How Donations Work: Donation Policy

Individuals and groups that work with/for transfems can put themselves, or any other suitable person, forward for the chance of random allocation via the form found on the FiveforFive home page (fiveforfive.co.uk). It is important that when filling out the form there is contact information included so that, if someone is chosen, they can be informed and accordingly go through the process of requesting a claim via Open Collective.

FiveforFive receives funds throughout a calendar month and then dispenses them to five separate individuals and organisations. For example, if FiveforFive were to receive £500 in a calendar month (and for example’s sake, ignoring processing fees on processing providers’ ends), we would send that out at the end of each month in the following way:

• £100 each to FOUR individual trans women, trans girls, transfems (total £400)
• £100 to ONE organisation or group working with and for trans women, girls, transfems (total £100; however, if one relevant group or organisation is not put forward in any given month, this total will instead be given to an individual as above, making that total £500).

When entries to the recipient list are vetted at the end of the month, we will check whether everyone is UK-based and is a trans woman, girl, and/or transfem. This is easier when there’s an active fundraiser (e.g. GoFundMe) attached, but that is not always necessary if there is also some contact information attached so that we’re able to verify this information otherwise. We rely on people’s honesty and good sense around this, but there have been instances in the past where people who are otherwise not applicable to be a FiveforFive recipient have put themselves forward, so we're seeking to avoid this whilst not grilling someone on their identity.

Everyone who is put forward is triaged at the end of the month [screenshot of what the spreadsheet looks like on FiveforFive’s end below]. If no contact or identifying information has been sent to FiveforFive, the submission is marked as ‘Unsuitable’. All relevant and triaged submissions then have their corresponding Unique ID* added to a list on Wheel of Names (a random name chooser) and they are chosen that way.

*Unique ID is used to avoid both long and confusing URLs being pasted across, and to minimise any risk of unconscious bias and/or data leakage by anonymising the submissions on the administration end.

Priorities are:

• those suitable for funding (i.e. we have adequate information including social media if relevant, email address, fundraiser URL) who have not received money from FiveforFive - new submissions and those marked as ‘Roll over’ being treated equally
• Those suitable for funding who have previously received money from FiveforFive (marked as ‘Sent previously - roll over’); only will be added to the random selector in the event that there are not enough new/unfulfilled submissions in any given month, including those rolled over

Where a person is randomly selected, FiveforFive will get in touch to organise and their status will change to ‘Money sent’. If someone is suitable but not selected that month, the submission status will change to ‘Roll over’, meaning that that submission will be added again to the following month (and so on) for random selection, on equal footing with any new submissions.

We would ask that you do not submit yourself or an individual when you know they have previously received funds from FiveforFive.

Payments will be made on the Tuesday and Friday following the end of the month.