It’s hard to believe that it’s been three months since I posted my first Substack article: Coming Closer to Financial Right Relationship.
Perhaps it’s always been this way but time seems to pass differently from how I remember it. It seems to have simultaneously contracted and expanded, so that three months feels like three years and three days; and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think, mostly, I’m not very impressed.
Recently, I was listening to Michael Meade speak about liminal time, a ‘a betwixt and between period’, (episode: ‘A Liminal Time on Earth’, Living Myth podcast), and it landed on me that perhaps time feels so strange because we are living within liminal time.
He speaks of how ‘entering the modern world at this point is like entering a rite of passage that is already underway. In that sense, we are in a “liminal phase” that requires a transition, not simply from one place to another, but from one way of seeing the world to another way of seeing and being in the world’.
The other day I was walking on Dartmoor and I tried to visualise the rock formations and lands through Deep Time (because I’ve been reading Otherlands; and if you read Otherlands, you’ll start trying to visualise things in Deep Time). It was both amusingly impossible and wonderfully possible.
Regardless of my personal opinions about it, according to my calendar it has, in fact, been three months since I launched my experiment and it’s time for my first update.
What Is Going On With 2023?
If you were to ask W, my husband, what I mutter on a regular basis, he’d likely say that it includes: 'What is going on with 2023?’
Reflecting on it, I suspect that I viewed publishing my experiment as an act of midwifery, with life stepping in as a loving caregiver who would steer my intentions along like a supported toddler. Nope.
And yet… I’m quite excited about where the experience has taken me.
The Ground Beneath Our Feet
So far, 2023 has been the worst financial year W and I have had since we met. Pretty much all our sources of income disappeared at the same time that every cost in the UK increased. This has coincided with me finishing an expensive round of self-funded treatment for health issues (that didn’t help) and my husband struggling with frozen shoulder.
Since I shared my article, we’ve gone through all of my personal savings and we’re now in his, while seeing no evidence that costs in the UK are going to reduce any time soon. We’ve therefore spent the last three months feeling intensely financially insecure and concerned about our financial future.
I read newspapers and speak to a lot of friends and colleagues, so I know I’m not alone in these challenges; and I’m acutely aware of how fortunate we are, even in these circumstances. What these circumstances do keep bringing me back to is realising that my husband and I have to have solid financial ground beneath our feet to do the work we want to, in the way that we want to, and to enable us to be the kind of community members that can help others when they are experiencing a challenging financial situation.
Therefore, my attention recently has been focused on helping my husband and I create more stable finances. When we have that, I will then bring more attention to generating donations into The Seaspray Collective - and working with economically- and politically-marginalised clients at no cost to them and at a much reduced rate for me.
As the unknown sharer of this tweet conversation says:
Talking of numbers…
The Numbers So Far
Firstly, the numbers! Between mid-Feb and mid-May, £184 was received in donations 🎉
This was from 2 annual Substack paid subscriptions and 1 monthly Substack paid subscription. Thank you so, so much. Every one of these pounds is appreciated.
However, some hard lessons have been learnt, including that:
Substack takes a 10% fee for each subscription and Stripe takes a 2.75% processing fee. This leads to a stark difference between the donated amount and the amount actually available to the Seaspray Collective (keeping in mind that the net amount is before I’m hit with the fees to move this to Seaspray’s Open Collective account, which look to be 1.2% + 20p).
This means a difference of having received £184 worth of donations and being able to send £160.27 to Seaspray’s Open Collective account, and I feel sad and guilty that I didn’t really take this into consideration.
Stripe won’t pay out a GBP balance until it hits £200. This means that I’ve been unable to access any donations so far, which has been very frustrating. I wasn’t aware of this clause until I couldn’t withdraw the donations and the situation has made me feel quite guilty that the kind and generous donations haven’t been utilised yet.
Applied Learnings
It feels awful to have such a large chunk taken out of donations and to not be able to access them until a certain amount has been raised. But I have plans!
