Frequently Asked Questions

We love working with groups who align with our approach. In particular, we strive to actively name and grapple with white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy as systems of oppression past and present. We are not a good fit for groups that have limits on what can be discussed or introduced when building an analysis of systemic oppression. Please visit this page for more information on who we work with.

While we currently do not lead organizational change work, we can contribute to it by offering educational workshops with an anti-oppression lens, skill building workshops such as facilitation training, individual or group coaching, or facilitating dialogue and meetings.

We ask all groups to begin by scheduling a consultation. This gives us the chance to learn more about the context of your group, share recommendations for next steps and how we might approach your specific situation, and see if working together would be a good match. This gives you an opportunity to get to know us, ask us questions about your organizational process in general, and see if working together would be a good match.

No. We don’t offer any workshops on bias, diversity, racial disparities, or other euphemisms for racism and oppression. We only do work centered in a power analysis (for more information, please see why we don’t say diversity, equity, and inclusion). If naming and grappling with systemic power is not what you are looking for, we are not the right fit.

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work is often focused on individual identities and interpersonal relationships and does not name, grapple with, or shift power. In our experience, DEI reinforces the status quo by making small tweaks that do not challenge power dynamics and over-emphasizes employee interactions rather than institutional practices. Thus, DEI often functions as an HR strategy used to provide cover for the institution and those in power. By contrast, anti-oppression work is fundamentally grounded in a power analysis and building power. Anti-oppression work necessitates getting at the root of oppressive systems of white supremacy, capitalism, militarism, patriarchy, etc, in order to dismantle them.

Workshops are experiential, meaning they are a space for participants to actively engage their learning in order to apply the learning moving forward. When we offer a workshop, it will include time for the group to meet one another, go over community practices, and participate together in learning. Our workshops use experiential learning theory to guide participants in connecting new concepts to their own lives while creating a group space for shared learning. If you sign up for a workshop, you should think of yourself as an active participant in a learning experience.

Teach-ins are lecture, presentation, or webinar style. In contrast to workshops, teach-ins do not create space for shared reflection or group processing. Those who attend can think of themselves as audience members. Teach-ins include time for questions.

Reading groups are spaces to discuss assigned readings and deepen your analysis of a topic. They are spaces to do group study on a topic. In contrast to workshops, facilitators are there to facilitate a dialogue but are not moving the group through an experience. If you sign up for a reading group, you should come prepared to discuss the readings in order to make connections to how you understand how systems are operating today.

At Both/And, we use sliding scales for our services to both make them accessible for those with lower incomes & wealth and to center our values and politics on redistribution. Often, sliding scales emphasize the accessibility for those who can’t afford full pay on one end of the scale without calling into question the perceived normalcy of being able to afford to pay the full rate. We believe in building an economy that doesn’t normalize wealth disparities and acknowledges the centuries of labor exploitation, slavery of Black people, violence, and resource extraction on which today’s economy and the wealth (particularly of white Americans) has been built. We believe in a solidarity economy, one that centers racial and economic justice, and is based on care for all and not profit for some. We recognize that, under racial capitalism, where individuals and organizations find themselves on the economic ladder is not based in justice. We are an organization striving to be anti-capitalist in a capitalist system, to articulate the value of the labor we offer while working to make it accessible and just within a system that values cheap products, devalues feminized labor, and extracts wealth. We are in process on this and will continue to shift and tweak our methods with new learnings.

In order to practice our values and work towards building a solidarity economy, we practice redistribution internally and ask that our clients engage critically with this practice as well. We guarantee our facilitators get paid a fair hourly rate and our full-time people a salary that aligns with our relative privilege and marginalization, regardless of the composition of a workshop and/or the rate tier of a client we contract with. Redistribution rates ensure we can offer solidarity rates and donation based programming for BIPOC, pay land rent, and contribute funds to Black & Indigenous-led organizing where we live without devaluing the labor of our marginalized facilitators.

A note about valuing labor

We encourage you to interrogate your sense of monetary value for different products and services. Many of us have been taught to shop around for the cheapest price with the best ‘value’ - but what do we really mean by that? How are we assigning worth to different kinds of labor? Like many who work in sectors with feminized labor, we experience people pushing back on our rates (some have even suggested we should donate our time because we believe in what we do). If your organization believes that anti-oppression work is important, we encourage you to reflect that in your budget. A good frame of reference is to look at what you are willing to pay for technical skills such as computer programming, financial consulting, or engineering and hold up a mirror to how you value anti-oppression work and skilled facilitation of structural change processes.

Solidarity - We set these rates as an attempt to be in solidarity with individuals and organizations who are surviving. We recognize that in some cases this rate may still not be accessible, and we encourage anyone to get in touch if that is the case.

Full - This rate represents the ‘true cost’ at which we would break even after paying our expenses. At this rate we can pay our facilitators.

Redistribution - Redistribution means ‘paying your fair share’ for individuals and organizations who have had structural advantage and access to wealth. We use redistribution rates to support our solidarity clients, offer donation-based programs for BIPOC, pay land rent to Indigenous people, and contribute to Black & Indigenous-led organizing where we live.

The organizational sliding scale represents payment for:

• Facilitation & Speaking Engagements

• Design & Preparation

• Administration & Client Communication

• Consults & Coaching

• Traveling (% of hourly rate)

When we are pricing a facilitation or consulting service, we take into account our time for design, administration, client communication, and travel. During our initial consults, we will work together to either offer an all-inclusive rate within our fee framework or build a contract for hourly billing. In general, we estimate 2 hours of design time per facilitation hour, per facilitator. We offer bundled rates for longer engagement and workshop series as opposed to stand-alone events, which cost more. With a few rare exceptions, we always do custom design for each client after learning about the current conditions in the group or organization.

There are a few factors that contribute to how we approach creating facilitation teams for different engagements. Most often, we have two facilitators on each project.

We believe in cross-power facilitation, meaning a pair or team of facilitators with dominant/privileged and with marginalized identities. For example, if we are offering a training series on racial justice to a multi-racial group, the facilitation team will typically be a Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color (BIPOC) facilitator and a white facilitator. Depending on the racial makeup of your group, we may prioritize a larger team of facilitators to ensure representation of different races and racialized experiences on the team. Cross-power facilitation is important to model power sharing, solidarity, and mitigating risk in real time.

Second, depending on the design & the number of participants in your group, we may require a larger team to ensure we can offer smaller facilitated experiences in break-out groups. We consider the risks associated with processing in mixed race groups and often will recommend racial caucuses (people in similar or same race groups, for example a white group and a BIPOC group or a Black group and an Asian group). Because building trust within a group is central to deeper learning and processing systems of oppression, we work to keep groups small enough for everyone to participate in dialogue.

Please note that all Both/And workshops are subject to time change or cancellation due to unforeseen circumstances. In the case of rescheduling, all participants will be offered the option to receive a full refund or register for the new workshop date. In the case of cancellation, all participants will receive a full refund.

Yes:

• If you have taken a workshop with us, we invite you to use our resources in your personal practice as long as you credit Both/And.

• If you would like to use our sliding scale as a reference or framework, please feel free! We just ask that you credit Both/And and note our credit to Resource Generation.

Maybe:

• If you’d like to use resources for an event or workshop where you are charging participants, we ask that you get in touch with us to license the resource for a small fee.