Everything, in the open
Transparency
Sunlight is a safety program too. This page holds Orlando Mothers Watch’s legal status, governance, and published budget — every line’s arithmetic shown.
What we are, on paper, today
| Operating structure | In formation: a fiscally sponsored project of an established Orlando 501(c)(3) — agreement in negotiation. Donations open only once it is executed — and this table names the sponsor, with its papers, the day it is. |
|---|---|
| Federal tax status | None claimed today. Under the signed sponsorship, gifts are received by the sponsor — an IRS-determined 501(c)(3) — and are deductible as the law allows from day one. |
| Books | Monthly fund accountings from the sponsor’s records; quarterly financials from month one — starting, if necessary, with a proud and public $0; the Year-1 independent audit published in full. |
| The stipend, on paper | Mothers are stipended $100 per shift — taxable compensation, not a reimbursement, administered and reported by the book through the fiscal sponsor, every stipend visible in the published books. |
Who is behind this
Citizens, patrons, staff, and businesses are funding their actual night shift
The people who live on these blocks and love them after dark — residents, bartenders and servers, patrons, venue and restaurant owners, landlords, churches — are raising the pilot’s budget privately, a few dollars at a time, not waiting on millionaires. No tax dollars are requested in year one. Large donors are welcomed; none direct the mission.
No individual or business is named on this page today, and that’s deliberate: names appear only on the live ledger, with written consent, once giving opens. Every dollar and every consenting name publish there; a gift without consent is listed by amount alone.
“I’ve seen the evolution of downtown, the devolution of downtown and now I’m on the part where we’re trying to reinvigorate and revive downtown.”
Governance armor — installed before the first dollar
Independent treasurer
From outside the bar industry, with dual signatures required on anything over $2,500.
Operator-minority board
Hospitality operators hold under one-third of board seats. The founder holds one seat and is recused from every venue-benefit decision.
Published books
Quarterly financials from month one; the Year-1 audit published in full.
The list firewall
Donor and volunteer lists are charitable assets: never sold, never rented, never matched to a voter file, never touched by any campaign. Written into the governing documents and into every pledge agreement.
Recognition only
Every sponsorship pledge carries the same sentence, verbatim: recognition only — zero operational influence. And it runs both ways: sponsors may not cite Orlando Mothers Watch in any permit dispute.
The Mothers hold power
A volunteer-elected Founding Mothers Council reviews every incident and can overrule the board on any question of how Mothers are treated.
The deal, plainly — the one-year covenant
If the pilot funds, this governance stands for the full pilot year, audited and published at the end of it. If the goal isn’t reached, every dollar goes back to OMW donors. Both promises are in writing before the first dollar.
The binding text of both promises is being drafted by counsel into the gift acknowledgment and the sponsorship agreement before giving opens. TODO_COUNSEL
The Public Ledger
$0 — for now
The ledger opens the day giving opens; from that day the number updates weekly and every dollar behind it is published. This is a referendum: Orlando votes with what it gives.
The goal: $242,000 — derived line by line in the budget below.
Quarterly reports will be linked here as they publish, beside the monthly counts the OMW App publishes — safe walks, de‑escalations, people helped. The first report will be short. It will still be published.
The conflict of interest, in plain words
Yes: bar owners will help fund this program. We’d rather say it plainly than have it discovered. This is the tension of nightlife, pivoted to solution-oriented support: downtown’s venues already fund enforcement — about $1.6 million of the city’s ≈$6 million downtown policing bill comes back from venue fees — and some operators want to fund the civilian layer too. Good.
How any funder’s money is kept from steering the mission: operator dollars sit under an operator-minority board and an independent treasurer; every pledge says “recognition only, zero operational influence”; the books publish quarterly; the founder is recused from anything that could touch a venue’s interests, his own industry included.
And one promise in both directions: sponsors may not cite Orlando Mothers Watch in any permit dispute, and OMW will never lobby on the After-Midnight ordinance — not for it, not against it. We are not the industry’s answer to the city, or the city’s answer to the industry. OMW is a force multiplier for the officers already downtown. We are the street’s answer to 3 AM. We are the citizens’ hand in our own vibrancy — the fans bringing this city back to the playoffs of downtowns.
The published budget — the plan and the money, arithmetic shown
Timeline: formation and fundraising, fall 2026, with training running in parallel — pilot-cohort first walks Q4 2026; full corridor coverage Q1 2027. Sprint hard close February 28, 2027. Launch is declared at the staffing the bench and the fund sustain, never above it.
The staffing the money buys: teams of three, two shift arcs a night across the 10:30 PM–3:00 AM core (the second crew arrives fresh for the close). Full strength (“ceiling”) = two teams per arc: 12 stipended shift-slots a night. Floor = one team per arc: 6 slots a night. Both configurations are published so nobody has to guess what a smaller raise buys.
The stipend arithmetic, in the open
Ceiling: 12 slots × 2 nights × 26 weeks = 624 shift-slots × $100 = $62,400.
Floor: 6 slots × 2 nights × 26 weeks = 312 shift-slots × $100 = $31,200.
