Hey WNC community! This has been an incredible year with you all - from creating actions, to steeping ourselves in re-generative dialogue and offering workshops for new members. And there are always ways that we can continue working to nurture and improve this space. We want to hear your feedback on how to do that. Please take just a couple minutes (or as long as you want) to answer the questions below so we can plan the most satisfying and supportive 2016 yet.

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* 1. How have you engaged with the WNC (Please check all that apply)

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* 2. Which themes that we have touched on (through dialogue or blogging) have been of greatest interest to you?

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* 3. What is your favorite thing we do and why?

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* 4. We have been in the process this year of developing and refining our Financial Policy (below and at: conspireforchange.org/?page_id=97#financial). What feedback, if any, would you like to offer?

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Our workshops are all offered on a sliding-scale donation structure because we are committed to ensuring that our work remains accessible and affordable. However, we ask that each participant truly pay-what-they-can, as the income from our workshops directly impacts our ability to sustain and grow the collective. The process of deciding what to do with the income we generate has been an ongoing discussion within our collective, as we seek to balance accountability and sustainability.

Currently, we have a policy of using 30% of our revenue to cover our expenses (website hosting, meeting space, food, materials, printing, etc.), 30% for internal capacity building (trainings, scholarships for conferences, curriculum development, etc.), and donating 40% to resistance-based movement organizations led by front-line communities. We focus on making these offerings to the organizations that we partner with in our work as well as to those from whom we draw our resources as part of a deeper process of relationship and movement building. All collective-related expenses are repaid automatically to core members. Individuals can choose to donate (anonymously or openly) a portion of their repaid expenses back to the collective.

We have found this exploration to be very rich and complicated. We continue to unearth our personal and group philosophies about money, class privilege, the impact of our intersectional identities, and models of and for economic justice. We seek to challenge capitalism and maintain integrity to our vision for the world. Because of these factors, our policy is continually deepening and evolving. We encourage others to explore this conversation with us and on your own.

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* 5. We are also in the process of developing an Accountability Statement (below), which we will be discussing at the retreat. Please let us know if you have any feedback or ideas.

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As an organization we believe accountability is important. However, it means different things to different people, and we have found ourselves in an extended dialogue about what accountability should look like and mean for us. We recognize that accountability structures that might look accountable through one lens might look problematic through another lens. Our relationship with accountability is as changing and evolving as we are. Currently, here are some of the practices we include:
**Transparency: we make our dialogue notes public and strive to visibilize our practices and policies
**Soliciting feedback: we send out surveys annually through our listserv, facebook and website; we also send out surveys after workshops and specific projects
**Informal advisory: some of our core members have personal relationships with elders and others with whom they check in about our work and with whom they check in with when issues arise
**Listening: we openly accept and integrate any feedback we receive from community members who are aware of our work
**Doing our Homework: we strive to stay aware of current and historical analysis about the themes we explore; we also try to remain in a state of constantly questioning the work we do, the assumptions we make and the ways we function in the world

We do have concerns about the ways the current structures and feedback mechanisms may function to insulate us from the feedback we need to hear and we look forward to continuing to evolve these structures. We are considering many possibilities, including formalizing our advisory relationships and identifying ways to seek more diverse feedback that does not feel tokenizing or that makes others do the work we should be doing ourselves. We welcome feedback from community members as we evolve this conversation.

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* 6. In your wildest dreams, what would you like the White Noise Collective to do in 2015?

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* 7. More specifically, which of the following would you like us to do or provide in 2015?

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* 8. Which themes/events/ideas should we be paying attention to or including in our dialogues and workshops?

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* 9. What else could we do to make our work more useful and relevant for you?

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* 10. How would you like to be more involved with us in the future? (Check all that apply)

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* 11. OPTIONAL: Who are you and what's the best way to reach you? (Please answer this if you are interested in getting more involved.)

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