Dear Valued Community,
Today we’d like to share a bit of our organizational history with you all along with an honest message about our current state of affairs. OF/BY/FOR ALL was founded in the months immediately preceding the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. OF/BY/FOR ALL launched the Change Network in 2018 and held its first in-person retreat in February of 2020. In some ways, it's challenging to remember what our world was like then since our collective existence shifted in ways that we’re still navigating and responding to.
In 2022, 62 organizations participated in the OF/BY/FOR ALL Change Network program over 3 cohorts; in 2023, only 23 organizations participated; in 2024, we hosted 6 organizations in 1 cohort. It’s impossible to pinpoint one factor that contributed to this decline. Recovering from a global pandemic, facing hostile opposition to DEI practices, funding challenges, and organizational apathy toward building better workplaces greatly impacted OF/BY/FOR ALL’s ability to gain traction and build its audience.
The good news is that, since our founding, OF/BY/FOR ALL has built a community that wants to create healthy connections and do thoughtful, meaningful work with kindness, care, and integrity.
The bad news is that without your direct support, OF/BY/FOR ALL will be unable to continue its work in 2025.
In an effort to truly live our values of interdependence and practice transparency, we are coming to you, our community, to ask for your support in any or all of the following ways:
Contribute Financially!
You can provide an individual, tax-deductible donation of any amount to OF/BY/FOR ALL. Your contributions will allow for:
- The creation and maintenance of an OF/BY/FOR ALL materials archive that will be available to the public.
- Staff time to continue offering coaching and 1:1 support to program participants throughout 2025.
- A closing ritual to honor OF/BY/FOR ALL’s history and staff.
Contributions can be made through our website here. Additionally, please email info@ofbyforall.org if you’re interested in using your corporation’s matching gift process.
Hire us (all together or individually)!
As an OF/BY/FOR ALL team, we are currently available for consulting projects. These include creating things like community engagement or program plans, individual and group coaching, and facilitated presentations or workshops. We have a variety of skill sets that can support your needs, so reach out.
You can also hire individual members of the team! As we are planning our next steps, many of the OF/BY/FOR ALL team are available for new positions post-sunset. Reach out with inquiries and we will connect you to the appropriate team member.
Be the hero we need!
Our annual operating expenses are just under $1MM. The majority of our costs are salaries and benefits (approximately $600,000). This is truly what it costs to honor the rigorous, challenging, and important work of facilitation and building thoughtful connections between communities, organizations, leadership, and staff. We honor our team’s labor by offering a thoughtful compensation package that allows them to not only be great collaborators but also active members in their own communities.
You (or a coalition you build) could be the hero that allows us to keep doing this critical work through a major gift. If you're a funder (or several), an angel donor, or an advocate willing to introduce OF/BY/FOR ALL and its work to anyone who would be willing to be our hero, we'd be open to this. Please email info@ofbyforall.org if you’re interested in offering this type of support. We want to continue this work and, with the right partners, would use the funds to continue our operations with the following priorities:
- Developing a new strategic plan for sustainability for 2025 and beyond
- Offering a new edition of the Learning Hive with a focus on building healthy community connections.
- Continued advocacy for healthy workplaces, healthy working relationships, and thoughtful organizational stewardship.
Over the next few weeks, the OF/BY/FOR ALL team will be sharing our lessons learned, revisiting key moments, and highlighting the most impactful and powerful tools we created. While we’re navigating this challenging moment, we want to be in celebration of what we’ve accomplished together. Journey with us through this transition and keep showing your support!
Share your OF/BY/FOR ALL Stories!
We have worked with many of you over the years and would love to hear how we impacted you! Tell us about the programs you participated in, or the blog posts that hit close to home. Share with us the social media posts that made you laugh out loud or share secretly with your colleagues. We want to know how you felt seen or supported by our work. Email info@ofbyforall.org to share your stories.