 And so Rachel, you're good to go. Thank you so much. I just wanna welcome everyone into the space. Thank you all for those of you who have been with us this morning, if you're just joining us, that's wonderful as well. We will be talking about the topic today of development and care support with Jenna Yarley from the Playwrights' Room, who I will have to self-introduce in a moment, but to start the space in a way that is whole and ethical and compassionate. I'd like to invite Tamanya to share our land acknowledgement, which I'll put in the chat as well. Sorry about that, I wanted to unmute. Thank you so much. My name is Tamanya Garza, and I am the PAL National Director of Community and Justice Initiatives, and I am also the Chief Rep for Philadelphia. I am coming to you from the land of the Lenape people, whose historical territory includes the places cologne-ly known as Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley. For more than 10,000 years, the Lenape people have been stewards of these lands, as well as the River of Human Beings or the Delaware River. Over the past 250 years, many of the Lenape people were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and dispersed throughout the country, though some families remain. These families continued the traditions of their ancestors to this day. The violence that removed the Lenape from their homeland is a powerful part of the history of Pennsylvania, and we acknowledge that in this moment, and that we work and live on these very lands. This is the story of our entire country. We encourage you to learn about the lands where you live and work and the history of the people who lived there before colonization. Many still live there today, though they are often starved with very resources they've protected for so long, including access to housing, sustainable food practices, safety, clean water, and the land where they once lived with their families. This information was provided in part by www.lenape-nation.org. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, our mute buttons have been turned off all morning. We're calling it moments. So thank you so much to Mania for that land acknowledgement. We acknowledge it and receive it. I would also like to share into the space our community agreements with everyone. As a session participant, you commit with us to welcome all caregiving responsibilities in reality in the background or foreground of any meetups, phone calls, and exchanges and embrace your life in our pursuit of productive and supportive practices. As a session participant, you commit with us to creating a transgender and non-binary affirming space, all language that includes but is not limited to mother, parent, dad, caregiver, et cetera, applies to any individual who identifies with the term. As a session participant, you commit with us at PAL to creating spaces rooted in justice and anti-racism in our structures, practices, policy, principles, and producing. And as a session participant, you commit with us to creating safe and supportive spaces for disability access inclusion and all access needs present in the space. Thank you all so much for being here. I also want to do some community agreements that are specific to the virtual space that we share to ensure that everyone is safe. And I just wanted to share that we prioritize safety over civility. So if at any point in this session, you feel unsafe, please speak up for your own safety using your voice, the chat, or even private messaging myself, a PAL representative or a colleague on the call if that feels most supportive, whether it's Zoom bombing or aggressions that may be micro on the outside but are not micro for your own experience, we will honor your experience and engage community. So I just want to breathe in those agreements with everyone. And now it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Jenna to the space to talk about developments and care. And I will allow you to self-introduce but just to lay a bit of the groundwork and the context for folks. If you all were in the producing and care session with Roberta Pineda from the playwrights realm, producing director of the playwrights realm, you know that PAL partnered with the realm on the radical parents project where organizations work to take every single line item on the budget for staff and for artists and even for the audience. PAL talks about the three buckets of care. All three we're taking care of in this project comprehensively, radically and it expanded beyond the parents to just caregivers. And it was exciting to talk about the possibilities. It's always exciting to talk about possibilities with Roberta and but also the questions that always come up are, yes, but on what fills those budget line items and how. And so it is our absolute pleasure to bring into the space the development manager, Jenna who engaged so positively and so passionately and compassionately with this entire project to fundraise for it who has been so generous to come and share her experience and insights with all of us on that process. So Jenna, I'd love for you to self-introduce as well and welcome and thank you. Thank you, Rachel. So I'm Jenna Yarlie. I'm the development manager at the playwrights realm. Rachel said, and I've also worked at theater for a new audience and roundabout and I'm gonna sort of, I'm gonna use our radical parent inclusion project as sort of a case study for how we did this but I also wanna acknowledge that there's a lot of different ways to fundraise around this. I'm also coming from sort of an organizational standpoint doing this for artists in a way where we're providing organizational support. I know there might be some parent artists in this group who might be looking more to advocate for themselves through grants and that sort of thing. So I wanna open up the space to that. And if you're doing anything that's working for you please feel free to chime in and let us know that in an organizational standpoint too. So I'll sort of talk about a little bit, a lot of you are probably in Roberta's session but I'll go through sort of how we started the ideation behind the radical parent inclusion project. We have sort of been doing probably the year before we had started doing sort of the bare minimum of like providing our playwrights with some mild caretaker support. Mostly like free embarrassments to attend events and things like that. But then we decided to produce a play called Mothers which is just sort of like branding goldmine to for parent artists inclusion especially from a fundraising perspective and Anna Munch the playwright was our first playwright who when we were doing the production was a parent. And also our first playwright coming from out of state she lives in California. And we didn't know at the time but was also our first parent pregnant playwright when we did the production. So that presented a lot of expenses. So we decided to really fundraise around that production and really package this package our radical parent inclusion project as sort of like we're holistically supporting parents and advocating for parents through this production the entire production process both artists, administrators and audiences. And so we took that on and our goals were sort of A number one like literally pay for Anna to be able to do this in a way that isn't like asking her to be apart from her toddler for two months. So to pay for her to be able to travel here with her husband and her kid to expand our parent artist support in general to really use this as a jumping off point to be able to holistically incorporate this in our ongoing work of anti-racism and anti-oppression. And then publicity, we really like we really tried to publicize this. We had articles, a couple articles in American theater magazine to try to create change industry-wide. And then use it in a super capitalistic way. So means of building capacity for our organization bringing in new donors that we could then afterwards transition into general operating support and then incorporate these ideals holistically throughout the organization. So I'll sort of, I'm gonna share screen does anyone have any questions before I jump into it? Any thoughts? I'll go ahead and share my screen and I'll sort of show you I'm gonna break it down into two years, right? Our 2019-2020 season, our production of mothers was in fall of 2019. And then rolling into general operating support in our 2020-2021 season. So when we approached it the first year it was that sort of very specific program funding. And we had, I'll show you our project budget we really broke it down and we asked what parents needed especially for Anna and we broke down the expenses and figured out how much money we're