The Next Three Steps
Starting a nonprofit with a vision of healing is in so many ways like training for a marathon. We do, of course, have big visions of the finish line, of achieving a new personal best, and of running the race joyfully. And while I certainly hope to wake up energized for my fifth marathon on October 30th, consume energy gels in sync with when my body needs them on the course, and be crushing it with a rush of endorphins as I pass mile marker twenty-five, at this point in time, the next steps I need to focus on are simple: stay hydrated, eat right, and cruise down the Mt Vernon trail, logging just one more of the hundreds of miles training requires.
Training for a marathon and the details of how you run your race raise many questions about the process. You actually do have to think about hydration choices and energy gels and whether or not sweet potatoes are the best source of carbs prior to a long run. Similarly, on the nonprofit front, earlier this year during the series on Energy, I wrote a special journal covering 7 Questions About Liberatus.
Today, as we conclude our series on The Great Outdoors and prepare to announce the next series tomorrow, I wanted to take a moment to outline where I see Liberatus headed in the near future.
As I noted in the earlier post, our most urgent need right now is fundraising. Our donors are currently giving roughly $1,055 each month to fund this work—but the daily needs include funding for everything from graphic design and photography, to buying and reading books, to writing and editing, to coffees and meals with our writers and subscribers on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, to planning issue themes and developing writing guidelines.
In my experience, a platform like Liberatus is unheard of in politics, and I love being able to fall asleep at night knowing that despite our sighs and groans during the day over the state of American politics, I get to get up every morning, turn on my computer and iPad, and get back to work creating something beautiful. We are writing a story of healing, of freedom deeper than anything we have yet imagined in America.
While I would love to scale this organization up rapidly and achieve the funding targets outlined in the prior post—and I fully believe we are ready to do so—in the short term, we need to reach a target of $2,000 in monthly giving to remain a viable organization in the DC area. Ideally, to maintain the quality of this work, which is hopefully fully rooted in a vision for the Kingdom of Heaven, we need to hit that target by the end of July. We will likely have to sacrifice the work itself if we do not. I am personally moving out of my living space to room with family and cut costs in the short-term, and by funding Liberatus you can help us achieve the next three steps, and ideally join us in bringing healing to the very center of American politics.
One way or another, I fully intend to continue publishing the weekly journal on how to bring Truth and Beauty to American politics, written by people on the inside. I’ve already outlined topics through the end of 2017, but it’s a monumental effort to publish something with a depth of perspective, and we need your support to do it well.
Reaching $2,000 in monthly commitments this month will allow us to take the next three steps.
1. A new project launch. From the beginning, the vision of healing has presented an organizational challenge: how do you market something so deeply personal to a mass audience, and how do you make the depth of perspective healing requires accessible? The solution is to create a new, separate brand that will still communicate the vision of healing but in a way that is both more accessible to the common person and that creates an additional revenue stream for the organization. While I can’t share more details on this project at the moment, we will be announcing the launch date in the near future. If you haven’t already, you can subscribe to the journal to be sure you hear about it.
2. A writing team of 10+. The purpose of the journal, from the beginning, has been more about having conversations on what healing looks like in American politics, building authentic community (even within politics), than just about pushing out content every week. We are working to grow our writing team so we can both reach more people on the inside who are ready to find healing and need a creative outlet to write a story of restoration, and so we can continue publishing a high-quality journal every Wednesday. As funds allow, we will focus our time this fall on adding writers to our team. Interested writers are welcome to apply now.
3. A consistent conversation to engage our subscribers. While it would be perfectly valid to publish a journal each week and let people choose to do with it what they will, ultimately, our goal is to empower writers in American politics to lead cultural change. In order to do that, we need to create a framework for cultural change by interacting with our subscribers in small group settings consistently. We need to be able to turn our Weekly Action Items into exactly that—action. And we need to have input on how it’s going, and what the current challenges and barriers to healing are. The truth is, many people have played a role in political dysfunction—myself included—and so now all need to be invited to write a story of healing through freedom with us.
We hope to launch Subscriber Coffees consistently in 2017 as small group conversations designed to build greater community and trust in politics, and begin bringing healing wherever we are currently working.
To achieve each of these steps, it is critical that we hit a short-term target of $2,000 in monthly giving by the end of July.
Will you join us?
With your help, this work can continue: LIBERATUS—we are set free.