The Outrage

Rebecca Lee Funk is the CEO and Founder of The Outrage, which she started in 2016 looking to channel public outrage into sustained civic engagement.

The Outrage quickly grew to become a hub for activism, serving as an official partner for every progressive social movement since its founding (Women's March, March for Our Lives, etc) and today has a network of 100k+ activists across the country. Prior to The Outrage, Rebecca worked as a senior e-commerce executive for LivingSocial and National Geographic. She began her career as an economist focused on food policy in West Africa, holding positions with the United Nations and IFPRI. Rebecca graduated from Yale University with a MA in Economics and a MEM Environmental Economics. Rebecca is recognized by the Marie Claire New Guard as one of 50 women changing the world we live in and identified by Washingtonian as one of Washington's Most Powerful Women.

The Outrage is building a nation-wide network of hubs for activism, with flagship headquarters based in DC. Our mission is simple — We seek to make it easy, tangible, and accessible for individuals to authentically engage with progressive movements and take their activism further. In our community and retail spaces, The Outrage has registered thousands to vote, helped thousands more to contact their representatives, fundraised for progressive organizations and put on hundreds of community events featuring presidential candidates, representatives, activists and celebrities. We've been an official partner of every major movement since the 2016 election — think Women's March, March for Our Lives, Families Belong Together, etc. By leveraging the power of community and fashion, we're mobilizing the next generation of activists to shift culture and change the world we live in. We're building the future of civic engagement. Join us. 

We seek to make it easy, tangible, and accessible for individuals to authentically engage with progressive movements and take their activism further. We've been building this infrastructure since 2016: a central hub for activism and dedicated, long-term resources for civic engagement. We set out to build this infrastructure through the realization that activating progressives solely around presidential elections does not deliver lasting change. You can’t drop in every four years and seek to turn out voters in communities in which you haven’t established relationships. But we repeatedly see campaigns and organizations pack up their ground operations and leave once the votes are tallied.

The Outrage is dedicated to building and sustaining this infrastructure - establishing physical hubs for activism in cities across the country that will operate 365 days a year for decades to come.For any new or long-time activist that wants to see change in the world, we provide both the scaffolding and a venue to help make that change a reality. 

Now more than ever, progressives need a singular space where supporters of orgs that represent a broad swath of social justice issues might cross-pollinate, allowing organizations to both expand their reach and benefit from economies of scale. 

The Outrage builds hubs for activism across the country. We hold physical space for progressive causes, underrepresented communities and, generally, convene interesting humans who care. Our mission is simple: To make it easy, tangible and accessible for anyone to become more civically engaged. And we do this by leveraging the power of both community and fashion, with a strategy grounded in behavioral economics and data analytics. 

Peek in our DC flagship to see what we’re replicating throughout the country. Enter and find a progressive retail space where you can stock up on ethically sourced merchandise championing the causes you care about (we donate with every purchase). Pass our voter registration stand, the ‘Call Your Reps’ phone booth, and welcome desk to enter a 2,000 square foot community space that serves as a communal living room during the day and hosts 3-5 weekly events on the issues you care about. You want Presidential candidates? To meet the The Squad? Self-care workshops? Womxn’s rights programming? Events on LGBTQIA+ issues, supporting communities of color, combating climate change, etc.? We have all the above. Or do you just want to catch up with like-minded friends over a beer? Great, because we’re also a bar.

We bring together two key audiences — 

1. People who want to become more civically engaged. While folks of all ages walk through our door and land on our website, the majority of our audience is young and eager to tap into their political power. Our community is highly educated (91% are college graduates) and while they almost unanimously express a desire to increase their activism, they have limited free-time and need structured, accessible and flexible ways to do so. For many, connecting with us is a first step on their journey to greater civic engagement.  