gonna need to get this done. And you can see it's like holistically both for Anna and then you can see our artistic staff and crew, auditions, auditioners. As we know, it's a huge barrier to even getting people in the room the first time especially because that's unpaid most of the time coming to an audition. And then audiences. So we broke that down and then I came up with a generic fundraising giving pyramid. I tend to, we budget super conservatively I budget super conservatively because I'd rather under promise over deliver. So when I'm asking for new money I always budget at a 25% success rate renewals I usually do 50% success rates. So I wanted to really ask for about $100,000 in money. And I broke that down very traditionally and that's sort of some people say about 25% is pretty industry standard. Some people would do more some people might do less especially for program specific funding. So I was looking for $125,000 donor to $10,000 donors, $5,000 donor and then around $10,000 or under $1,000 donors. And I really, I think sometimes people ask when we talk about giving pyramids why you even care to put the under 100 but I also think it's a means of engagement of like making people feel like they're on the ground floor and they're your partner in doing this work on which they truly are. So then I'll show you what we actually did. We raised about $45,000 for this project. We found one just under $25,000 annoyingly under $25,000 donor a couple of $10,000 donors and a $1,000 donor and then a whole slew of lower level donors. And I'll show you like the materials we turned out. And I think even from a branding perspective this doesn't look like the rest of our materials. We usually go with like greens and blues or colors like pretty jewel Tony muted colors and we went pink. Part of that it reflected the production design of mothers but I also just think defining it like really branding this project was important for us in this year. So the materials we sent out this is our sort of two-pager that we sent with ask letters and it starts with really referencing the problem we're trying to solve which I don't need to preach to you guys and then what we intend to do. So family-friendly scheduling intentional hiring of parent-artisan lead positions family-friendly housing for Anna and increased support in things like tech week. And we sent that out with our budget and made about, I don't know, 10 asks and some grant applications to that $125,000 donor was a grant. So that came from a grant application. And then we really going into year two let me check my notes to make sure I'm not missing anything. Going into year two, we really wanted to find a way to roll that into something sustainable so that we could build capacity and I think any oppression initiative anti-oppression initiative has to be imbued in all of the things we do to truly be anti-oppressive. Right, like we can do it for this month like to say we're supporting parents and to do it for one project it does not do justice. We need to incorporate it into all of our programs and all of our thinking. So that was really the language around year two and I think we did that in year one but it wasn't part of the branding. So really the branding transitioned into year two and two, this is one of a number of things we are doing to fight racism and oppression and using those donors bringing them back into the fold and giving them the whole picture of all of the amazing work we do. And we really tried, I think, I don't know if I said this in the first year we didn't wanna take money away from general operating so most of those were new donors. We're reaching, we're tapping into it's a really great way capacity building to tap into a whole nother ethos of people who really care about parents and who especially a lot of parents, we went to a lot like our prospective donor list we really singled out, oh, these people are parents so they'll understand the struggle, they're working parents. So tapping into that new stream of funding and then bringing it into the fold to build your annual budget in the next year. So we really set out, we set out for a goal of a 50% renewal rate and to roll as much of that as possible into general operating support as opposed to program support. If you go to our website, you can still donate specifically to the Radical Parent Inclusion Project but our ask letters were much more about how this is part of our season and we hope you'll donate to the Playwrights Room. And we still raise, I mean, we have about $1,000 now that is allocated specifically to Radical Parent Inclusion Project and we don't, it's not overfunded, we use all that money for that and that works for us. So we really, we also wanted to continue the visibility and it was really balancing, incorporating this in our annual work with maintaining visibility from the program so this can continue to be an industry-wide conversation. And I put some challenges and a challenge is that that is harder to measure because you don't know if someone's donating because of RPI, it's hard to know how much money we're raising from that one program. And then COVID was a challenge, obvi. So I put an example of our sort of the letter we sent out and you can see it starts to look, all of these materials for this start to look a lot more like our brand and it's in line with all the other stuff we're doing. So I put our basic letter in here. I tried to make it impact base, which is why I have that quote from Anna on the top right. So if you're gonna look at one thing on the letter, that's the thing you look at is how amazing that was for Anna and the ask. Hopefully you give me a thousand dollar check. And then we started to incorporate, so this, it was COVID was happening, obviously. And so one of the things we were doing during COVID was providing emergency relief funding up to $5,000 for people with large extenuating circumstances. And one of those extenuating circumstances that we offered was for parents. To be able to pay for childcare and one of the people who really had the hardest time was a playwright named a Simway. And she is from Uganda and had just given birth and traveled to America to have her family meet the baby. And then COVID hit Uganda closed its borders and she was stuck here for like seven months, no way to get home. And finally when she could get home and they opened their borders and said a citizens can come back in, it was like, but you have to pay for a $5,000 hotel room. And you have to like her and her baby were in like five different airports. It was just terrible for her. So we provided the funding to do that. And I think that story really helped us transition RPI into the work we do as a whole. Because it wasn't even, it's from, that funding was from a totally different project. It was from our alumni playwrights fund. But it was because she was a parent because we're helping parents that we provided that funding. And then we started to like we had our online community programs. So we, one second, sorry, I opened up the chat and I don't know how to make it go away. We had our online community programs was sort of our audience-based program during the pandemic. And we started offering childcare reimbursements for anyone who attended those free zooms. Reimbursements for, that's any kind of caregiver. So there aren't that many people who take us up on that offer. But I think just having that language amongst the rest of our access need language is a really helpful tool to like build awareness about this program and about the challenges facing caregivers in this industry. And then I put an example of our grant language of how we rolled this into our general values talks. We started an international theater makers award that year too. So I was able to sort of and we had done some ASL translation for some reading. So I was able to sort of list those as three things we were doing to meet specific kinds of needs for oppressed communities. So that's sort of how we did it at the playwright's realm. I'm wondering if any, I will open it up to you guys. Does anyone have any questions or anything that worked for them or anything like that? I just, I wanna amplify something that you mentioned, Jenna, and this is gonna be helpful for everyone moving forward in the summit, but just how you talked about, creating caregiver support is anti-oppressive work and it's not truly anti-oppressive work if it only exists in like one location or for one project. And I know that one of the words that always comes back to us is that organizations are scared of setting a precedent that they can't fulfill and the intimidation of that, which is valid because you face discrimination if you can't continue to provide it and the