Heather Corinna replies:

This summer, Arianna, who is one of our readers, wrote and produced a play at her college about sexuality which also included a fundraising ask for Scarleteen.

This month, Marlena, another Scarleteen user, surprised us with this incredible video she made as part of Project for Awesome, to do what she could to help support what we do and express her experience of what Scarleteen can offer to young people, particularly in a world which is so often unsupportive not just of youth sexuality, but of youth as a whole.

And now, in the last week, yet another fantastic young person began an ingenious self-designed fandom auction to help us here, an effort a host of creative, generous folks have hopped on so far to pitch in with.

We feel the information, support and services we provide for young people are things that young people truly are owed: things they should be able to receive for free from any of us who have the ability to provide them for them. Ideally, our hope is always that older folks with a greater ability to help support organizations and services financially do so that youth can simply take what they need from us as they need it and not have to worry about whether it will still be there for them or not tomorrow or next year.

At the same time, even though their resources are most often far more limited, we've had some young people step up now and in the past to do what they could to help keep us going. That's evidenced well by our fantastic and highly dedicated volunteer staff, all of whom are under 30. Young people have also given through our give-a-buck campaign (which sometimes also includes lovely thank you letters I keep on one wall of my office, letters which always make me smile). Over the years, some of our strongest donors have been those who used Scarleteen as young people, and years later, want to do what they can to say thank you and assure that we're here for other teens and twenty-somethings like we were for them.

We just can't thank all of you enough. Both for what you've been able to do to help provide financial support (support we think you really shouldn't have to give in the first place), but also because when you do things like this, it makes all of us who run and manage Scarleteen feel so great about what we do, have done and can keep on doing. All of the Scarleteen team love the work we do here, but it's hardly an easy job; it's one that asks a lot of our time and energy and requires intensely sustained motivation and determination, especially in a world where what we do and the way we do it is so often grossly unsupported, even though it's exactly what young people themselves are asking for. Efforts like yours are wonderful gifts. They're like having the most amazing alternative cheerleading squad an organization could ask for. Thank you.

Our thanks, too, to all of you, whatever your age, and in whatever way you've done it, who have already given us your support this year. Scarleteen has remained the kind of independent, grassroots media and free-range, progressive activism and advocacy we want it to be for all the years we have operated, and as we enter our 14th year, we are excited to be able to continue the work and service we couldn't sustain without your generosity. Thank you.

We're at the last day of end-of-year fundraising drive. I know how overwhelming it is this time of year with the flood of requests in your postal or email box asking for your support for so many organizations or issues. If you're like me, part of the overwhelm you feel is a deep desire to give to many of these when you know you can't possibly give all you'd like to to all of them, or even more than one or two, at best. Often enough, the most charitable and progressive of us also happen to have wallets whose skimpy contents are highly unreflective of our big-hearted desire to support the organizations and issues most important to us. I know that asking for even a little financial support is often asking a lot, which is one reason why I continue to keep Scarleteen one of the most cost-efficient organizations out there and continue to set our fundraising goals as modestly as I can.

This time around, we've unfortunately -- so far -- only been able to reach less than 1/3rd of our minimum-needed goal of $35,000. When we subtract the two highest donations from the $7,500 we've raised as of today, we're only looking at around $3,000 raised. Anything you can give will make a real difference.

If you can help out in the last days of 2011, we'd truly appreciate it. You can be sure every and any dollar you give to us will be stretched as far as possible to help us continue to provide the trailblazing, holistic sexuality education, information, services and advocacy for millions of young people around the world that we have since they started asking us for our help in 1998.

Support Scarleteen Now

  • To make a secure, tax-deductible donation by credit card online: CLICK HERE.
  • To make a tax-deductible donation by mail, make your check out to The Center for Sex and Culture, writing "For Scarleteen" in the memo. Mail to: The Center for Sex and Culture, c/o Carol Queen, 2215-R Market Street PMB 455, San Francisco, CA, 94114. They will mail a written acknowledgment of your donation to you. The Center for Sex and Culture is a fiscal sponsor for Scarleteen.
  • To donate securely by credit card, online check or account using PayPal: CLICK HERE. Donations made this way are not tax-deductible.
  • To donate by check or money order directly: make checks payable to Scarleteen and send to: Scarleteen, 1752 NW Market Street #627, Seattle, WA, 98107. Donations made this way are not tax-deductible.

This isn't now or never. If you can't give now, but may be able to within a few months, that would be fantastic, too. Whether you can help out now or a bit further down the road, your contribution has real value.

If financial support isn't an option for you, we understand. But don't forget that as an organization without the budget to even adequately compensate one staff member, let alone have a paid staff of more than one, we always can use extra volunteers. For 2012, we could use any help you might be able to offer in the following areas, particularly:

  • ethical SEO consulting and services
  • qualified volunteers to help answer our Sexpert Advice queue with thousands of questions
  • grantwriting
  • reviewers for books and other media
  • qualified adolescent and young adult medical consulting and fact-checking
  • grunt work: such as meta-tag adding and spam moderation
  • legal services, specifically in helping us manage unauthorized copies of our content online and in keeping our copyrights current
  • office management assistance
  • tech development
  • ethical marketing and public relations
  • teen and young adult writers for our blog

If those are skills or services you can and want to offer to share, you can contact us here. Thanks!

Our very best to all of our readers, users, colleagues and allies as we wind up 2011 and enter 2012. We feel lucky to have you as members of our community as we enter another year of creating and supporting what we think is some of the very best sex and sexuality education on the planet for readers we strongly feel deserve nothing less. The very least we owe the young people in our world is to be half as awesome as they are, after all.