Hello! I wanted to write this for anyone that is curious about what has gone into this workshop. Perhaps you are interested in hosting a similar event in your town, or maybe you are a participant this year and want to see how it’s being put together, or you’re just curious about where your donation is going. With this, I hope to provide more information about our budget and resources, and to demystify the difficulty of organizing your own event.
Our total budget is 20,000 USD. This workshop is hosting twenty-six women and paying two teachers, and we are using every dollar judiciously.
Instructors [$5000]: We are paying Sarah Schulman and Casey Plett the same rate that the Lambda Literary workshop pays its instructors: $2500.
Travel [$6000]: All the participants in the workshop were given the opportunity to request travel assistance either in the form of a partial refund or outright purchase of their travel arrangements. Over half of the participants have requested assistance of some kind. When we began organizing, we knew that travel would be a large factor in limiting people’s ability to participate, so we made this a priority within the budget.
Food [$2600]: Food is an accessibility issue, if you can’t eat you can’t write. We budgeted this amount to supply food for the workshop and to offset costs for anyone coming into the city who might need it.
Accommodations & Accessibility [$5400]: This allocation covers things like the cost of printing, any additional accommodations we need to make for housing and travel within the city, costs related to the reading events that writers will participate in and any accessibility needs attendees have. Our organizing team has been in close communication with all of our writers about accessibility and we have tried to make this a big priority in planning this workshop.
Emergency [$1000]: Ack! I have nowhere to sleep! I had an intense allergic reaction to the food I ate at the airport! We ran out of paper! This part of the budget gives us a little wiggle room in case of unforeseen events.
Budgeting Beyond the Money
Additionally, we had a lot of resources that have either been donated or were available to us for free. Recognizing and utilizing these resources has been central to our organizing team.
The Space One of the biggest free assets we have for this event is the space. Having access to Brooklyn College gives us an accessible, beautiful, and academic space that is centrally located between two major transit lines. I asked the LGBTQ Resource Center director at my school to help us, and we were given access to two spaces on the campus for the week, at no cost. It also gives us a really special place in New York to host this workshop. To me that is a win/win.
The City New York City is a transit hub for the Northeast, and is easy to get to by train or bus. It has three airports. Locally, it has a ton of options for public transit. The MTA provides low-cost transportation for participants, virtually eliminating the need for cars.
The Community One of the most powerful resources New York City has to offer is its local network of queers and artists, many of whom are volunteering to house writers on their couches, floors, or air mattresses. Our community in New York City has made this workshop possible by lowering housing costs.
The Fundraiser To manage the fundraiser, we used a plugin on the Topside Press website. A mainstream fundraising site would have cost us over a thousand dollars more in fees, so this was a huge savings for our organizing team.
Where is the money coming from?
Some of the money is coming from tuition charged to participants (suggested $300 per person) on a self-determined sliding scale. Some participants are paying zero, and some participants are paying more than the suggested amount, based on their own assessments of their financial ability to participate. In fact, the participants pay their tuition simply by donating to the fundraiser. All the rest of the money for the budget is coming from individual donations. This workshop is not supported by grants or corporate sponsorship.
Lead Organizer Zoey Wolfe has spent the last couple days writing up this guide to our budget, which might be useful for other folks who would like to plan a similar workshop in their home town.