funding has to be there and sustainable. So what in your mind separates going from pilot to sustainability separates it from a burden of precedent and an opportunity or what is the language that you use in that situation? I think it's really about that is sort of that using it to build capacity, like using it, tapping into a whole new source of donors, that messaging can really get across to somebody who might not have been struck by your messaging in general and so tapping into who those people might be and then making that a renewable source of funding just through cultivation, like we did all sorts of things that season, like we sent, I sent everyone a copy of the American Theater Magazine with a handwritten thank you note that donated to RPI any amount, just for like generally like, hey, remember you helped us do this so that we really put in the cultivation work on that to make those renewable sustainable sources of income. Incredible and just to amplify, Jenna did invite folks to share their takeaways or questions in the chat. This is a great opportunity for that and I have plenty of questions so I can keep the conversation that we do want you to populate that box there. You're also welcome to send me any questions privately if you would like me to speak them in the space anonymously for you. This is fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing those numbers. I know that one of the things we talk about is that the largest amount of funding like for one of the initiatives underneath, all the subcategories was travel and housing. Can you talk about how that discovery was made in the conversations that were made about what in the subcategories that you learned from carried over in your practices? Well, what were the most sustainable pieces? Sure, and I think travel and housing is an example of something that we would have had to pay for with Anna even if she wasn't a parent. So the sort of the golden opportunity to include that and our language about parenting. But I do think, I mean, we've been in general trying to expand the geographical reach of the people we serve, not just artists, audiences because living in New York is a socioeconomic barrier, especially for artists. And I think really communicating that is the first step to sustaining that of like, people don't self-eliminate based on their location by providing examples of like really publicizing that like we have paid for housing, we're willing to do it again, like this is successful to you. And then, I mean, how to sustain funding for that is a little harder. But I think that that is part of that capacity building. Like once you can translate RPI money, if you've got like, that was part of our budget, then you can use that capacity built money. It's going now to GOS. So you can use it for housing for people who might not be caretakers or who might be caretakers of adult dependents that need to travel with them, anyone really. There's a question in the chat. Yeah, I'm happy to share it if you want to think through it. What are the most common questions you would get from donors regarding this funding? Was there ever any time of pushback or a certain area of the funds that people were most excited about? I don't know that we had a lot of pushback. I think there were a lot of people who we tried to take this to who weren't necessarily, this wasn't the tree to tap them for. Like they weren't, we've sort of, there were a few people that we went to for a radical parent inclusion that now we've gone back to for our International Theater Makers Award. And that's what worked for them. Like it's just kind of throwing some stuff against the wall to see what sticks. But there wasn't a lot of pushback from like consistent donors. It's hard to think of someone who would have a problem with like supporting caretakers. But there were definitely areas that people were most excited about. Our childcare matinee was really exciting. I think we had 25 kids come for that. Yeah, sold out. Yeah, totally sold out pretty quickly. We scheduled it at 4 p.m. so that it was accessible for nap times. And I think we offered that to kids six months. Rachel, you might know this more than I do. Six months plus, which is unusual for a childcare matinee. Usually I think they start at toddlers. So like people with young children felt included in that. And I think people were really excited about that. And I think tying it in with a production is also like it's giving people a chance to sort of, everyone's gonna, all of our loyal subscribers, we don't have subscribers, but in the colloquial sense of the word, all of our loyal patrons are gonna come see that play without necessarily knowing that we're doing the radical parent inclusion project with it. So I think that was a really great chance to like build awareness for this project and about the problems in the industry as a whole. I think really this part of this program was to start the conversation. And that helped. Yeah, the theme I'm hearing in your answers to both of those questions is to fold this one, the relatability of this conversation with donors and to the opportunity for exposure. Like it would be very interesting to think that any theater has exhausted donor potential. The conversation of that capacity building of who have we not been relevant to yet? Who this may excite is something that I love seeing people explore that you all just dove in at first. I will say we did have one, our $25,000 donor was a foundation who only donated it because it was tied to a production. They found productions and they were very generous with us because they were really excited about the program. But now that it is not tied to a production, we've lost them, but it started a whole, I mean, we've been in a pandemic, so we haven't, we're not doing productions again until 2022, but it started a relationship with that funder and that is still pretty strong and like still as soon as we have a production, again, has expressed like I will support your productions from now on. So it's another form of sort of that capacity building. But that's sort of the only thing I think about pushback. Yeah, and just to share to the space if it's helpful for folks, when it comes to foundations and 501c3 funding, there are some legal questions that maybe top level foundation folks have about money for like childcare stipends, childcare grants. And so that's why it's so important, rewatch the producer session, look at our chapter resource on how to build a caregiver fund that's compliant because they may be wondering how you're doing this legally. And they also may be wondering, is this a re-grant because they may not be qualified to provide funding for re-granting, tying it to a project actually makes it more easily seen as compliant for folks to give money to if they are a government entity. I will say the one thing we got solid questions about was like, are you do you have insurance for that childcare matinee was sort of the only, we had to prove that to a couple of people foundation specifically. Yeah, absolutely. I love that question, Susan. Thank you so much or the multiple questions I appreciate that. So reminder to populate the space with any thoughts that you have. I mean, what's exciting is that Jenna, even when I talk to you back in the day, I was like, oh, how are you fundraising? And there's something very complex about this, but at the same time you or Roberta would always say, well, the same way we fundraise for any initiative. And so can you talk about when I share how chapters from the handbook appeal sometimes, I'm like, now this one's mind numbingly simple. You expect it to be kind of like some secret sauce, but it's actually just about saying, do you include this in your funding? But what would you say is complex about it? And what would you say is actually just pretty straightforward fundraising for an initiative? This is a philosophy of Roberta that I, that has been transformative for me. Now that she's my boss, it's really helped me clarify my thinking about it is like, if you let your values lead every decision is easy. Like if you lead from your values, you know what is the right thing to do and you just do it. You don't have to think about it, you know what's right. So when we budget for our values, that's the right thing to do. So I think that is sort of the simplicity of it of like, now that we have acknowledged that this oppression exists, the right thing to do is try to fundraise around it and to meet that need. And that's sort of what is simple about it. I think what's complex about it is honestly, this sounds like a line, but I always say this all the time, like we do so many things, it's really hard to communicate all of those things. Like