Getting subscriptions directly into Open Collective. Open Collective is the money management platform that kindly welcomed The Seaspray Collective into its community. It supports non-profits, like Seaspray, to collect and pay out donations and monies, and does so with complete transparency.
The first wonderful thing about Open Collective is that it can directly collect monthly and annual subscriptions, as well as one-off donations. If you head to Seaspray’s Open Collective page here, you’ll see that I’ve set up a monthly and annual subscription option that is the equivalent to the paid Substack options, along with a one-off donation option.
The second wonderful thing is that utilising Open Collective is free for Seaspray, and the donor chooses whether to pay a transaction fee (and how much they pay).
I have now turned off the Substack paid subscription option, so reducing the 10% bite that Substack took, and I’ll be adding a small paragraph at the bottom of each Substack articles asking supporters to donate directly into Seaspray’s Open Collective page.
To note: because utilising Open Collective’s services means I need to have a Fiscal Host (I have chosen All For Climate), donations will have a 3% fee taken to support AFC’s operational fee plus there’s a small fee for using Stripe, but overall more donor money goes to Seaspray.
In summary, it’s a bit frustrating that there’s no fee-free way for donors to get money to Seaspray, but bringing the donations directly into Open Collective will reduce them quite a bit. I’ll have to see what this new arrangement looks like in reality as new donations come in.
Separating Patreon from Seaspray. My second learning is that I find engaging with Patreon much more challenging than engaging with Substack, which means that I haven’t paid it much attention since I set it up. And, since W and I do not have stable financial foundations right now, I have decided to remove Patreon as a source of income for Seaspray and, instead, have Patreon as a source of income for me (and pay more attention to it!).
Moving forwards, the avenues for Seaspray donations are therefore:
Donations directly into Open Collective (replacing paid Substack subscriptions)
Donations into Seaspray’s crypto wallet: 0x915f6bfd244c245be0c100E0f3ae6Fe4D7b888DF
Other Forward Movements
I’ve set up and published to the web this Google Sheet to track all donations, fees, and outcomes. I will also log client-allocated hours and costs here.
I’ve set up a clear application route here for the communities and organisations that want to access Seaspray’s services. Interestingly, setting this up has brought up some challenging questions and tensions about Seaspray’s intentions and how I find clients to work with that I don’t yet have answers for, including:
Is it right to ask potential clients to give me their time and energy to apply for something that I cannot guarantee they will receive?
Is asking potential clients to fill in a questionnaire an unfair (perhaps impossible) ask for those that don’t have English as a first language, or are dyslexic, or blind, or neurodivergent?
Although I am not offering a grant, there is still something alive for me around the dynamics of the grantee/grantor dynamic that I’m not comfortable with. What’s alive in that?
It feels important to work with groups and organisations that have transparent financial practices, but will this discriminate against the groups and organisations that I most want to work with?
Am I asking the right questions on the questionnaire?
How do I best get the information to clarify if I can help a potential client/they meet Seaspray’s criteria, without giving too much of my time for free and ending up feeling depleted? Could/should I log time spent on pre-client work as something I can/should invoice Seaspray for?
The first two admins are ready to act as stewards of the collective. Their roles will include ensuring that money trails make sense, that invoices from me to the collective match work completed, and approving (or not) my invoices to Seaspray.
A Learning Curve
I’ve already gained so much out of writing about my experiment in an income of two halves, publishing it, discovering what hasn’t worked, and finding new pathways for how I move forwards.
As I reflect on shifting into this next phase of seeking out and working with Seaspray clients, and the new tasks and responsibilities I will now be dealing with, I notice nervousness, an uncomfortable sense of responsibility, curiosity, excitement, and some guilt that I’m not stewarding Seaspray and the generous donations better.
So here we go… into the next phase of Deep Time and Shallow Time™.
If you have any idea about the questions and tensions I’m holding, please do utilise chat, notes, or comments.