2. Organizations and community organizers who can provide curriculum and entry points to activism. These individuals and orgs are simultaneously our collaborators and our customers. In focus groups they expressed a need for physical space and a desire for cross-pollination with other progressive organizations. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship that amplifies the work of the organization while increasing our customer base (30% of first-time event attendees make a retail purchase on the way out) and allows us to build local activist communities that engage with a variety of causes.

The Outrage serves as the megaphone, not the voice, existing to connect our community with the causes they care about so that collectively we can take action to build something new together. 

We do this by amplifying pivotal issues facing society, including but not limited to racial justice, civic engagement, disability rights, ending violence, environmental justice, immigrant, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and womxn’s rights. We’ve created a platform that has a spectrum of engagement points from walking in off the street and buying a tee, to contacting your reps, to building an entire lifestyle that centers intentionality and questioning at every point.

Our CEO and Founder, Rebecca Lee Funk, was on the hunt for feminist merchandise that was (1) aesthetically on point, (2) ethically produced, and (3) women-owned. When she couldn’t find it, The Outrage launched in October 2016 as a feminist e-tailer, poised to celebrate the election of the first woman president with an aesthetically pleasing and ethically produced apparel collection that donated to progressive organizations with every purchase. In the wake of the presidential election, we partnered with Women’s March to open a pop-up store to help build awareness and fundraise for the upcoming march. Four-hour lines formed outside of our store, as over 100k people streamed in to buy merchandise. But once inside, customers wanted more than retail. They asked to host book clubs, organize voter registration events and poster-making parties.  Some simply asked to sit on our couch and cry. A singular underlying theme presented itself: there exists a significant and unmet demand for a physical hub for activism. 

So we pivoted our business model. We would not just be an e-commerce or retail store - we’d also be an educational and nurturing physical space for underrepresented communities and progressive organizations. We’d build the future of civic engagement. 

Fundamentally, the passion I have for this work comes from the power I see in outrage as an emotion. I believe it's a signal of injustice and its existence is often a call to duty. Helping people channel outrage into action, or better yet, sustained civic engagement, is my life's work. 

I spent my former career as an economist, learning how to pull meaningful insights from data to better understand how and why you can motivate people to do things. Applying these lessons to civic engagement has been immensely satisfying. Through a combination of data analytics, community events and fashion we've identified incredibly successful activation points and highly effective ways to engage both new and long-time activists.

Each member of my team was called to movement building work for their own 'personal is political' reasons, whether that's as a survivor of sexual assault, navigating society as a person of color, or a plethora of other identities that impact the way we move through the world.

We each feel a responsibility to amplify people's collective power and at the core of our work is a deep belief that those most affected by the issues should drive the change. 

In addition to our team's background in start ups, movement building, and identity politics, in short, the best evidence that we are uniquely positioned for the proposed work may be our incredibly low customer acquisition costs ($0.50). Our growing and loyal progressive community is a testament to what makes us special and our approach uniquely authentic. 

We are committed activists with sharp business acumen. We know how to reach our customers because they are us. But unlike many passionate activists, we are also uncommonly good at building sustainable businesses. Our journey to becoming the nation’s hub for activism highlights our ability to pivot, build relationships, act on business insights and leverage subject matter expertise.

Since 2016, we’ve learned and evolved. Other organizations that have set out to do what we do haven’t lasted. And our low acquisition costs of both individual customers and larger organizations is a testament not only to this positioning but the deep expertise we have acquired in the process: Our acquisition costs for individual customers (e-commerce, retail or community space) are less than 80x the industry average, and we’ve spent over three years cultivating deep relationships with our community, local organizations and national organizations. In just 3 years, partners have identified us as experts in the space because we’re working WITH them and NOT reinventing the wheel. 

We’ve pivoted and tested a profitable financial model underpinned by multiple revenue streams. Not even COVID-19 can sink our ship.