this feels we're a playwright centric organization who like playwright services. This feels like a whole separate thing from that, right? So like just communicating, you know, we have these playwright development programs, we have about five, plus we're working with international theater makers, plus we're working with parents, it doesn't feel to somebody, it might not feel mission centric. Of course it is because if we're serving playwrights, we need to include parent playwrights, caretaker playwrights in that umbrella, but sometimes it feels like a lot. Like I'm trying to bring all of those things under the same umbrella and articulate how that is mission centric. Yes, yeah. And that sounds like it, what sort of learning process would you recommend for folks who are in development and want to, you know, start applying for grants? And in a session earlier today, an individual artist shared that an organization brought them in to provide insight for their grant application because they were not caregivers. And they're like, would you tell us what we're fundraising for? Like what are your experiences? What do you recommend the self-education process be for a development person to campaign for this? I mean, I'm not a caregiver either. So I, and I wrote all the grants for this. So I, and generally I think even if you are a caregiver, like Roberta is a mother. So she certainly helped me, but also she doesn't know what her experience might not be somebody else's experience. If we're serving a large community, we don't know whatever, like there's no way for you to know what everyone needs without asking. So the very first thing we did was sort of, Anna was our number one concern off the bat, Anna Munch playwright. So we asked her what she needed. And then as we went, we started to survey different communities. I mean, we're lucky enough to have long-term support programs. So we sort of have a base of playwrights we can ask. But artists in general, it was really just like, just sort of start the conversation. And then I did a lot of like fact finding of, cause I think, especially in grants, you need to have facts of how this is affecting community, like this percentage of people, this, and so I really started to do that research online. I mean, it's 2021. We had ignorance is no longer an excuse. We have it all at our fingertips. So I really, and I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but there were a lot of facts that I could include about particularly, drop out and then breaking those numbers down to be about, I think women are disproportionately affected. And I have that number. And then I think black women, black people are disproportionately affected, people of color in general. So I think that I really broke down those numbers to show that it was an intersectional issue, that it was really it went under the umbrella of our anti-racist practices. Yeah, 100%. And I remember I worked with Roberta on helping gather some of that data. And it was fascinating to me because I had thought about that in terms of data helping to move decision makers and leaders within the organization internally to, and I see the questions in the chat. Thank you all so much. We'll get to those. Motivating decision makers to say, ah, yes, this is an issue. And then when I started gathering for Roberta to have the conversation and development, it made me realize, oh, this data expands much farther. If you can use these statistics and we talked about what statistics should be highlighted, what statistics should she share with you that should be amplified. And we do have resources, why I actually saved those resources and clutched them in a chapter. So if you all need data and numbers, I'll drop them in the chat for the end, you can use them in your grants. But yeah, that's a fascinating piece that I don't, I hadn't heard folks talk about before our PI. I mean, the social data is out there. This is a global conversation. And that's the exciting thing to me too about expansion because it's not just the arts. More questions for you. I'm gonna start with Susan's second question. Were there any surprise costs you weren't expecting thinking of your insurance item, for example, that might not be in front of everyone's minds that maybe people wouldn't think of when building out budgets or applying for grants? I think that's a, that might be a better, Roberta might have a better answer for that question because she was really doing the producing work. I'm trying to think, I mean, I think Anna, because she was traveling, something we didn't think about, I know is like she need pots and pans for her housing, which was something that sort of came up late in the game, but that's not super parent specific, caretaker specific. I do think when we first started out, we were talking specifically about parents. And then an actor actually in the production came to us and said, I'm not a parent, I am a caretaker of my parents. And that is also a burden for us. And so we didn't, we actually didn't budget for that originally, but we did include caregivers of any kind and expanded our language to really talk about caregivers. Yeah, 100%. I will say that we talked about in this session and we've talked about this often, audition childcare and callback childcare and structuring that in a different way. We did provide like open call full day. And unless you know you're going to have an excessively large group, that pool of folks who are going to be using it is very small, but the folks who use it, it will be the game changer for them. So budgeting wise, we talked about, would it be more reimbursements and connecting them to resources to say, here's a link to sitters that you can book and the reimbursement for the invoice. And if you need a stipend for it is, you know, we started having this conversations, conversations that Roberta started having with off Broadway theaters, just to share with y'all in the space that also our chapter in Milwaukee is having with the Milwaukee theater alliance for when theater rebuilds more robustly is how can theaters create cohorts, which is why we're hoping to gather theaters by region next year to have these conversations. How can theaters gather together to have childcare at the general auditions so that you know that you're creating a deeper impact for lower costs that's shared between institutions, but that is probably also gonna increase the number of people who would use it, just as an offering for that. And I think one of those expenses is not just the childcare, but the space. And sometimes that's not just an expense, like you have to find creative solutions about where the caretakers are going to be, where their children are gonna be. But we are also, I think when we start producing again, we're also going to band with a couple of other organizations for general auditions with childcare. Yeah, it's fantastic. Just a shout out Broadway baby sitters was the company that we use in New York for the childcare matinee for auditions for callbacks. This sitter service, Susan, they come with mobile insurance. So the insurance is the responsibility of the professional caregiver service, which means that any space they occupy is covered for their care. That can get a little costly, but when you budget it in and you get this close ahead of time, it helps. I would also say that that's why the reimbursement strategy is helpful so that it is not actually our recommendation for the organization to directly hire the sitters if insurance is unclear. For example, if you don't own that building, if children are not usually taking classes in that building, if there's any leeway there, there are other creative solutions that provide the same kind of support. That's even potentially more flexible. Another question in the chat is Sherriana. If I mispronounce your name, I would love to hear how it's pronounced so I can learn it. The question is, you talked about color choice and looking like your brand. Are there any other techniques or visual elements that go into fundraising and attracting a donor? I think RPI was easy because we could use baby pictures. We used a lot of like, Rachel, we used your kids where there's a really great picture of you at the first rehearsal with your kids looking at the set model that I love to use because it's really cute. And we use Roberta as a lot of excuse Bianca. And we call her the junior producing director. And so that's like, I mean, that's like a directly showing impact of like these children were welcomed into this space and he had like, this is how it was beneficial for them and for everyone in general outside of parenting. I just, I think I try to, I'm not very good at it because I'm a grant writer by nature, but I try to