By Lori LeVar Pierce, Exponent II President
As you consider which non-profit organizations you will support on this Giving Tuesday, we hope you will consider a donation to Exponent II.
Exponent II is run by volunteers. There are staff members for the magazine who receive nominal stipends for their professional services for the quarterly magazine, but everyone else in this organization volunteers their time. It has always been this way. While we keep our expenditures to a minimum, there are things that cost. Costs like magazine printing and retreat hosting are passed along as direct costs, but there are other costs that are not quite so direct.
Recently we have been working on a new website for the organization with the goal of bringing the main organization site, the digital magazine, and the blog onto one site and making everything work more seamlessly together. Much of the work has been behind the scenes, though the digital version of our magazine has been available there for most of 2022. Blog readers will soon see a very different blog interface on a more reliable platform as we migrate the blog to the new site. We are very much looking forward to the public unveiling of this long-anticipated project.
In addition, we have committed organizational funds and efforts to increase the number and variety of diverse voices on the blog, in the magazine, and at the retreat. While funds are not the primary driver of these efforts, having some funding available does expand our options. We recognize that some valuable voices have not been part of Exponent II and we hope to make those with more diverse experiences feel welcome.
We have created a handful of separate goals for additional organizational funding. You may donate generally, or support one of the four specific areas below. Even a small donation helps.
- Support free subscriptions to the Exponent II magazine for community members who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford them. With enough funding support, we could make our digital version free for all to access.
- Fund our BIPOC artist and writer scholarships for Mormon women of color who write and contribute art to our award-winning magazine.
- Provide need-based scholarship funds to attend Exponent II’s annual retreat. Some of these are specifically earmarked for individuals who would increase the diversity at our retreat.
- Sustain our free-to-access blog by helping defray its technology and associated costs. Our bloggers create fabulous content and donate their time but hosting a blog such as ours is not free or even (any longer) cheap.
- Contribute to the Exponent II general fund, allowing the board to meet needs as they arise.
In this season of thanks, I am grateful for every person who volunteers their time and talents to help create Exponent II. I am grateful for every dollar of financial support we receive and for every subscription purchased that supports our efforts to share more stories and art.
Exponent II is about creating forums for the sharing of stories, but the reason for and result of sharing stories is to develop a community to better understand and support each other. We hope that today on #givingtuesday we can count on a little bit of financial support from our community to enable us to continue providing these forums and to help us expand our reach in good and better ways.
Exponent II is a registered 501(c)3 charitable organization; all donations are tax-deductible in the United States.
