War Zone Diary #32 – Ripley’s Heroes Financial Friday. Week ending 20 May, 2022.

From the CEO:
We are immensely gratified for you, our individual heroes, for your solid support and donations to the front line heroes we are all supporting.  We are still awaiting non-Profit status, the process is long and arduous, but we believe it will be approved soon and is the right thing for Ripley’s Heroes. In the meanwhile, we remain a fully licensed LLC so we can operate, and operate fully in the light of day; with government approval and with ALL our financial information visible to state and U.S. Government authorities. We are accountable to the Government, but responsible to YOU our donors. Me and my team at Ripley’s Heroes CANNOT express enough our thank you for your contributions and well wishes as we continue to grow to fully realize our mission statement. Most importantly, thank you for the trust you’ve placed in us to use your donations wisely and where they really matter most to end this war quickly.

Statement from the CFO:
We are thrilled to have completed our first 30 days of operation and wanted to let you know how grateful we are for YOUR donations and provide you with information on how they are being used.

Financial Discussion:
During the first thirty days we are humbled to report Ripley’s Heroes has taken in Donations from just over 3,100 individuals with our average donation just over $80. Our donors have come from 54 different countries. The majority of our donors are from the US (approx. 64%) followed by the United Kingdom (8%), Germany (5%) and Canada (5%) with no other country making up more than 5%. None of the donations to date have come from business entities instead we have been funded 100% by individual donors.

We have spent approximately 67% of the funds raised to date. There are no salaries or costs charged to Ripley’s Heroes for any of the administrative personnel – the only admin costs we have incurred during this time have been related to fees charged by the donation processors and those are approx. 3% of the total donated. All other amounts have been expended on Mission Related Programs.

Our program related expenditures to date can be broken into several categories: Night Vision and Thermal Optics (51%), Vehicle Purchases (37%), Travel Reimbursements for Legion Members (Gas and transportation – auto, bus, car, rail and plane) and Medical Volunteers (5%), Medical Supplies (4%), and Misc Equipment and Supplies for Legion Members (3%) (combat harnesses, carabineers, gear bags, large packs, etc).