"Inside The Membership Model" with Bellingcat's Development Team

This week, we explored how our work is funded - what keeps our open-source collective's lights on? Bellingcat's Sarah Bishop Woods and Mareike Vitt, both members of our Development Team, joined us to explain our new funding structure: a Bellingcat membership model. We discussed what a membership model is, why Bellingcat has adopted it, and the benefits and risks associated with this type of funding. Mareike also stressed that relying on a single source of funding is not enough to sustain an organisation in the current economic climate.

The talk was hosted by Charlotte Maher on July 3oth 2026. Music featured is courtesy of Artlist.

Recorded live in our Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/bellingcat

Links:

Become a Bellingcat member: https://www.bellingcat.com/donate/

Mareike's previous talk is here on wider funding models: https://rss.com/podcasts/bellingcatstagetalk/1897808/

Bellingcat Toolkit: https://bellingcat.gitbook.io/toolkit

Listed member benefits: https://www.bellingcat.com/bellingcat-member-benefits/

Some guidance on how to support Bellingcat from Mareike, we're grateful for all of them:

Amplify. Share our program, newsletters or posts within your networks.

Take initiative. You can create your own campaign for Bellingcat and start raising funds within your peers by e.g. for your birthday, run a half-marathon, live-stream your gaming activity

• Fundraiser for Bellingcat NL (tax-deductible in NL)For raising funds that are tax deductible in NL: https://www.bellingcat.com/bellingcat-member-benefits/
• Fundraiser for Bellingcat US (tax-deductible in the US) For raising tax deductible donations in the US: https://donorbox.org/peer-to-peer-fundraising-for-bellingcat

Targeted support. You can support specific causes at Bellingcat now. We’ve created a dedicated fund to support the Bellingcat Toolkit. Let us know what else you’d like to support. Donations to support the Bellingcat Toolkit specifically: https://www.bellingcat.com/donate-bellingcat-toolkit/

Advise. Your insight is important to us, and we will listen carefully.

Connect. If someone from your network belongs in the conversation, we would be grateful for the introduction.

Any ideas, questions or initiatives, we're here for you: donations@bellingcat.com