An example of our resourcefulness and ability to adjust our mission to best serve our community and partners in any context is the launch of The Postcard Project. In the wake of COVID-19, we closed the doors to our retail + community spaces and immediately asked our community — how can we help you during this time? They answered looking for connection, joy, and employment opportunities as many had been laid off. Within 24 hours we launched The Postcard Project — an initiative that allows you to send postcards to your loved ones while practicing social distancing with each postcard being handwritten by someone who has lost their job to COVID-19. We received over 1,000 applications for employment within the first 24 hours and mailed 2,000 postcards in the first week alone. 

Now, we’re teaming up with our strategic partners (think Women’s March, Families Belong Together) to send postcards highlighting their strategic priorities with $1 of each postcard kicking back to their work. Leading up to November elections, The Postcard Project is evolving in the coming weeks and months to support the current priorities of our progressive partners, with a heightened focus on voter engagement.

Rebecca is insanely good at enabling individuals to take action. One example of this - When Rebecca was traveling solo, asleep, on a train in East Africa during her days as an economist, all of her belongings, including pants and shoes, were stolen. 

Instead of focusing on herself and her needs, Rebecca used this opportunity as a catalyst to share the story of the organization she was working with — highlighting that while this one-off obstacle was frustrating, the difficulties of living without electricity or access to fresh vegetables was part of broader systemic issues. 

Her letter circulated within her hometown, raising thousands of dollars to install solar panels for the organization, plant a half acre garden of fresh vegetables for youth who did not have access to fresh food, and set up payments and care for the land after she left. 

Rebecca is a builder — that is what she does and that is who she is. Only Rebecca could have built a culture-shifting business from her couch. It is her ability to pivot, with a lot of resiliency, that's built The Outrage into the movement that it is today. 

- Michelle, CCO 

“...it is not really possible to organize outside of capitalism and thus outside of compromise. What seems to be the problem in the United States anyways, is not that there are nonprofits, but that the organizing is often done solely through the non-profit. In our networks, we found that mass movements in other countries did not necessarily avoid NGOs, foundations, or grant writing. What they did was to develop movements that were funded by their base.”  - Andrea Smith, co-founder of INCITE!

Inspired by the above quote, we've built a new, hybrid space for movement building funded by our base. Instead of building another donation-model business or non-profit, we've built a self-sustaining apparatus to fuel progressive movements - an apparatus that doesn't seek to reinvent the wheel but solely exists to amplify the work already happening. It's capacity building for progressive issues. 

Simultaneously, progressive organizations that represent a wide range of issues are operating in these communities in silos, with one-off events thrown in hotels and random event venues. There isn’t a singular space where supporters of these orgs might cross-pollinate, allowing organizations to both expand their reach and benefit from economies of scale.

And there isn’t a widely used, customer-oriented platform that makes it easy for an average person to get engaged. To walk in off the street and say ‘hey, I’ve got 20 minutes and care about climate change- what can I do right now?’ Enter The Outrage. 

Through community, fashion, and more, The Outrage makes it easy, tangible and accessible for anyone to authentically engage with or support a progressive movement. To emphasize the unique ways that The Outrage engages its members to support progressive movements, we group our outcomes into the following core themes: 

1. Consciousness Raising 

2. Community Building 

3. Engagement + Action 

We recognize that activists develop on a continuum of change and organize our outcomes into short-term, medium-term and long-term. The Outrage’s outcomes are guided by Marshall Ganz’s elements including a story of self, a story of us, and a story of now. 

Story of Self: Short Term — While participating in The Outrage’s programming, to what extent are participants…

• • Gaining a better understanding of identity politics and their self-identification and self-awareness with these identities? 

  • Gaining a better understanding of how as an individual they fit into social issues?

  • Gaining insights on the social and political constructs of privilege? 

  • Questioning their own cultural competence and awareness of current issues and gaining an instilled sense that cultural competence is an ongoing process? 

Story of Us: Medium Term — As a result of The Outrage programming, to what extent have participants…

• • Identified where their passions and skills align to commit to being civically engaged citizens either through their vocational decisions, activism, public service, or social good? 

  • Become active and committed to either one issue or organization? 

