only gained momentum, increase Basic Income awareness. Since humbly beginning his journey writing articles on his personal blog and his medium account, he has picked up nearly 10,000 subscribers, become a blogger on The Huffington Post, and found himself speaking about Basic Income as an expert panelist.
As of today, he is being paid US$12,000 annually to do it.
This all began when Scott created his Patreon account.
Patreon was founded in 2013 by Pomplamoose’s Jack Conte as a way for content creators to monetize their content and build lasting relationships with their fans. As a Patreon creator, you can choose to ask for pledges monthly or based on the content you create. Scott has asked for a monthly pledge whereas Pomplamoose have asked for a pledge per video.
As you can see Pomplamoose are doing quite well for themselves as artists. Here is their Patreon page where you can see the types of rewards they offer for different levels of pledges.
Here is one of Pomplamoose’s songs, a cover of “I Feel Good” by James Brown.
And if you’re curious to see who is earning the most on Patreon or want to discover different creators, you can check out Pledge Society where they have it all neatly organized.
Now, back to Scott!
Scott made a commitment when he created his Patreon account. Sticking with his ideals for a Basic Income and wanting everyone to be able to achieve one, he thought it was only right to use his account as a method of earning a basic income for himself and for helping others earn their respective basic incomes!
From Scott’s Patreon page:
Taking a page from the Creative Commons concept of Share Alike, any and every patron dollar pledged above $1,111 per month I will consider to be greater than a basic income and will pledge away to other Creators here on Patreon also creating content in support of their own basic incomes by making the same pledge to limit their own final goals to $1,111/mo (plus $333/mo per kid for Creator parents) and pledging to give the rest to others making the same pledge. My goal here is to create a community of content creators all working toward their own basic incomes with the same shared goal of achieving basic incomes for others.
Scott isn’t the appointed Basic Income representative (because there isn’t one), he is however a moderator of the 30,000 subscriber-strong Basic Income subreddit, a dedicated researcher, editor, and freelance journalist.
And as of November 21st, 2015, with 153 supporters with an average donation of $7.26/month, he has succeeded in crowdfunding $1,111 per month towards his own cause. Which comes to $1,000USD per month after Patreon’s fee.
Scott chose the goal of $1,000USD as a way of marking what he believes ought to be the poverty floor. Based on the 2015 Federal Poverty Guidelines, the poverty line for an individual without kids as $11,770. While this might sound like a meager amount, more than 45,000,000 Americans live with less than that.
With the achievement of Scott’s own basic income, he is now “free to begin more fully engaging in the grassroots organizing required to better help achieve [Basic Income] for everyone.”
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Jamie Klinger — Founder of JoatU and Honestly Marketing, Community Organizer, Entrepreneur, Journalist, Photographer, Marketer, Poker Coach and Rebel with a Cause.
For the past three years, I have been living a basic income experiment where I spend less than $12,000 per year to raise awareness for Unconditional Basic Income (UBI).
I am working for, promoting, and writing about causes that I sincerely believe in. If you find my work to be worthwhile, please consider hiring me for a contract, offering me a one-time donation, or supporting my goal in achieving a basic income.
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