Facebook Publication Date: 10/18/2019 13:10

I am re running the Ask. Look for it.

I am also including a response that you can also see if you look at the comments, but I thought it was important for you to see right here right now.

When we say that if we don’t hit a sustainable level, and it is a very modest amount, but that if we do not, we, I, we’ll have to close up shop we’re dead serious.

We have been doing this for almost two years. It has never been sustainable.

You will see my response below. It is incredibly Raw. I almost took it down.

But you all need to hear this. I have not been this blunt with you for over a year.

If you want this space to continue, you need to support it. And fewer than 10% of you actually do.

We are going to be doing even more when we move to the website.

My amazing admin is with child, and we will actually need more people to step up in administrative and moderating roles.

We need more of you, more from you, concomitant with what we give all of you, but we consistently get less.

That is not sustainable.

If this is a place you want to continue, you need to let us know.

It is taking Monumental effort to move to the website with all of our other commitments, and we are basically doing it alone.

There is something deeply unsavoury about me thinking about having to get a part-time job to supplement the space that is, ultimately, for all of you.

So we as a community have some decisions to make.

Is what we have built worth keeping?

*****

M Boe Flores when I looked at the sustainer list it was sobering.

We actually have seen a real drop off of people willing to be sustainers, even though our numbers month-over-month of followers and likers have increased a lot.

That’s telling me something. People want to be in this space and they want the space to continue and they find value in it. Which is great.

Increasingly though now they feel it’s kind of a public resource and they don’t necessarily see the need to contribute financially which is a large part of why we get the low numbers of that we do. There’s a lot of reasons for that.

But this is feeling like about a year-and-a-half ago when it was really discouraging.

That’s why I set a timeline for myself for the two-year mark.

If we are not sustainable by January then I have some decisions to make. And I know that people would lose their minds if I said I was shutting down.

There’s so much Dynamic going into this. This idea that I can’t really be invested in this if I’m monetizing it, however lightly; that white people don’t want me to live large on their dime

I actually gave an answer to Jennifer in another sub thread on this post that actually broke down our very modest goals.

We are doing work that no one else is doing. When you count all the hours that I put into this project, I sometimes cry at the number.

The problem with it is in order to get the numbers bigger I have to do more moving to the website is a big deal. It will mean more content, adding groups, more engagement, not less.

I work full time. I’d like to be able to at least attempt to remunerate you and Claire. I would like to pay our contributors.

Everybody wants and expects more, and frankly they’re getting more. What they also are is complacent.

Coming up with the concept of sustainers was a good one and for a while it worked.

But like I told Jennifer, out of about 120 people who are currently sustainers, (out of a total of 4000 community members in about 400 participants), about 20 to 30 show up every month to honor that commitment (and I’m overstating, because I know how pathetic that number is).

The fact is, and I never talked about this, but the people who are listening to this on this subthread know my story for the last two-and-a-half years but almost no one else does.

I can’t afford to do this for free. And I feel shitty that I can’t.

But when my husband attempted suicide multiple times in 2017 I lost that income when he left me.

And I have turned cartwheels to try to make up for at least part of that income. I know that people think I live large, but I don’t.

There’s so much shame in having to ask for money, even though the service we provide here is novel and valid. I feel shame but I don’t have a better job so that I could just do this as a hobby for you all, I feel shame that it feels like what I do here is not good enough to support, even though I’m proud as hell the work I do; that we do.

In the sub thread with Jennifer I mentioned three budgets; one that is bare-bones and that like I said makes up for a portion of the income that I lost.

That’s $2,000 a month. We have never met that goal.

We have had two months will we got big gifts; one is reserved for conferences and retreats and the other one went into general fund, but other than those two months we have never met the goal with the small contributions we get from an increasingly small cohort of people.

I don’t want to sound opportunistic, I know that asking for money is so fraught. We lose people every time I do the ask. Every time.

Month-over-month we gain more than we lose, but almost none of these people in the six months since we have started the program for sustainers have converted into being willing to give regular contributions to this project, and all of the new people do not as well for the most That’s just true.

I haven’t been this blunt about it in over a year. And if I say things that sound pathetic or like I have an expectation or entitlement, I don’t feel comfortable with that either.

What I do know is that I can’t work three jobs.

I work full time at my desk job. I work more than full-time here. It works out to about 90 to 100 hours a week, although I stopped counting a long time ago.

But if I have to take on another part-time job to supplement the work, I simply cannot. I shouldn’t be thinking about finding part time work to subsidize this space.

Nor do I want to become resentful of the space I created or of the people in it.

I’m feeling really activated. I probably should step away from the keyboard. But this needs to be said.

And to the people who are in this conversation with me I know that you stand behind me you and Claire and Deb and Jennifer and a very small cohort of other people who carry this funding on their backs.

But the community, for the most part, does not. And that’s just true.

Like I said if I pull the plug today people would be upset, but they really don’t think about what they choose or not in relationship to the space.

And particularly after the last couple of weeks when I have been called a cult leader and a monster and any number of other things, it makes it even harder to take the huge risk that I do to ask at all.

Which is why my asks are less frequent. And the small amount of this community who do contribute to this tends to only do it with an ask; not on their own.

In terms of boosting the ask posts, that takes a lot of money, and the last two times I did it we actually lost money on that. So we get more reach, but basically that just means more people ignore us.

I really don’t know what else to do.

Like I said I’m going to step away. I think I was a bit too raw. But the people need to hear this.

You guys already know who are already in this conversation and I am grateful for all that you have done.

But I also feel so much that I can’t even say the words that I feel because I don’t want to make anybody upset. I am going to walk away from this keyboard and think.

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