  • Used their privilege to serve as a co-conspirator for movement building? 

  • Engaged in courageous conversations with individuals in order to “widen the circle” of movement building? 

  • Actively sought out communities that are different from their own? 

Story of Now: Long Term —As a result of The Outrage programming, to what extent have participants…

• • Become active and committed to movement building as a gateway to a lifetime commitment to civic engagement? 

  • Embedded activism into everyday actions? 

  • Built an entire lifestyle that centers intentionality and questioning at every point? 

  • Not only activated the progressives around them but also grown the movement outside of their own personal networks? 

  • Used intersectionality as a framework for reconstructing their understanding and engagement with social movements? 
    

Currently, The Outrage has a reach of 100k+ individuals with a reach of 3M through partner networks. Across platforms, we average a growth rate of 35-40% each year. In the next year, we'll increase our reach to nearly 150k+ individuals and a reach of 500k+ by year 5. 

Where The Outrage is going:

• In the next 5 years, we will build a nation-wide network of hubs for activism with 25 locations for folx to connect IRL with our mission. 

• The potential to donate 3M over the next 5 years to fuel progressive movements 

• We'll host thousands of events centering communities historically marginalized within movements 

• We further build out an army of progressive activists, shifting culture with everyday actions   

• In an era where some elections are decided by hundreds of ballots, we’ll reach 10 million new voters by Year 3.

Financial: The largest obstacle facing our business today is access to capital. To date, The Outrage has not received any outside investment. As a female-founded business, we’ve faced additional barriers to capital despite having built a profitable business with key performance indicators consistently above industry averages. Only about 2% of venture capital is invested in women-owned businesses and we have received very little interest despite our success. Nonetheless, we’ve bootstrapped a model that supports multiple stakeholders while building a cyclical economy within itself. We pay a fair wage to all staff members, we maintain affordable prices, we have created a community space that serves that actual community (not just those with an ability to pay), and we do all this while donating proceeds back to our community partners. All we need now are the funds to take this model across the country. 

Cultural: We are unapologetically progressive. It is such an exciting time for us as we see in an influx in partnerships from brands like the WNBA, UberEats, and many more, who want to tie themselves to partners that are driving social change. However, it's a double edge sword - while traditional investors are intimidated that we take a stance, that is the very reason why our partners and community want us — because we are driving change and being unapologetically progressive. It's a catch-22. 

This "funding meets cultural catch-22" is what led us to the decision to approach fundraising with a non-traditional lens. Instead of pursuing large funding rounds, we are now focused on capturing smaller opportunities, like grants, to fund specific objectives. Small amounts of funding, targeted at specific revenue streams will allow us to capture low-hanging opportunities.

And that is why we need your help now. We have a model that moves the needle while keeping people engaged. While this is a unique time in history, the social issues don’t go away with new elected officials. We need capital to support and amplify our work so that our mission can continue for not only the next 1-5 years, but for decades to come.

We partner with hundreds of organizations over the course of one year alone. Here are just a few of the ways that we've teamed up: 

• We’ve served as an official partner for every major progressive movement since our founding (think Women’s March, March For Our Lives, Families Belong Together, and more). From helping to plan marches to fundraising via fashion—we’re increasingly called upon to amplify and advise progressive social movements

• We’ve hosted 150+ events at our DC flagship in less than one year (it opened May 2019) with hundreds of both national and local organizations like Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Campaign, NARAL, Black Women Radicals, United State of Women, Supermajority, Women’s March, 500 Women Scientists, March for Our Lives, Moms Demand Action, etc.

• We’ve attracted national brand partnerships and support from companies like Naturalizer, Uber, Colugo, Luna, WNBA and many more. 

• We’ve become the go-to brand for celebrities interested in progressive causes including but not limited to Sophia Bush, Alicia Garza, Liz Plank, and more. 

• We’ve been featured in Marie Claire, Teen Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Forbes, The Washington Post, girlboss, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post and many more. 

