You can help!

PLEASE SUPPORT THE WYR INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN!

I’m a 30 year old woman who has spent her entire career in the corporate world. I have a little bit of money set aside for this project, but not much. I’ve spent years volunteering for various causes, but I have absolutely no experience starting one. So I need your help and your support, and I’ll be grateful for whatever you can give – whether it’s a story to share, words of encouragement, your time, or one of the following:

Advice

Whether advice on how to set up, manage, and grow a project like this one, or legal advice on whether or not I should establish a Not for Profit corporation and a registered charity.

You can read more about the projects I plan to launch and if you’re a lawyer you’ll probably realize right away I could use advice on how to navigate the legal risks of enabling user submitted content.

All I can offer right now is the promise to buy you lunch and be forever grateful!

Technical Skills

The WYR Project must be a safe space for women to connect – allowing them to submit their own stories while respecting their need for privacy and 100% control over their own information. I have a few ideas which are further described on the WYR Projects page, but to do it right I need help building the technology to make it possible.

If you’ve got the skills, I’ll keep working to find the funding to buy the infrastructure.

Connections

The women who initially inspired this project were able to share their stories and their voices were heard. If you have connections to women of influence who are willing to attach their names to an important cause, I’d appreciate an introduction.

You can also make a huge difference by sharing the project within your own networks: on  Facebook or Twitter or any other way you connect. It only takes a second but the more awareness we can raise the more momentum we can gain.

Marketing

Check out the WYP Facebook and Twitter pages and you’ll quickly see that I’m not very social media savvy, or do I have an eye for design. I hate to ask for someone that is “looking to build a portfolio” because I know that’s a not-so-sneaky way to ask people to work for free. So I’ll just come right out and ask, will you help me for free? At least until I figure out how to compensate you?

Content

The goal here is to build a community. I welcome guest bloggers, suggestions for resources of any kind, opportunities to help you with similar goals by sharing or promoting content – use your imagination!

Money

Of course, money. As I mentioned above, I don’t have experience managing a project like this one. Maybe someday I’ll create a registered charity so donations are deductible, and I’ll learn how to properly manage the accounting for such an endeavour. In the meantime I can offer personal commitments:

• Full transparency on how any donations are spent.
• Recognition or anonymity, your choice.
• 100% of your donation will go to WYR Projects described on this site. If you’d like to designate a use, I’ll honour your request. In other words, at this time there are no administrative costs and I won’t be paying myself.

Or perhaps you’d like to make a direct donation to one of the Projects, or general expenses such as:

• Website hosting (currently whenyoureready.org is hosted as a free WordPress site – I purchased a domain name, but it has limitations in terms of customization and setting up community features)
• Video camera – perhaps you’re planning to upgrade yours and would like to donate your old camera to use for creating videos of interviews? I’m not very experienced, and even the most basic model is a step up from my cell phone camera!
• Gift cards for restaurants – I’m currently trying to meet with as many people as possible who can help me move this project forward, and I’ll be offering to buy them lunch! Nothing fancy, just restaurants in Toronto’s downtown core or near Queen’s Park.