Why no thank-yous?

Why no thank-yous?

Today we would like to talk about the topic of " thank-yous". Perhaps many of you have already asked yourselves why we don't actually offer any material thank-yous, but "only" symbolic thank-yous. These serve primarily as orientation scales to help you better assess how much money we need for which of our tasks. As we would like to act as transparently as possible in our entire work process, we would like to explain our thoughts behind it:

1. We all work in our collective structure parallel to wage work, care work and political activism. And we do it on a voluntary basis. Material "thank-yous" involve an enormous amount of effort - both in terms of time and money. The time and money spent on organising, financing and sending vouchers, products and gift items were for us, after long deliberations, disproportionate to the added value, that the so-called "goodies" bring. Precisely because none of us earn any money from the project, we have to be careful with our resources. And we would rather put the resources we have into our work, because that is what Consent Calling is all about. In addition, we would have had to set our funding levels even higher when planning for material goodies, because we then would have had to put a large part of the money into those, instead of our project. Everything that we have saved in resources through this decision, we are already putting into our educational work.

2. Consent Calling is a passion project with a feminist orientation. The central core is therefore the educational and enlightening task. We assume that the people who support us do so because they share our vision and they (will) benefit from our work. Therefore, the classic logic behind "thank-yous" does not work for us. In return for support, there is not just any product, but the implementation of our idea. We therefore sincerely hope that supporters will recognise the value of our project, even without a "quid pro quo", and support us financially. All supporters can profit from their contribution insofar as Consent Calling can create a space. An area in which you can buy your toys in a feminist safer space, get individual advice, visit our workshops and events, browse our library and find a meeting place. Ultimately, this is our "return service" for you supporting us now.

3. Thank-yous are indeed "nice to have", but they primarily have nothing to do with our work. They are a nice motivation, perhaps convince to a higher amount or entice support in the first place. But they are often neither sustainable - products that are not really needed but only used as an incentive to support are a form of consumption that can easily be refrained from - nor are they necessary to promote our campaign - our project should convince, not a goodie on top. At the same time, they are based on a capitalist idea of output, which we would also like to bypass in this way.

For all these reasons, in the end we decided not to include any material goodies in our campaign, but to show you the financial effort of our work symbolically. We can imagine that we will lose one or the other person as a supporter, but of course we hope that you are still as convinced of Consent Calling as we are and support us financially accordingly!

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