The Outrage is mission-driven and inextricably linked with progressive values, leading many to assume we are a non-profit organization. We have intentionally structured ourselves as a C corporation (B corp certification pending) because we believe financial independence in the activist space is imperative. To be candid, we will not get you 10x returns on your investment, but our model is demonstrably profitable and predicts an ROI of at least 3X.

The sustainability of our financial model hinges on diverse revenue streams. Even in the context of COVID-19, the ability to pull on different financial levers has preserved our future viability. Our hubs for activism and centers of civic engagement will not be dependent on donors, grants, or continuous external funding. 

Our revenue streams include: merchandise and apparel sales, both in-store and online, membership dues, rental fees, and bar sales. 

Partnership fees are also a growing and promising revenue stream. We are able to leverage our reputation with our customers and community to help larger brands meaningfully engage in the activist space. Our first partnership will launch in August 2020 with one of the largest shoe companies in the United States.

With the aforementioned revenue streams, we see a clear path to 4M+ in Year 1 and 45M+ in Year 5

The majority of our revenue comes from merchandise and apparel sales, both in-store and online. We’ve seen consistent growth in this area, particularly as we’ve become the go-to brand for celebrities and high profile activists. Additionally, we have been the official retail partner for several large organizations, most notably the Women’s March.

With the opening of our flagship space in May 2019 we introduced multiple new revenue streams including membership dues, rental fees, and bar sales. 

Through membership dues, we offer a sliding scale “choose what you pay” model where no one is turned away based on what they can or cannot afford. We are radically transparent with our costs and one third of our members choose to pay more than the suggested $50/month. We have had dozens of requests for membership from people around the country that cannot physically visit the space but want to fund its existence- this is a promising opportunity for digital membership that we’d like to build out.

The rental fees we charge are lower than industry average, resulting in overwhelming demand from our progressive partners to use our community space for their events. Providing affordable access to physical space for our organizational partners is crucial to our mission.

Bar sales allow us to embed activism into everyday actions, providing an additional touch point to engage with our community.

Since 2016, we've generated $5M in revenue with $0 in investment. 

Beginning in Q1 2021, The Outrage will launch a hub for activism in a new city every quarter. To do this, The Outrage is raising up to $2M to run at three key objectives: (1) New space openings in swing states, (2) hiring of key positions, and (3) marketing. 

As a business focused on impact rather than returns on investments, we are seeking angel investors to provide loans and/or grants to fund our work. To date, we have circled $500k from angel investors.

Omitting.

$300,000 from The Elevate Prize could fund directly fund (2) new openings for The Outrage. This not only immediately advances our mission and increases impact with the birth of (2) new hubs for activism into the world, but this would also free up a substantial amount of our staff's time. Our team of 5 is already at capacity and the hours spent by our Executive Team on fundraising could instead go to movement building. 

In one hub alone, we are able to directly donate our space to hundreds of grassroots organizations, fundraise six-figures for progressive orgs, help hundreds contact their reps, and register thousands to vote. 

Additionally, disasters don’t discriminate but recovery does. We are witnessing underrepresented populations not only suffering more from this pandemic, but also finding themselves at risk of being left further behind in the eventual recovery. Only progressive change -- forged through sustained civic engagement -- can keep this crisis from becoming a permanent scar.

As a society, we have an opportunity to build something new from this pandemic. Building something new doesn't come without creativity and innovation — something that The Elevate Prize inherently attracts with its work. We are interested in teaming up The Elevate Prize because your network attracts social innovators that can advance not only the work of The Outrage but the work of our hundreds of community partners as well. The synergy for collaboration is strong. We are confident that The Elevate Prize x The Outrage will change the world. 

Outside of fundraising, a large obstacle facing The Outrage is brand awareness. We've built a strong community but know there is SO MUCH low hanging fruit for further taping into affinity groups. While we're proud of our marketing and media exposure to date, we are excited to increase capacity, and team up with entities like The Elevate Prize, to take our mission to the next level.