use less text. Like people don't make it visually interesting and just like really focus on numbers for impact because I tend to lean wordy as a grant writer. So I really, I try to like, people don't wanna read a whole brochure. They wanna read one little thing with like the numbers highlighted so they can skim it. Yeah, 100%. And I am right now dropping the articles from our pal handbook on those external articles for caregiver support with the statistics that we've provided for RPI to include in their grants and in their proposals and in their donor letters. Here's another one here. If you open up the pal handbook which if you're streaming this live is available on our site for free. We'll ask for your email address but that's just to protect the site. You can absolutely read it without charge. And then we also provided for the grant and development our pal childcare grant statistics. And what's unique about these as opposed to the national statistics. So the national statistics will help your donors and foundations understand how this is a global situation that you're addressing for your community. And then the pal child care grant statistics address the parent artist or artists with family responsibilities caregivers reality specifically and how they're impacted by it. So then you talk about in this global way and then in the micro way for your field. And if anyone has questions we have an AMA session tomorrow morning we can talk about that. Great. And any other questions in the chat throughout the minute. Jenna, when we went to the gala and I actually found that a lot of donors and I was invited to share my story is a wonderful event by the way. I loved it. And afterwards I was surprised at how warm the donors were. And would you just share it? Like, okay, let's say someone does the initial outreach and they hear from donors saying, yes, I'd love to talk about this more. What are the conversations that unfold after that? Or what have you found most people want to connect about in terms of making that closing conversation? I think a lot of people are scared of development because like especially grants and donors feel really scary. Like it feels like they hold a lot of power when you can't necessarily be your seller. Like you have to mind your P's and Q's in some way. And I really, my perspective is like I bring my authentic self to all of those conversations. And I think that's the only way to really truly build connections. Even in grants, I think specifically for artists who are looking to self advocate I think sometimes grants, like writing a grant can be really intimidating. And I think like just start at like how you would, like how you know what you're talking about, you know what you need. Start like you're telling anyone, you're a friend, what you need. And like don't be afraid to really have your own voice in there. Also for people, great writing for organizations. But also, and then like in the room with donors, like I think that's, I love Gallas because it is like sort of like, it's the one chance your whole donor community has to come together. And it's like sometimes it's the only time I see them throughout the year. So it's just like nice to catch up and to let them know what's going on. And so I thank you, Rachel, for coming and speaking at that gala. That was actually the only gala. That was the only gala I've thrown for the playwrights realm because that was, which feels like forever ago, but pandemic times. But I lost my, I just lost, what was your last question? Right, no, the relationship, the opportunity to speak with the donors, what happened to introduce the ADM, yeah. Yeah, I think that I, especially at the gala, we were introducing radical parent inclusion project. So it was really about an announcing mothers. That was sort of our big announcement. So it was really about the original idea. And I think sometimes when you're talking about that, like the facts can get overwhelming. I don't necessarily wanna throw a lot of facts about what we're doing specifics at you at a gala. It's impact-based, which is why it was so great that Rachel could come and like share her story. And then it's sort of like, then it's emailing like, here's your ask letter with the facts of what we're doing. So you can see like the actualities of what your money translates into. I love that. So to make the in-person conversation relational and the written conversation, which also sounds very on track for development, but I think making this intentional connection between why caregiver support, develop a relationship with the person you're talking to, about why would they care about the caregiver support? And then write in the letter, how it applies to your work, why you care. That they give. There's also an art gala of like, which artist I put at what table. And like at that gala and specifically, I put parent artists at tables with people, but those like that knows new donors who I thought might be great donors for RPI so that it can like start like putting a face. And then I really try to remember, like if one person really like was like, I loved that show, like note to self, the next time I'm like doing table seating. Yeah, that goes in your database. So the next time you're looking at a seating board with post-its, you're like, I know exactly who to put that and that's where you start. I love this so much. And just to offer, I wanna highlight something that is potentially hard to see unless we speak it into the space that not only did you invite artists to go. Roberta talked about this in the producing session, but when I showed up there, I was able to bring a ticket. I was able, I was given a ticket for a guest, which I could not afford as an individual artist, right? I can't afford to attend your gala as beautiful as it is. But I was also offered a childcare stipend in order to attend. And so the conversation of, and so was the staff. So was the playwright, literally anyone who participated and engaged with the gala. And this is important for everyone in development when we're talking about legal, ethical and compassionate care support. Everyone who engaged and participated and made the gala possible, caregiver support was offered to them in order to make a project about caregiver support possible. And this is where I feel in the playwright's room you all did a beautiful job of not just fundraising for an initiative, but the word that keeps coming up this summit is modeling the initiative to say, we're gonna make this an internal buy-in so that we all see how we benefit so that when we go out in the world, we all know how to talk about what this thing is that we're doing. And we're talking about pictures of kids, artists with family responsibilities at the table, all of these things that are an asset to fundraising. All of those things have to exist in a space before the fundraising happens. So the initiative of creating that safe space, so many folks are like, well, we don't know if we can afford to comprehend caregiver stuff now, but it's about creating the safe space first so that you are able to turn that into an opportunity to make an impact, et cetera, et cetera. And how do you, yeah, how do you, what was the most useful thing for you development-wise before the project started, that like the first moment of inception for you that was like, oh, yes, we could make this a thing? And that side note is that we are moving forward. We've decided to pay artists to attend, not just offer childcare reimbursements. From now on, we are paying artists to attend because that is, they're taking time, like you might have to turn down a shift, your day job, to attend that. And so like you're working for us that night, right? Like you're schmoozing for us, you're at tables with donors, you're expected to be on like as an anti-racist, anti-oppressive practice, we wanna pay you for your time, regardless of if you're a caretaker or not. And then we'll also provide caretaker reimbursements beyond that. And I think that that was really the first, our first foray into RPI before we started the project. And I think it was, like I didn't even, Roberta had to like tell me to, I like invited artists. And then Roberta was like, did you think about childcare reimbursements? And I was like, oh no. Like I was the first like, oh, like this needs to be thought about holistically and like is the first like really thinking about it incorporating into everything we do sort of thing. So that really that gala was the first thing we did. And I also, I think specific to when we moved into RPI, auditions were really important. But then I think something that like really made it come full circle. And it was like the first moment was that first rehearsal when we