Fighting for justice

George Floyd was part of the creative community. When a creative voice — or any voice — is silenced by police brutality, we have to fight back against racial inequality. We have to take action. We have a responsibility to our creators and employees to fight for, and with them, against injustice.

Today and forever, Patreon stands with our Black creators and with Black people everywhere. We stand with all the courageous people fighting for equality. We stand with the voices calling for the end of racism. We stand with the people calling for change and reform.

Racial injustice has been embedded in our country’s foundation for hundreds of years and to debate otherwise is to ignore the facts. Unless we push for immediate change, the murders and injustices will prevail with the list of victims getting longer and longer. From Eric Garner to Breonna Taylor to Trayvon Martin, how many more lives will it take? How many more people will be the victims of a broken system before we see significant and sustainable change?

We are enraged and saddened by the persistent racism that permeates our society, but our feelings will not fix the problem. At Patreon, we have a platform with which we can drive change, and if we fail to leverage that platform, we become part of the problem. We have a tremendous amount of responsibility in forging relationships with creators of color, actively supporting their work, and communicating that we as a company are doing everything we can to model effective, equitable behavior internally.

Today, Patreon is donating $50,000 to organizations fighting racial injustice, 50% will be donated to Black Lives Matter and the recipient of the remaining 50% will be determined by Represent, an internal Employee Resource Group for employees who identify as a person of color. In addition, we will be increasing our recruiting budget and efforts to hire more people of color across all teams and levels.

Creators are often decades ahead of society — they show us the future. Their values are the values of those who come after us. In that spirit, we have doubled our budget for Patreon employees to support creators directly and encouraged them to use the new funds to support creators of color, learn more about racial injustice, and form relationships with the important voices of our time. We expect this program to send an additional $30,000 – $50,000 directly to creators of color each year.

Change won’t happen on its own. It’s up to all of us to create it and support it.