I know you'll be flooded this week with people asking for money from you. If your inbox has been anything like mine, you've already suffered through a solid week of targeted marketing landmines and nonstop sparkly coercions to spend money buying everything and anything on earth, no less. So, I'm going to do us all a solid and keep it simple.
It's the end of the year -- also the end of our 20th anniversary year, something any fully independent, feminist, grassroots nonprofit, let alone one focused on progressive sex education for young people, rarely survives to see.
If you have it to give, and you'd like to give it to us, we're asking for some financial support from you. We intend to use that support the way we usually do, to fund all of the things we've done over the last 20+ years and want to keep doing like:
• Making and publishing the kind of creative, progressive, inclusive (and in so many ways!), affirming and caring sex, sexual health and relationships content that our readers ask for, want and need; content and approaches to sex education that have also helped to move the field of sex ed forward over the last 20+ years.
• Providing one-on-one services to our users through our moderated message boards, text/SMS helpline, live chat and advice columns, as well as some in-person outreach, all given by real, live people -- not bots -- and whose responses are original and responsive, not pre-written scripts so common in many digital/online help services.
• Supporting and amplifying other great sex and relationships education, content and actions from all around the world, from all kinds of people, in our content, direct services and all our social media channels.
• Making or taking part in books and other kinds of print media projects.
On that note, we'd like to offer new donors in the next month the little gift we're given to our current donors: a new, interactive, printable zine!*
We'll be releasing the zine for free to everyone come the new year, but if you'd like to get it early, and help us keep on keepin'on, it's yours now with any one-time donation of $20 or more, or any new recurring donation of $10 a month or more.
You're welcome to use it for yourself, for your family, or, if you teach sex ed, to use it with whomever you teach. You can even take pictures of it and brag about how gobstoppingly righteous and adorable it is online, if you want.
I don't want to say too much about it yet, mostly because it's fun to have a secret, but also because we want to wait to say more until it's available to everyone. But I can tell you now that: 1) it's seriously awesome, just like you (awwww), 2) one of our amazing staff, Al Washburn, came up with it a couple years ago and we've been using a version of it in our in-person outreach for a while, 3) this updated version includes rad new illustrations from Archie Bongiovanni, and 4) it is going to be very hard for you not to pass this around everywhere so almost everyone you know can use it, which is great, because come 2020, our hope is that's exactly what everyone does with it.
That's it! If you can donate, here's where you go to do that! All of us here at Scarleteen fling our enduring gratitude in your general direction!
If you can't, we certainly understand. Know that we stand with and for you in what are likely long-frustrated wishes for pay equity, fewer people to take care of with little to no help, and catching a break for a change, for crying out loud. <3
We wish everyone a great rest-of-2019, and, presuming you've all had the decade many of us have around here, we wish that the next one is considerably better. Kudos to all of us for making it through: it sure hasn't been easy. Here's to a new decade of all the good things, very much including all the great sex and relationships education all of our hearts desire for everyone.
* Some fine print:
- Be sure when you donate that you use a current, working email so you can get your copies!
- After you make your $10+ recurring donation or your $20+ one-time donation, we'll email you the files -- one for print, one for digital-only use -- within 3 days. If you don't hear from us by then, check your spam folder. If we're not hiding in there, you can email us at: feedbackAT scarleteenDOTcom.