invited children into the room. Like you were allowed to bring your family was a really, cause it's, it felt, built community of like, I'm allowed to talk about this in the rehearsal. Like I'm allowed to talk about how I'm a parent. I don't have to hide it. I'm allowed to bring my kids and like be visible, like showing that I'm like, I'm wearing different hats in my life. Like doing it physically in the room was really powerful. Yeah, absolutely. Something that comes up every year at the summit and happening in this year is that individual artists are sharing in the room, how in, you know, at their core and in some administration too, as caregivers they feel like assets to their organization, but they don't feel like they're treated like assets to the organization. And I will say that that was one of the, kind of the highlighted moments for me in my artistic experience of entering a space and being treated like an asset to an organization. To say, we understand that creating access for you is creating access for a larger community. And that matters to us. And to be seen as a line of valuation made an impact. I would love to hear about your favorite things to fundraise for or, you know, you shared some of them like the travel and how to apply that flexible fund. How do you have conversations with these donors and fundraisers about a fund that does grow in its flexibility and application? Because I know that sometimes that feels like the tighter boundaries are safer for fundraising, but how do you have clear boundaries that are also flexible for life? I just want to say that we invited our PI donors for that first rehearsal too. So, which has a sneaky little move to like show impact. I think, like, how do I, sorry, gathering thoughts. I think the thing that I really try to be is just to be honest. Like, I really fund our partners. I think there's a tendency in both donors and like to your board and to your funder partners to sort of lie about things. And like, I think it's really being honest about what we're trying to do and how we're going about that. And when you lead with values, when you make decisions based on your values, it gives you the capability to do that, right? Like if you're not leading with your values, then you feel like you have to hide something. So if something's not a success in the way it is, then we pivot and we say like, this is what like we tried this and we pivoted. And so, and saying like generalizing things, it's like, like RPI, we did this and now we're incorporating, like we're just really laying the groundwork of like explicitly being honest about why we're doing it and why we're like, why we're incorporating it and to our genoff money, like where, where that is in the budget and why we did it. And yeah. Do you think that it would be, this is kind of like a leading question, but do you think that it would feel like more of an obstacle if it weren't an initiative that you had fully embraced yet as important yourself? Like how much does your personal individual buy-in to this as access matter? 100% and I think that's like, that's what I mean when I like bring my authentic self to something is like, I have to believe something before I can write about it in a smart way in a believable way. And sometimes grants feel like stretch. I recently wrote a grant that was like for mental health resources, like the intersection of arts and mental health and it was a stretch and I knew it was a stretch and I didn't believe it and we didn't get it. Just like, yeah, because it was a stretch. Like I was really trying to make this argument that I didn't know if we fit the parameters. Sometimes you have to try, right? Like I'm not gonna make up programming for mental health, for the intersection of arts and mental health, but I had to try. So I really think like I have to believe in the things we're doing and that's why I love working for the Playwrights Realm because we do and it's challenging as a grant writer to work somewhere that is constantly coming up with new programming because you're writing new grants every year, like I'm not just like updating the number of children served by our 30 year education program. I'm like rewriting grants every year for new programming and it's work, but it's like, I like it because I like it's exciting and I believe in everything we're doing because we come from that perspective of leading with our values. So I buy into it and I like to write about it but I think absolutely it's imperative. Yeah, 100%. Just to share with folks in the space with us there's about 25 minutes for you to get questions in for development. Any insight as you think about fundraising whether it's a particular donor or making a relevancy connection with another organization ways that you can partner and fundraise drop them in the chat. And one question that I don't think is talked about enough when it comes to this development but that does come up whenever I get an email. Thank you so much, Patrick. When I get an email from folks who are trying to advocate internally in their organization is development is having a hard time communicating with the board about this initiative. So before even going outside to donors what is the conversation with the board like for you and those nuances? I think boards are coming from the same place that like leadership might be it's like coming from a place of fear of like how do we make this sustainable if we start it, how do we continue it? And I think it's just impaired like if you it's about that authenticity and telling the truth all over it like if you have that relationship established with your board where there's a level of trust and they're really on your team then you like you feel what you're saying about why this is important. I think that's the way to do it. We didn't, I mean, we have an incredibly supportive board. I've worked at other places that wasn't like that. There were a lot of questions asked a lot of the time and that there was a tendency to lie to them. And I think that's why it got set up like that is that it might not have been conscious but like there is a sort of like they feel like they need to ask questions. And we do have, we have board members who really investigate, really like ask like questions to try to get to the bottom of like what we should do to try to help us make the right decisions. And if we really like those questions are welcome because we believe in what we're doing and we believe it's necessary. So we're telling the truth and it's not it's not like anything we're not ready to take on those questions. What if that isn't your relationship with the board? I mean... Yeah, how do you get, how would you recommend starting the conversation of board buy-in? Yeah, I think... Right. It's like if you had to be authentically yourself in with a board that won't, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it starts with board development like when you're cultivating who you want on your board. It should be really somebody who, you should make your values and your mission and your programming very clear to them of where you hope to go and the kind of organization you hope to be because you want like, I don't want any board member. I want the board members who are on our team. So I think that those conversations really start and I think sometimes that feels like you're trying to impress someone when you're trying to get them on your board but it should really be like a very holistic conversation to make sure they're the right match. And board membership is down across the country. Like it's just, it's a declining, it's hard. Everyone is in the slog of trying to find board members and everyone's coming from a scarcity mindset. I think it's okay to have a smaller board. I think it's okay. But how do I get people on the board? I mean, I could, I think it's a long game. Like really, you want somebody to be on your board who has invested, who has been with you for a while who has like, I don't want anyone who I don't know on my board. So I think it's like a long game of cultivation. Someone should be a donor first because they're like buying in. And then having those conversations, I think sometimes you're like, let me take you out to coffee and you sort of hide the fact that you're trying to ask them about board membership but it's okay to be upfront about that too. Like, hey, I want to take you to coffee to talk about board membership. And if they're resistant, then that's fine. Or like, they say like, come back to me in three years when I'm off this other board, then you know, you can move forward from there. It's better to get it out in the open. Sure. We have a question that says, can we start the conversation about looking for a caregiver to