Our story

Leadnow was founded in 2010 by a group of young people who cared about a wide range of issues and wanted to create a new, non-partisan way for people to participate effectively in our democracy.

No. Leadnow is an independent, registered non-profit organization, and we aren’t affiliated with any political party. Our supporters vote for various political parties, and we work on issues we care about across party lines. We recognize that partisanship can sometimes be a barrier to democratic engagement for some, and we believe that as progressives, we are more powerful when we focus on raising the bar for all parties by growing a movement united by shared values and a desire for people-powered change.

We’re incredibly proud and grateful to be supporter-funded. We rely on the Leadnow community for small donations that provide most of our funding. Within a year of our launch in 2011, we grew our community enough to rely on crowdfunding through many small donations to sustain our work. Now in 2024, approximately 75% of our total funding comes from our community generously supporting our campaign’s work and organization — over 3,000 supporters sustain our core mandate with regular monthly donations. As movement builders, we’re also committed to working in allyship with other organizations when issues demand collective power. We occasionally receive grant funding from allied organizations to work on specific campaigns aligned with our community’s top-ranked priorities, like addressing the climate emergency.

Please consider chipping in today by visiting our donation page.

Your donations help fund our campaigns, our operations and our cutting-edge technology to unite, strengthen and amplify the voices and actions of our community. Donors fund campaign tactics like radio ads and rallies, and cover the salaries of our small team. We know the Leadnow community has ambitious plans and we’ve worked hard to manage donations efficiently to ensure the greatest impact possible.

Since 2014, Leadnow has partnered with Public Outreach, a Canadian company that conducts telefundraising campaigns to bring new monthly donors for charitable and non-profit organizations. Public Outreach’s campaigners are dedicated and knowledgeable Leadnow supporters and have signed up thousands of monthly donors. Their work has made our funding more sustainable and reliable, allowing us to focus on critical longer-term campaigns on the  issues that matter to our community. Public Outreach’s highly-trained and professional team share our passion for achieving progress through democracy.

If you have any questions about Public Outreach, you can reach them toll-free at 1-888-326-5535 or by email at info@publicoutreach.ca. For other donor-related inquiries, you can reach us at donate@leadnow.ca.

Leadnow is a federally regulated and registered non-profit organization. Your donations allow us to engage in unfettered political advocacy work and to be as impactful as possible when engaging with political and corporate leaders. As such, we are unable to provide a charitable tax receipt.

Leadnow’s priorities and campaigns are guided by our shared values and driven by our community. Through face-to-face events, online surveys, social media channels, and digital mobilization, our supporters help us decide where to focus in our priority areas: affordable housing and food, ensuring that greedy corporations pay their fair share, fighting against the rise of the far right, and neutralizing the corrosive influence of the oil and gas lobby so governments will deliver bold climate policies that put people before profit.

We also run rapid response campaigns as urgent issues arise. Our small staff team writes emails to our supporters in the same way an aide briefs the Prime Minister — summarizing an important issue and asking for our community’s support to take action by, for example, emailing their MP or donating to fund an ad in the paper. Our supporters then decide if they want to take action on the issue.

Finally, you can also start your own campaigns! Our petition platform allows anybody to start and run campaigns on the issues they care about. If a petition gains momentum, we’ll share it with other Leadnow supporters who care about similar issues.

Federal elections are key opportunities to help shape the direction of the country, improve people’s lives, and build campaigning and organizing capacity in the Leadnow community. 

During the 2015 election, Leadnow’s Vote Together campaign connected millions of people who wanted change with the information and tools they needed to defeat the Harper Conservatives. We built a volunteer network of 45 local teams and 5,500+ volunteers who had 51 500+ voter-to-voter conversations at the door and on the phones. This network continues to canvass and organize around our priority campaigns.

Vote Together was an ambitious strategy, and for a first-time effort, it paid off well. We’ve published a report that documents how we built this campaign, how we executed the strategy in Conservative swing ridings, our first reflections on its success — and what we could have done better. Watch the video and read the full report here.

We occasionally support or participate in regional elections. For example, we impacted provincial elections, such as in BC, where in 2017, we helped defeat Christy Clark’s Liberal government and encouraged the NDP and Greens to form a governing alliance founded on core issues that the Leadnow community cares about.

As an organization that is focused on building collective power in communities, it’s essential that we view elections as a key moment along a spectrum of moments in time to build and focus collective community power. We know no single federal or regional election will “win” the good and just society we all want to live in. Elections are critical inflection and action points that connect the progressive movement to a future where wins extend before, during, and beyond any one election.

There are so many ways you can get involved!

To learn about volunteering opportunities, sign up here.

You can follow us on social media and share Leadnow content: Facebook | Instagram | X/Twitter

You can take action on our open campaigns here.

And you can support our work by donating here.