A Mother at the standard 3–4 shifts a month earns $300–$400 a month in stipends — taxable compensation, reported by the book.
| Line | Ceiling | Floor | The math, plainly | Sponsor offset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Program director / coordinator — full-time W-2, six months | $33,600 | $33,600 | $60K-annualized salary ($30,000) + employer FICA, Florida reemployment tax, and workers’ comp (≈$3,600). The program’s only paid staff role. | — |
| Training — 40-hour curriculum built with our consultant D2C (Dedication 2 Community); first two weeks shadowed by retired police chiefs from its network | $40,000 | $40,000 | Curriculum build + cohort delivery + certifications. OPD Citizen Observer certification is hoped for and the ask is pending — the budget assumes nothing from OPD. | A training underwriter frees this entire line |
| Background screening | $2,600 | $2,000 | State name checks across the applicant bench (≈80 ceiling / ≈50 floor at $25) + fingerprint screens for team leads. | — |
| Uniforms, fully kitted, with spares | $8,000 | $4,800 | Decorated hi-vis jacket $50–90 at volume + shirt, cap, ID ≈$80–125 per Mother; 60 kits with spares → verified vendor range $5,500–$8,600, budgeted at the high side. Floor: ≈35 kits. | The classic line: in Norway, an insurer has bought the night-walkers’ jackets since 1995 |
| Radios + personal-protection-grade kit | $10,000 | $8,000 | Radio fleet + licensing (≈$5,000 ceiling), 130dB duress alarms and high-lumen lights (≈$1,500), anchor-corner kits and consumables (≈$3,500). Naloxone costs $0 under Florida’s statewide standing-order distribution. | Kit and Narcan sponsors keep the pouches full |
| Stipends — $100 per shift (“stipended expertise”) | $62,400 | $31,200 | 624 / 312 shift-slots × $100 — the slot math above. Taxable compensation, administered and reported by the book through the fiscal sponsor. | — (the stipend is never sponsor-directed) |
| Insurance — six months, documentation protocol disclosed | $10,000 | $10,000 | Estimate pending a real quote. Small-nonprofit baselines run far lower, but a late-night street program prices at a multiple — honest planning range $12,000–$15,000/yr (GL $1M/$2M, volunteer accident/AD&D, D&O, non-owned auto). Broker engaged early; some carriers will decline; this number updates when the quote is real. | An insurance partner is the highest-leverage sponsorship on this table |
| Independent evaluation (university partner — to be engaged at funding floor) | $30,000 | $30,000 | Estimate; evaluator engaged when funding clears the launch floor — target partner and study design in “Proof, not vibes” below. Basis: evaluation guidance runs 13–16% of program budget; comparable university evaluations price ≈$55–65K — our fear-not-crime scope prices under them. Per volunteer: $30,000 ÷ 55 trained = $545 (ceiling) / ÷ 30 = $1,000 (floor). | An evaluation underwriter buys the public its proof |
| Launch, media & collateral | $8,000 | $7,000 | Launch materials, consented storytelling (off-shift, release-based), print, witness-connect cards. | Media sponsor |
| Legal & accounting | $8,000 | $8,000 | Formation, agreements, counsel’s refund-term drafting, CPA review of the fund. The Year-1 independent audit is budgeted in the operating year. | — |
| Admin & contingency | $17,000 | $14,000 | ≈8% of the subtotal ($212,600 / $174,600), rounded. | — |
| Program total, six months | $229,600 | $188,600 | Sum of the lines above. | |
| Fiscal-sponsor processing — 5% of funds raised | $12,100 | ≈$9,930 | 5% × $242,000 = $12,100 (floor: ≈$9,930). The sponsor’s published fee for receiving and administering every gift — invoiced on the ledger for all to see. | — |
| Goal (gross raise) | $242,000 | ≈$198,600 | $229,600 ÷ 0.95 = $241,684 → rounded to $242,000 (nets $229,900 — a $300 cushion). Floor: $188,600 ÷ 0.95 = $198,526 → ≈$198,600, the launch-or-refund line. |
One goal, stated identically everywhere: $242,000. Every line above is sourced in our public source ledger or marked as an estimate with its basis — and every sponsored line extends the runway: a sponsorship that carries a line frees the same dollars to keep the Mothers on the street longer. For scale: one Mother’s entire shift ($100) costs about what one hour of one extra-duty officer costs (≈$99 loaded, Orlando Weekly, Feb. 2026).
Proof, not vibes
When funding clears the launch floor, OMW will formally engage an independent university evaluator — our target is the University of Central Florida’s Department of Criminal Justice — to run a pre-registered study of the thing we claim to move: how safe the street feels, measured before we start and six months in, on our corridors and on comparison blocks we don’t walk. Budgeted at $30,000. The report goes to the public and the City the day it’s done — whether it flatters us or not. That’s the difference between asking Orlando to trust us and handing Orlando the evidence.
Fund the nights. Back the build.
The table above is Fund the nights — the charitable rail: the Orlando pilot itself. Back the build — the Kickstarter campaign — creates what every city gets: the OMW app (in development now), the published playbook, the deployment kit. Kickstarter funds only the things being made, never operations — so the two never mix, and both ledgers publish. Give to either. Give to both. Orlando wins twice.