add to the board the way we look at adding a lawyer and accountant, a financial advisor, et cetera? Yeah. And does the financial obligation keep caregivers out of the room? Like, how do you create that balance? I mean, I think that that is a nationwide conversation too about give-gets. That is a hard one because I think it's not just caregivers, it's a socioeconomic barrier. I mean, my beliefs are that a board is meant to represent the people of the United States. So if you only have an oversight, so if you only have, that is the legal definition of a board. If you only have rich people, right? Then they don't represent, it's a jury. They don't represent the people of the United States. So I think making those give-gets flexible, I mean, our give-get is 7,500. I'll be upfront about that. But we do like, that's flexible. It's sort of to give you a ballpark, but then it's what other board members are giving. But if you can't afford that, then it's like part of a conversation, right? Like it's not just one number and it also includes a get, like we expect you to advocate. So if you can't afford that, maybe you have friends, you have a network who can help you fundraise. But yeah, I think it's for caregivers and just like every area of oppression, right? Oppression is socioeconomic systemically. So I think it's a hard line to draw. But yes, that's a great point. I'm actually working on our big board matrix right now. So I'm gonna include a caregiver category. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, and just to offer to folks recently, held to this recently, but has been doing this since we, it's a couple of years ago, I believe, but has been brought into consults of board members with our compassion training and conversations. So if this is a conversation, you all feel like you need help with, Pal is happy to partner with you to have a conversation with your board and engage with those statistics and help field those questions. Yeah, I wanna give about 15 minutes or so before we close out the space for any more questions that may come up. It could be about the giving triangles at the top, the subcategories of development. I'd also love to hear if there are any specific projects that you have in mind that you brought into this space. Just love to see what those are or if it's something that you hope or and or a challenge to organizations in your sphere to do and I'd be happy to speak them anonymously out loud. How many pages was that proposal that you all put together for the foundation? We had, it was two pages. Inside of baseball, we had a four page version and a two page version and yeah, it just depended about really the two page version, we really sent out to individuals for major gift asks. Also just shouting out the Howard Gilman Foundation because they were our first foundation to sign on and we love them so much. Gilman is, yeah, we really love projects. Yeah, projects they fund are pretty fantastic. I'm a huge thank you to them for sure. And a huge thank you to all the RPI donors as well. If you're listening to this, you're changing the industry. So thank you so much for being a part of that. I would also like to challenge if there are any donors who are listening, I'd love to invite Timania Garza if you are able to share or just shoot me in the chat I can share for you. But if you are one of those small-scale donors or someone who likes to give to the arts, there is an opportunity to make change in the development of an organization through giving strategy. And I'll give a brief moment to see if Timania wants to come on and share her strategy as well. But I'm happy to share as well, so that's okay with you. Sorry about that, Rafa, I was answering your question. My mom is here assisting. Did you see my name? Well, it's a foul space where you're allowed to walk away, come back and see. It's so good. Yeah, no, no. You are worth the wait for every moment. Yes, so yeah, this is something that you shared in another one of the spaces, I believe the opening keynote, but as it applies to development, we'd love to hear about what you put down when you give to an organization. So when you have your little byline, and especially at the end of the year, giving the end of your donation, when they say where would you like this to go, I say to a caregiver fund, which I think may even create some financial responsibility that they have to respond to what I've said. So if they don't have a caregiver fund, it's a really easy way to start a conversation about what is a caregiver fund or what do you mean? And so I think that's a sneaky way to get in front of people and ask them to engage with that information. Yeah, absolutely. So just offering, if you're listening to this or engaging as an individual to know that your voice does matter for the development team. It's not just the larger donors giving those quote unquote small amounts still carry with the messaging. So it's a great opportunity as well. Think the term funder partner, people throw that term around a lot and it can feel like BS sometimes, but it's like, it's very true, right? Like we are partners in this, like we share a mission and like we both have our role and we are doing this together. And I think that's true of donors at any level. Cause they're giving, I mean donors at every level are giving what's meaningful to them. So that's meaningful. If it's meaningful to you, it's meaningful to us. Yeah. That's wonderful. Oh, this is great. So really appreciate this conversation as someone working in programming who communicates with our development staff and is asked to help contribute language anecdotes to board and grant reports. Thinking how I can be an advocate for those things within our org. And in the moments when we as non-development staff, though all of us who work in nonprofit are also in the work of fundraising get to interact with the board and our donors. That's a great question. So how does non-development staff and community support these initiatives and advocate even, let's say if it's a new idea to the development individual or staff. And just, I mean how people in our staff help me is I don't have very much interaction with artists themselves. So when an artist says thank you for something and they say something particularly, like when they say something that impacted them, just letting me know that that happened so I can reach out and get the quote or whatever. And like gathering facts, I'm not always at a first rehearsal. So just like knowing how many kids were at the first rehearsal. Gathering facts like that, being aware or like that might be helpful, just like an awareness of how it can be helpful. And like we have a Google Doc spreadsheet that like our artistic team can just go log in things that might be helpful for me for grants anytime. And then I also think just like, I think the rest of our staff, especially in galleries and in rooms with donors, sometimes don't engage with those donors because of that sort of like fear of like these are fancy people and I'm not. And I think sort of being willing to like be yourself with them and like have conversations because those people are in the room because they believe in the work you're doing and believe you're the right person to do it. And so really like not being afraid to get to know a donor or chat with somebody. Yeah, absolutely love that. Yeah, actually absolutely anytime. You're also happy to come on camera or on microphone to ask any final questions in these last 10 minutes, send them private message or in the chat. Happy to support. Yeah, I would say I guess my next question is let's say it's for a smaller organization or even a larger organization and they feel like this is a long way off like the financial aspect and looping donors in. What are some of the first steps that you hope they take before they start that in the meantime? I think the things that are like really easy are not that expensive. Like reimbursements to a 10-gall like that probably cost us a thousand bucks at most. And it was like a very easy way to just like show someone to make them feel welcome in a space or like welcoming children and the first rehearsal doesn't cost a thing. And it increases visibility in a way that like can start to lead to fundraising and just to making people feel like they don't have to hide themselves. Like I think there are things you can do that don't cost a lot of money or that are free and you can start to build on those things and you can start to include them. Like I spoke down our case study in a way that was like this is what we did the first year and the second day or we translated that into capacity building but you can start with just like the capacity building. You can start with just