My Humble Experiment in Gift Economics
I invite you to participate with me in my own gift economics experiment.
Here is how I currently run my experiment:
I have three offerings: Community Events, Distributive Leadership & Need-Based Gift Economics Consulting and Spiritual Strategy Sessions.
I currently offer all my community events as: "No one turned away for lack of funds." Every event is genuinely offered as a gift. I encourage everyone to attend these offerings and enter into the gift experiment with me. I offer sliding scale guidelines because people have asked me for support in determining what would meet my needs.
My training and work within supporting groups in creating distributive leadership models is with Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL). I am currently working intensively on a project to create a community on land.
I am also working with organizations applying NGL principles and systems. All of the distributive leadership work I do is offered completely as a gift. In addition I often pay to work; which can include travel, lodging and food. I choose this because the resources I have access to as a highly skilled citizen of the Global North gives me access to resources that exceed the resources many of the communities I serve.
So how do I manage to offer community events on gift and distributive leadership models to groups where I often pay to work?
I offer spiritual strategy sessions to a very small group of people that sustain my material needs each year. And if I make more than what I need per year, I redistribute it.
Regarding my spiritual strategy some of the criteria I use to see if someone is a good fit to work with me are:
1. You are believe we are in a global poly-crisis and have a willingness to take risks in order to divest from the economic, social, political and environmental systems we are embedded in. The scale of this is not important to me as much as the heart, sincerity and energy you bring.
2. Willingness to discuss my needs and your needs and make a monetary agreement. As information, I currently see clients who are housing insecure who offer me $0 to people with significant access to wealth who offer me $350 per 1 hour and 15 minute session. Having these conversations brings me joy and I often get feedback that people also appreciate them. You are welcome to contact me and we can discuss what works for us financially.
3. You re in some kind of transition where you would like accompaniment.
I see my task...
is to listen deeply and ofter back to you what I hear from you as well as support you in taking risks. If you are interested in working with me, I encourage you to reach out schedule a 20-30 minute consult to see if it's a fit.
Intensive Immersions
Occasionally, I co-design immersive Rites of Passage experiences for small groups or individuals. If you are interested in this please reach out.
If you got this far, I appreciate you reading about my experiment in needs-based gift economics. I offer it as a completely imperfect and heartfelt experiment and sincerely hope more people will continue to join this growing movement.
To learn more about gift economics and the thoughts that have shaped me, please check out the Resources on my site.