scarleteen
From a Strike to a Home Run: A Thank You (and also a nudge, but just a little one)
Today, like most days, our site has been up and running, including its tremendous archive; probably serving around 20,000 users by the end of the day. All of our direct services are live: our message boards, SMS service and live online chat. Myself and some of the volunteers are in the middle of creating new content, like one of our in-depth articles or advice columns. The daily and collective creative brainstorming, problem-solving, observing and reflecting that goes on behind the scenes amongst our staff and volunteers, and together with our users, can and will happen today.
This is dedicated to...
Thanks so much to everyone who has been pitching in with our current fundraising drive. We're getting awfully close to our goal -- to the minimum we need to raise to avoid any shutdowns -- and we could not be more appreciative and excited. Thank you!
Of Condom Charity and Open Houses
As you may have read a few weeks ago, we are in dire straits when it comes to sustaining all that we do here at Scarleteen, and need more support to do so now. Since we put out that call, we've raised around half of what we need to keep doing all we currently do, thanks to a few hundred generous individuals. Thanks so much to everyone who has given us your help so far!
A couple quickies (not the fun kind)
Just posting to make a quick addition to this post to clarify a couple important things.
While people are being mostly incredibly supportive of us right now -- and we can't thank you enough, but will do our best to try in another post soon where we can talk about nothing but how awesome some of you are -- we've seen a few comments out and about that either aren't so supportive, but which also advance some misunderstandings or misinformation.
May Day 2014: Scarleteen Strikes (Or, With Your Help, We Don't.)
UPDATE! We -- and you! -- did it! WE SO TOTALLY DID IT! We met the minimum goal we needed to to avoid a strike and having to shut down any of our services. We can't thank the 1,000+ of you enough who have helped us do this, and who have made it possible for all the young people who need and use our services to keep on using them without interruption.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!
Over the next few days, you'll notice some changes on the site. We are finally finishing the process of some design tweaks, and a pretty major reorganization of our static content on the site.
We hope everyone will be as excited about what we have come up with as we are!
Happy 15th Birthday, Scarleteen!
We are 15 years old today. FIFTEEN! (In internet years, that's like being 500.)
We debuted online on December 15th, 1998 and here we are, still rolling, and wanting to keep on rolling some more, in 2013.
From Emily, Who Really Gets It.
Eleven years have gone by since I first came to Scarleteen as a very frightened, very lost sixteen year-old who had nowhere else to go and was ready to give up altogether.
I don't remember now what I wrote or what I asked for. But I will never forget seeing a response from Heather which read "I believe you, and I care."
Can you help us meet our match?
As you may know, we started our major fundraising drive for the year this month. Our goal, for the year, is to raise just over $40,000 from new donors in order to best sustain, support and grow our organization.
Since we began the drive on the 13th, you've helped us raise just over $5,000. If the donors who chose to give monthly all keep that up for the year, that will get us to $8,500 of the total funds we need. Hooray!