sort of throwing this into your, I mean, I get asked about our values in almost every grant. So like you can just start with like a couple of sentences about the different ways you're fulfilling your values and that part of that can be caretaker support and the things that are sort of not that expensive you can start to build that budget slowly over time. Yeah, awesome, awesome. And welcome to new folks who just joined us. You're welcome to put a chat, a question in the chat or jump on screen, speak out loud. We're happy to take any questions that you have. Yeah, I'd also love to hear from folks, your takeaways now as we're nearing towards the end of this session. If we could have each person just drop a takeaway privately or publicly on what you're going to commit to whether your role as an individual advocate or an organizational advocate admin, an artist with some leverage or agency in your community. I would love for folks to share into the chat your takeaways from this conversation and what your commitment will be. Wonderful, and I'll give you a moment for that. If you have a lingering question as well, you're welcome to share that. And yeah, let's just give a minute for folks to think that through. I think for me, what my takeaway is going to be is improving communication between the departments because if we're siloing all this really good information, how are we making institutional change if we're all bouncing up against the walls? So thank you for that. That's great. Sometimes I think just having like once a year, I have my artistic director look at my grant language and can point out just like, because normally Roberta approves my grant language and just saying like, this is what we've been using as this, like, is there anything that comes off the top of your head when you're looking at this? Like, you can have other members of your staff like look at what you're using just to see if it inspires anything too. It's shared in the chat that at the next organization I work for, I will definitely represent that I participated in this summit and encourage institutional change including caregiver reimbursement, et cetera, where it went appropriate. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing that. And anyway, that sharing these resources are helpful for all of you. That's why we stream some of it publicly. Yes, take it in and run with it. Spread the good word. Spread the good word that this is part of access. This is part of anti-oppression work. Thank you for doing that and committing to that. Just offer, like, if anyone is starting as like starting from day one at writing this like grant language and they're like, I overwhelmed by it and wanna look at my like facts or anything, please feel free to email. Awesome. Would you drop your email in the chat for folks who are attending? Thank you so much. I would definitely engage with that opportunity for those of you who are doing development have that conversation for sure. It's shared in the chat. I'm a rhetorician and I'm currently studying how performance can be a rhetorical space. So this conversation is incredibly beneficial to discover so many ways that we can make this an anti-oppressive space and advocate for parents. I'm writing my thesis on this conversation and I've taken a lot of notes today so I'm grateful. Oh, we're grateful you're here. Thank you so much for identifying those spaces and creating that language. That's what I love about actually specifically the performing arts and granting work and nonprofit work is how the art that comes from it like has been talked in the chat informs the granting and then like the granting identifying anti-oppressive initiatives can inform like the art that we make and just engaging with Timania's takeaway of not having these departments siloed. That's how like the anti-racism work and the justice work goes into the grant writing goes into the content and how everyone should be committed as like a communicating collaborative unit like an actual organized open channel organization. I worked a lot with the playwright Anna Munch when I was first drafting this language she told me like she had written mothers after like she was up one night breastfeeding and was watching the news and was like, how can I parent in this world? And then it's about like moms at a mommy baby meetup and like the apocalypse happens and they're stuck together. Is it the place? And then that was like a real like it's like we want to model the world that we want while on stage we're modeling the world that we fear. It's like, but I use that language of like we're taking these like feelings and we're trying to create a better world. That's gorgeous, yeah. Thank you for that. Yes, absolutely. Yes, awesome. So thank you. Adriana has also dropped into the chat the link to Jenna's presentation. So if anyone wants to deep dive that and now you have her email address you can ask her questions about it. It was a fantastic presentation. Thank you so much. And we will also be sending it in our resource email at the end of the summit for attendees. So we're so glad that all of you can join us. We've got a few minutes left. Is there any encouraging send-off Jenna or Timania that you have for folks that you hope they take away with them? And then I'll hand it on to you Adriana after they share. I'll just say thank you, Rach, I sort of thank you for like you had such lovely questions and like engaging in this discussion with me. Thank you so much everyone for all of your questions. I'm just hopeful that we can create a better world one step at a time. Yeah, absolutely. What a great mission for development to be quite honest. Thank you for adopting that. Yeah, Timania, your thoughts for us as we close close out the daytime portion of day two. Tonight's affinity space at 8.30pm is other care, including elder care, disability care, any sort of caregiving that you feel is not usually talked about or included. We've created an affinity space for you. 8.30pm tonight, same link, same time, grab a ticket if you don't have one yet for free. You are allowed to watch any life while you're in the affinity space. I mean, just there are no rules on how to participate. You're welcome to. But Timania and then Adriana and thank you Jenna so much for joining us and everyone in the space. Thank you. Yes, thank you to Jenna. Thank you to the interpretation team, the ASL interpreters and to Adriana for always making this space incredible and Rachel for helping Jenna guide the conversation in a way that it hits so many topics. I think something that I just want to, as my closing thought is, yes, this work is so incredible. These tools exist. Let's make sure that we're accessing them without guilt and shame. Like this is work that other people doing, we're all colleagues here. Like this whole, some of it, everyone is colleagues here. So I know I experienced a lot of like, I'm a director. I should know all the answers. I should have everything figured out. We don't, and that's fine. And the world is not built for this kind of success right now. So as we're rebuilding, let's all put our arms at each other and make sure that we're feeling very affirmed in asking for help because that is our strength and that is our superpower. I think also to remember that as you're inviting caregivers and as you're inviting people into these conversations, you are taking into account that in these spaces, the most marginalized will suffer the most if they are not centered in the conversation. So making sure that we're centering people with different access needs, people of a diverse group of people who are different kinds of caregivers so that we don't continue biases that have existed in the system thus far. But I've been so inspired by everyone. So thank you all for your incredible contributions. Thank you so much, Tori. Adriana, help us. Awesome. Wonderful. Oh my goodness, on the dot, 230. Wow. Thank you everybody who is in this session and just a big shout out for anyone who's watching on HowlRound and on Facebook Live. I know there were a couple of comments of like, I'm watching but I have to leave, but that's absolutely fine. We love your thoughts and questions and comments even if you watch this later at a later time. And there is a morning session tomorrow as Rachel likes to call it and ask me anything session. So if something pops up later tonight, feel free to put it anywhere. You know, it could be on any of our social media channels and we will try to address it even if you can't make it tomorrow morning, especially for the West Coast people. Awesome. So we are wrapping this up and thank you so much everyone for joining us. I will stop the live streaming and hopefully you can join us this evening.