Ten years and counting
It’s December 19th and I can safely say now that we’ll make it over the finish line. CASH Music has been in existence now for TEN years. You guys, we made it into double digits and we made it through the hardest year of our existence yet.
Oh 2017, I will not be sorry to see the back of you. Like many smaller nonprofits CASH has struggled so hard this year. I know why, I get it, it feels like everything is on fire and we have to take care of so much that we thought we could just take for granted. Supporting a nonprofit focused on artist sustainability hasn’t been on the top of that list for most folks. However what’s happening in music is not unrelated to the larger issues right now — corporate consolidation and worker’s rights are on the forefront of everything we’re facing and decentralization is key to a healthier future for music, for journalism, for communication, for politics.
For those of you that are CASH Music Family members, I cannot thank you enough. Your support has meant that the hosted tools have stayed up, Watt has been able to keep going, and you helped support our work on net neutrality. We could not have done it without you. There will be so much more from us on all those fronts very soon. We’ll be continuing our partnership next year with The Future of Music Coalition on what a healthy internet looks like for music, there are several Watt pieces in the editing stage right now, and Tom (our lead developer) has a MASSIVE platform update coming very shortly.
We also could not have seen this year through without the support of the Shuttleworth Foundation and Mozilla. Thank you both for supporting us and consistently believing in us.
On a more personal note, as many of you know CASH lost our founder and my partner in crime, Jesse von Doom, earlier this year. He is missed daily but we are moving forward, always with his passion and vision in mind. He’s now doing incredible things at the Mozilla Foundation on a much larger scale. Proud of that jerk. Jesse is a one of kind thinker and CASH has always been a bit ahead of its time but we’re getting there, the world keeps making our case for us. Our time is coming.
Those of us who have stayed are mostly doing so in volunteer mode until we’re able to find more funding. I cannot thank Tom Filepp, Christopher Leckie, Kayleigh Hughes, Daniel Bogan, and Jeff Sheltren more for their dedication and belief in CASH. I could not do this without any one of them.
I‘ll be spending my break working on vision docs for what’s next for us, where we might find funding and partnerships, and how to make it through to the next phase. Expect so much more from me, esp if you’re part of the Family, on that soon.
But for now and for real, THANK YOU. Thank every one of you that’s used our tools, that’s written for Watt, that’s supported us with $5, that’s said a kind word, that’s volunteered your time, that’s just taken the time to talk to me about CASH. YOU are why we’re still here and why we’ll be here another decade. I’m certain of it.
ONWARD!
