Disability Justice for Individual Artists
Disability Justice for Individual Artists
Best practices for funding artists with disabilities
Grantmakers in the Arts
Grantmakers in the Arts is the only national association of both public and private arts and culture funders in the US, including independent and family foundations, public agencies, community foundations, corporate philanthropies, nonprofit regrantors, and national service organizations – funders of all shapes and sizes across the US and into Canada.
In May 2022, we collaborated with our friends at Grantmakers in the Arts to uplift the challenges that asset caps on benefits and assistance programs create for those with disabilities.
The webinar featured Reveca Torres, Executive Director of BACKBONES, and grantee in CCI’s Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Artist-Innovator Fund, Laura Poppiti, Program Director and leader of CCI’s grantmaking programs including the SCI Artist Innovator Fund, and Alex Nock, principal at Penn Hill Group, a DC-based government affairs firm.
Participants discussed the ways asset caps impede grantmaking to artists with disabilities, including specific challenges they encountered, strategies to overcome them, and opportunities for shared advocacy on this topic.
Watch the webinar below!
Benefits for Freelancers
Benefits for Freelancers
Freelancers Union insurance
Freelancers Union
Freelancers Union is the largest and fast-growing organization representing the 56.7 million independent workers across the country. They provide their 500,000+ members a powerful support system and voice through policy advocacy, benefits, resources and community.
Freelancers Union is demonstrating new ways of building collective power and protections for independent workers.
Freelancers Union offers health, vision, and dental insurance, as well as life, disability and liability insurance (at competitive rates), alongside important advocacy, education and community for those who work independently.
As a membership organization and 501 c(4), they are demonstrating new ways of building collective power and protections for independent workers.
Debt Collective
Debt Collective
Building collective power via a new debtors' union
Debt Collective
Debt Collective is a debtors’ union fighting to cancel debts and defend millions of households. Join them to build a world where college is publicly funded, healthcare is universal and housing is guaranteed for all.
Debt Collective is building new forms of collective power for debtors.
Debt Collective is the nation’s first debtors’ union, and they organize around intersecting forms of indebtedness – from medical debt to carceral debt, housing debt to student debt – that characterize life for working people, disproportionately in Black and Brown communities.
The Debt Collective’s work shows that people do not go into debt because they live beyond their means. They go into debt because they are denied the means to live. Housing, education, and healthcare are all out of reach for most people, and people are even forced into debt for their own incarceration. The Debt Collective organizes debtors, including artists, to collectivize their debt and their political voice to force debt relief and changes to the legal and financial system to protect individuals from predatory financial practices. Debt Collective is building power to decommodify basic needs—education, food, shelter, and health—and make sure everyone has a material share of what is rightfully theirs.. Its recent significant wins of student debt relief in 2022 have elevated conversations about how debt exacerbates the racial wealth gap.
W.A.G.E. - Working Artists and the Greater Economy
W.A.G.E. - Working Artists and the Greater Economy
Minimum payment standards for artists' labor
W.A.G.E. - Working Artists and the Greater Economy
Since its founding in 2008, W.A.G.E.’s work has developed in service of a single achievable goal—regulating the payment of artist fees in the nonprofit sector—but they emerge from a long tradition of artists organizing around the issue of remuneration for cultural work in the United States that dates back to the 1930s. W.A.G.E.’s mission is to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract artists' labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy.
We are so inspired by W.A.G.E.’s work to fight unpaid labor in the arts, and build new models of collective bargaining and power for the field.
WAGENCY - WAGENCY is an artists' solidarity union and a platform for negotiating the fair remuneration of artistic labor in the nonprofit sector. Supplying artists with digital tools and the collective agency to negotiate W.A.G.E. fees or withhold labor when not paid them, WAGENCY is a new model for organizing contingent workers. W.A.G.E. understands that artists ARE workers and deserve fair pay for their labor – WAGENCY empowers them to negotiate it.
We are so inspired by W.A.G.E.’s work to fight unpaid labor in the arts, and build new models of collective bargaining and power for the field.
A Guaranteed Income for the 20th Century
A Guaranteed Income for the 20th Century
A report from The New School Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy
Naomi Zewde, Kyle Strickland, Kelly Capatosto, Ari Glogower, Darrick Hamilton
The Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy conducts research to shed light on the structures of inequality and develop knowledge about the pivotal roles of race, power, and social stratification. Building relationships beyond the academy, institute researchers work to identify, implement, and scale transformative ideas to promote economic inclusion, civic empowerment, and social equity. The institute also works to foster the next generation of scholars bringing diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and new thinking to society’s biggest challenges.
Over the past several years, the idea of establishing a minimum income floor via a Guaranteed Income has gained traction, with several pilots offering opportunities to see the benefits of these policies in action.
We support establishing a minimum income floor for all, and believe widespread adoption of the policy would make meaningful progress towards our broader vision of protections for all. However, we are not convinced by the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) that would deliver the same amount of support to everyone, regardless of their income level. Instead, we believe any guaranteed income program should seek to bring all individuals up to a minimum standard, providing more support to those in greater need, and narrowing wage and opportunity gaps across the economy.
For these reasons, we find the New School’s guaranteed income proposal particularly compelling. The authors suggest updating the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in a way that makes it function more like a true guaranteed income, removing the various income requirements and benefit differences that define the EITC today. This seems like good sense to us!
Guilded - A Freelancer-Owned Cooperative
Guilded - A Freelancer-Owned Cooperative
Protecting freelancers against wage theft
Guilded Freelancer Cooperative
Guilded is a cooperative committed to empowering freelance workers. They are incubated and informed by the work of the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives. Guilded provides contract management, invoicing, guaranteed payments, tax preparation, and health care.
Guilded offers an exciting new model to build collective power through shared ownership, shared governance, and shared protection.
Guilded is a freelancer-owned cooperative that provides 1099 workers with access to timely guaranteed payment, backend invoicing and tax services, and a range of worker benefits like licensing, insurance, and direct primary care. Guilded creates financial stability while providing freelancers with opportunities to build relationships with other gig workers, collective agency and power, and financial assets as cooperative owners.
Incubated by the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC), the national grassroots membership organization for worker cooperatives, Guilded offers an exciting new model to build collective power through shared ownership, shared governance, and shared protection.