Change to Mutual Aid Donation Logistics

The summary here is that in an effort to maximize how much I’m able to donate to mutual aid funds for Palestinian families in Gaza, and also able to continue to expand my art and reach without risking impacting the amount of potential aid negatively, I’m changing from 100% profits donated to 50% total sale donated which should generally also mean more can go straight to aid.

—-

As an artist, my aim is to create things that bring me joy and share what I love with others.

As a small business, the only financial goal has always been to use my art (and the privilege of my fulltime day job that in enough to support my household) as a way to try and help fellow Palestinians who are unable to live the lives they deserve to in Gaza.

That is NOT changing, simply a shift in the specifics to be able to get funds to families easier, and have the bandwidth (mentally, ethically, and financially) to more comfortably take risks with growing my art and business

If you’re somebody that follows me, you likely are either Palestinian or an ally, and know the helplessness of feeling like nothing you can do is even close to enough.

The intent for the money made from lovely people like you buying from OmNacho absolutely is not changing.

What IS changing is some back-end logistics, with the intent of maximising what I can get to the mutual aid funds of the families, and striving to be as transparent as possible

(TLDR: the changes are good)

Previously, my approach has been that 100% of profits are donated. Given my intent for the money made, this seemed like the obvious way to go, as I have no intention to make a profit myself.

But ultimately, the reality of the logistics made me reflect on the specifics-and what the actual result was.

If, for example, a $10 item costs me $4.16 in supplies*, each time it sells that’s $5.84 profit to go to mutual aid funds. But lots of what I made use unique materials- so maybe the $10 item right next to it is $6.17 in profit, or $3.12, or $4.29. Just the logistics of trying to track it all ends up almost a much time than I spend making some of the items.

(*not including the time spent to make the item, which you’re supposed to factor in as cost but I don’t because I consider my time and labor as part of what I can donate)

And once I factor in website fees, or vendor fees, sometimes the profit at the end of a day is $0, or even in the negative. It happens, thats how these things go sometimes especially at events.

Those times I’m usually opting to take the full financial hit myself because the people that do buy from me that day (just not enough to offset an event vendor fee) did so expecting to be helping Gaza families by doing so, and even more intensly I feel awful making the recipients of the aid pay the price for me taking a risk on a certain event, or a pricier material

I am fortunate to be able to financially handle covering those amounts without it being a big deal.

But I’ve realized recently the result has ALSO been that the amount of risks I take with new artistic ideas I have, and new events in town that are maybe not the usual democraphic but a great opportunity to teach and spread culture, has gone down significantly. Because it feels irresponsible and selfish to be risking funds that are to be to help people.

And then ultimately that fundraising grinds to a halt anyway because I am stressed and leaning away from those risks that are also opportunities to continue to grow (and then feeling guilty about THAT)

Anyway.

All that to say, I’m going to try a shift-with the intent of maximising how much I can raise to go to mutual aid, both in literally dollars per sale and also in my bandwidth to be able to keep growing as a small business (and artist) and ideally also increase the amount of support that way as well.

So instead of trying to navigate exact profit per individual item and wrestle emotionally with factoring in all the actual business costs, I am switching from 100% of profits ot 50% of sales.

So selling a dozen of that hypothetical $10 item at an event, that could mean anwhere from $40-$80 profit donated, but maybe that event had a $100 vendor fee that I took a risk on but feel wrong passing the cost along, its now just $60 donated of the $120 of sales. Straightforward, easy, and the $60 that is left goes towards my costs. Sometimes I’ll still take a loss but its clearcut as my risk, and I can decide what to go for based on that.

Sometimes it’ll break even (hopefully) or slightly up, in which case any extra will just go towards supplies or the next event to help offset the slow ones, and if it ends up enough of a surplus then thats just extra I can add to the donations.

Anyway thanks for coming to my existential crisis/therapy session rant, if anybody has any concerns (or sees anything I maybe missed in my logic and has suggestions!) don’t hesitate to reach out. ❤️

And in all seriousness, thank you for caring and supporting both the product I sell and by extension the families in constant actual crisis.

And to my actual therapist who is also an artist and went on an even longer, rambly-er journey with me on all this