BEYOND RESILIENCE: HELP US BRING THE OS and LIMINAL LAB into a FUTURE of POSSIBILITY

An end of year / #GivingTuesday community call for support

Dear Friends and Community Members — and those who may become either of these, you are welcome here!

There are big and exciting things happening at the OS and Liminal Lab — more than ever in our 10 year history is this a moment where our commitment to radical system and resource building been more central in our work. Like animals and plants in winter, some of the most important growth happens below the surface, out of sight. So: don’t be fooled by the funhouse mirrors of social media, from which we’ve been taking a bit of a break, while deeply engaged in exciting, vital projects!

But we need your help! We’ve put together an end-of-year fundraiser with the belief that now more than ever it is clear that we are in desperate need of new systems, and that you’ve seen the OS and Liminal Lab studying, iterating, and modeling these systems for a decade — and that you believe we have the capacity to continue to help infinite numbers of creative people and communities through the tools we are building and archiving, for now and for the future.

You can make a donation here directly through Facebook, where on #GivingTuesday, November 30th the platform will match funds starting at 8 am. Not on Facebook? Not to worry! You can also donate directly through our Little Green Light platform. [Still no good? you can use operator@theoperatingsystem.org to donate on PayPal, or use @thetroublewithbartleby on Venmo.]

We want to be fully transparent in our ask, and keep it simple for those who want to quickly understand what we need funding for. Please continue reading below for more details and exciting updates! Tomorrow at 8 am EST begins Facebook’s #GivingTuesday match, so if you set your alarm and put in a donation as close to that time as possible, there’s a possibility your funds will go twice as far! Also: Facebook pays all the processing fees for you, so 100% of your donation goes directly to the OS / LL.

At current we are seeking support for:

• CAPACITY BUILDING AND TOOL DEVELOPMENT for the Open Resource Hub / Open Project Resources / Toolkit, Virtual Gallery Development, the Open Access Library Database Buildout and Launch, and Training Materials for Liminal Lab = $1500
• LIMINAL LAB FACILITATOR TRAINING, SUBSIDIES and SCHOLARSHIP SUPPORT for FREE and SLIDING SCALE PARTICIPATION = $2000
• SUPPORT for UPCOMING BOOKFAIR FEES and EVENTS = $1000
• SUPPORT for HIRING IN PRECARIOUS COMMUNITY / STUDENT LABOR = $1500
• SUPPORT FOR BOOKKEEPING EXPENSES / LEGAL = $4000 / yr

It’s important to know that the OS / LL, in its insistence in existing between forms, between and across disciplines, and in focusing on the development and establishment of open source resources and tools that are harder to quantify is a hard thing to find funding for. Though we’ve been a nonprofit since 2018, we have yet to receive major institutional or foundational funding, which is what allows a lot of other organizations that may “look like” ours to survive and thrive. We’re working on what it means to refuse to fit ourselves into those boxes, despite this cost. We’d also love to work with grant-writers or anyone who’d like to help us get some significant funding support in the years ahead!

Thank you for believing in this work. Please share with your communities! And check out the details on our current funding areas below.

We’re so excited about what we can do, together, and offer you for your projects and dreams in the years ahead.

ONWARD, IN SOLIDARITY AND POSSIBILITY
Elæ Moss

DETAILS on our CURRENT FUNDING AREAS:

CAPACITY BUILDING AND TOOL DEVELOPMENT : While we’ve continued to produce publications throughout 2020 and 2021, our focus has turned more and more to what it means to be a SYSTEM for SCALABLE development — both using the OS infrastructure and beyond. Our Open Access Resource Hub has grown and will continue to grow, and soon we will offer our tools and strategies through Liminal Lab programs for both individuals and organization / community use! We’re also in the process of training in the development of and building out virtual gallery space, for use in curating ongoing mixed media presentations accessible to all.

We’ve also continued to grow our Open Access Library, which while already offering all our titles free of charge for Open Source use, has been in continuous development as a searchable library-style database, to which we will soon invite projects and multi media digital materials from the OS community, out of print works from other publishers and self-published works that are not readily available — this new version will launch in the weeks ahead! We can’t wait to share it with you. Here’s a screenshot of the work in progress, below. [Thank you to Doug Luman for all his technical prowess!]

LIMINAL LAB FACILITATOR TRAINING, SUBSIDIES and SCHOLARSHIP SUPPORT for FREE and SLIDING SCALE PARTICIPATION : since its inception in the spring of 2020, Liminal Lab has hosted 30 programs, including workshops, performances, roundtables, and the 12-week Performancy Forum / Corpus Coliseum series in collaboration with Panoply Performance Lab. To date, 40+ facilitators have been engaged in planning, training, and developing programs — and have been invited into LL trainings and offered access to all OS / LL tools and sessions at no cost. Of these facilitators, 50% identify as TGNC, 75% identify LGBTQIA+, 50% identify as BIPOC, and 40% identify as disabled, with similar numbers reflected in our participant body — we’ve had 226 folks join us for workshops alone, of which over 50% selects no cost options or precarity pricing levels with 50–90% off of standard registration fees. All of our programs are sliding scale with no questions asked, and 80% of fees go directly to our facilitators, a better percentage than any similar program we know! To continue to offer this radical model, ensure ample payment for our facilitators, and to continue to develop additional trainings and support Liminal Lab tools and work-book publication, we need your help!

SUPPORT FOR UPCOMING BOOKFAIR FEES and EVENTS: we’re seeking support to help the OS get ourselves and our books to upcoming in person events after so long working entirely online, as well as to support access / ASL for upcoming online events!

SUPPORT for HIRING IN PRECARIOUS COMMUNITY / STUDENT LABOR: we’ve been lucky to have volunteers willing to work for no pay and sometimes interns supported by institutional funds, but we’d love to hire in and PAY community members who are eager to work with us but can’t afford to work for free! We are still operating on such a shoestring / agile model that this is almost never possible, especially with rising costs in every area. Subsidizing this with community donations can ensure we support paid labor!

SUPPORT FOR BOOKKEEPING EXPENSES / LEGAL: one of our largest invisible expenses, in maintaining the books for a 501c3 is paying our bookkeeper! We work with wonderful folks and we’re glad to pay them a very reasonable rate of around $350 a month, but this adds up and is something we’d love to offset with community support.