Q: Why do we use a sliding scale?

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.