The League of what?
Fan funds exist to bring fans together and strengthen connections across SF fandom worldwide. They operate races between nominated candidates, which raise money to enable travel to another country or region; there the successful delegate will attend a science fiction convention and meet other members of the SF community.
First envisaged in the middle of the twentieth century, the funds continue to support fans to travel to represent fandom in their part of the world, find out more about fandom in the places they visit, and meet in person both known and new contacts. (Today’s fan funds exist alongside a range of other funding methods and mechanisms which assist fans from under-represented communities to attend conventions.)
Fan funds exist only through the generous support of fandom. As well as the small fee paid to vote in each race, money for each trip is raised through auctions at relevant conventions and online, sales of the reports written by fan fund delegates following their trips, and other activities and entertainments intended also to raise awareness of the funds.
See the report on overall fan fund activities at the Worldcon, Glasgow 2024.
So what is this League?
The League of Fan Funds (LFF) is the unofficial umbrella organisation for fan funds operating in the UK. It was formed to help co-ordinate fundraising for individual fan funds at UK SF conventions rather than having separate, perhaps competing, events.
Since 2000 LFF’s fundraising has gone beyond the fan funds themselves and from time to time has included support for other fan-run non-profitmaking endeavours – including the Memory Hole fanzine archive, the Memory Hole Annexe for convention records, the Science Fiction Foundation (SFF) and the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA).
Good causes currently supported by LFF and associated joint fundraising in the UK are:
LFF works with the administrators of the specific funds and other organisations involved to co-ordinate and support joint fundraising activities and general awareness-raising, as needed. The extent of LFF’s involvement at any given time depends on the help and support wanted by individual fan fund administrators. It remains an unofficial organisation, not least due to the separate responsibility of each elected fan fund administrator for their own funds and to the relatively small scale of money raised.
LFF has its own separate bank account; this helps with collection and disbursement of funds raised, as well as temporarily holding sums on behalf of the good causes that don’t have their own UK bank accounts. It is not a registered charity, and neither are most of the funds and organisations supported.
For a little more detail see our summary of the amounts raised and disbursed since 2020.
Who’s involved?
Current members of LFF are Claire Brialey, John Coxon (former TAFF administrator), Flick, Ang Rosin (former GUFF administrator), and Alison Scott (current European GUFF administrator). All are volunteers who have been involved for some years with activities to raise money, improve the profile and support the administration of the various fan funds.
Alison was a founder member of LFF, along with former TAFF administrators Bridget Bradshaw and Maureen Kincaid Speller.
LFF collectively can be contacted via LeagueofFanFunds [at] groups [dot] io
More history for those who can’t resist
The League of Fan Funds replaced the former, even more informal, ‘United Fan Funds’ in 2000. Its function is to co-ordinate fundraising and distribute those funds where needed, being accountable to UK SF fandom about where the money handled comes from and where it goes.
LFF also inherited the pot of money that had previously constituted the ‘Mexicon Hat’, established from the final proceeds of the Mexicons to provide grants and loans as seedcorn funding for fannish projects. The original intention was that, if there was no real call for such a financial service, within a few years the money would be distributed to ‘all the usual causes’. Consequently, in 2004 the LFF divided the bulk of the remaining Mexicon Hat funding equally between the SFF and the BSFA (who were then providing additional support to the Arthur C Clarke Award) and the main ‘travel funds’ involving the UK and the rest of Europe, TAFF and GUFF.
Over £1,000 (from sums donated by different conventions to the fan funds collectively, plus small residues from fundraising auctions after rounded amounts were disbursed to individual funds) is currently held by LFF in the bank account against contingencies. If necessary this could be used for a small loan to a fannish project along the original lines of the Mexicon Hat.
Continuing thanks to all those who donate money, time, fundraising items or other assistance to the fan funds – including David Langford, who among many other services to fan funds is hosting this web page.