Hi Tara,

Pardon the slow response, it had been awhile since I checked in on this article.

I know there has been a lot of confusion and concern around how SWOP is responding to decrim efforts. As I mentioned in this article, SWOP is at a crossroads where we are deciding how to best adhere to our proposed values: To support any step in the right direction that will help a segment of sex workers, or to ensure that all motions forward include and address the needs of all sex workers (particularly the most impacted/marginalized)? The former is easier to support than the latter (and may enable more of us to participate in advocacy), but the latter best describes SWOP’s values, and is where the most anti-oppression works needs to be done. This is a complex and active conversation at SWOP, one we are striving to address concretely this quarter, via community discussions with our Chapter Reps, and via outside perspectives in the format of webinar presentations on various decrim efforts. We are also considering creating a decrim task force, a group composed of SWOP members, sex worker advocates from outside the SWOP network, and allied strategy advisors. This group would be charged with researching best practices, creating model policies, and identifying where implementation could take place. In this way, SWOP hopes to bring together a diverse array of bright minds that can develop strategies addressing the needs of the broader sex worker population. Again, this is in it’s fledgling planning stages, but it feels like the right next step.

On a personal note, you’re a powerful activist, and I greatly look forward to meeting you as well.

~ Savannah

We haven’t met, but I hope we can get to know each other at Desiree. I take Matisse’s opinion of you very highly.

Here in Alaska we suffer from heavy criminalization, and you know most of our efforts have been towards supporting those impacted and ultimately going upstream and changing policy. It has been frustrating to see SWOP not supporting or actively sabotaging efforts towards decriminalization across the country. I hope this is something you’re working towards changing.

Solidarity,
Tara

So you brought up a number of things I want to address:

1.) What is Our Financial Situation: What I was trying to say is that while we are not well-funding, our existence has never been and will never be reliant on donations from corporations, individuals, or foundations that could curtail our advocacy. I also want to make clear: we are NOT WELL FUNDED: We have about 1/30-60th of the annual expenses/income of that of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, 1/120-1/240th the Drug Policy Alliance and 1/200-400th that of the National Womens Law Center. We are very very fortunate that the core of our meager funding is not from sources that could be seen as having an agenda; and that that core funding that we can predictably expect is enough to make sure our website, our chapters’ websites, our email addresses, phone line, our mailing address, our newsletter, etc. doesn’t disappear; we can pay someone to handle our accounting and finances so we don’t lose 501(c)3 status; and also have ~10,000-15,000 to use for all of the following: dividing as micro-grants between 27 chapters; funding specific national-level projects/research/advocacy, providing support as national (eg – for chapters, for local advocacy) beyond volunteer capacity.

Right now I think SWOP is trying to move beyond its’ historical, core funding sources so it can be more consistent and make a bigger impact. I also know “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded” was required reading for our board retreat and new board members, so even though we are moving into the fundraising zone, the issues that often come with $$$ is totally on everyone’s mind and in discussions. I also want to say that Savannah and the board are at a place where we are trying to catch up to our growth and create clear, written policies around these and other kinds of questions, and really well-define the structure. So I’m glad you highlighted this as a specific thing it’s really important to have a policy around.

2.) Chapter Accountability: We have gotten a lot of complaints from both sides — one the one hand, that our accountability processes (eg. reportbacks on micro-grants) is overburdensome, impossible and unfair to volunteer-run grassroots groups; and that accessing funding is also overburdensone (especially for small, 100-500 grants) and impossible for chapters, especially chapters run by people without a finance or business or non-profit management background (eg. most of our chapters); that we are preventing chapters from accessing funding that is there’s that we are serving as a fiscal agent for (eg, because in order to serve as a fiscal sponsor, we need expense documentation). On the other hand, we have gotten criticism for not holding chapters accountable enough.

So this is a conversation the SWOP Board has been having, and Derek and Savannah and the chapter relations and finance committees are working really really hard to streamline funding requests and accountability mechanisms — that they are both less burdensome and better at making sure the (meager amount of) money we give out has an impact and is well-used.

Another issue — increasing monitoring and elaborating rules/regulations for new chapters requires capacity, especially across 27 chapters and hundreds of people…when I was on the board, we really really tried to be all volunteer and do this, I was working maybe 60-70 hours/week without pay, other board members were working 20-30 odd hours/week, and we weren’t able to effectively implement a sustainable, streamlined prosess… And so, this goes back to this recurring theme of trade-offs: improving accountability and support and advocacy nationally means less funding directly for on-the-ground work or getting more funding; getting more funding (not from sources with a clear conflict of interest, but even from more mainstream donors or foundations) often comes with diluting our messaging or changing the way we do things or focusing more on different things or spending more resources tracking impact and less resources actually making an impact… so I don’t think there are clear answers; and again, I believe the board is still working towards a point where we have all of that defined.

3.) Top-Down Policies – (eg. policies about who we can accept donations from + policies about activities/what chapters do) So, as a preamble, I want to say that when I first got involved in national, there was a major, major discussion about what national CAN and CANNOT force/require chapters to do. I think SWOP-USA is very conscious of this and also very cautious of top-down approaches.

So, regarding “How can SWOP-USA make sure the changes Savannah talked above permeate across the SWOP network.” — I first want to say this these goals and changes that chapters expressed a desire for from SWOP-USA. So I think it’s important to clarify that these aren’t top-down changes that the board discusses and then imposes–this is something we are doing in response to and in collaboration with chapters.

Re holding chapters accountable for this happening, you are right — SWOP has not had a clear, well-formed accountability mechanism, due to capacity issues I went through above and also concerns about being “top-down.” However, since early on, Tara, a former board member led drafting of “chapter agreements” and SWOP has had these for years. Chapters (now) sign these when they become a chapter; prior to that, becoming a chapter meant explicit acceptance of that agreements: http://www.swopusa.org/about-us/swop-agreements/ So these core agreements — which include working within an AR/AO framework, fighting economic injustices, fighting criminalization, engaging in coalition work, and making SWOP a space where all voices are valued and where all individuals feel welcomed, comfortable and safe — IS something that we CAN enforce.

My understanding (and Derek and the board can correct me if I am wrong on this) is that the work Derek, Savannah, and the chapter and advocacy committees are now doing is to better define what these agreements mean in practice and also creating more elaborated materials about HOW to put these agreements into practice that chapters can use… And again, with maybe very very very rare exceptions, I don’t think “iron-hand-enforcement” of policies is what is leading chapters to do something that might be questionable, it’s chapters not getting the information (as in a comment below) and not having access to training and tools to help them/chapters do it (not having a toolkit, not providing practical education on “how to do X”). SWOP has an obligation to do this for chapters, and Savannah, the Advocacy & chapter relations committees, and I are working really hard to get this together,

And then, for things that are not connected to the core agreements (and again, Savannah and Derek and BOD, chime in with corrections/elaborations), we can attach conditions to serving as a fiscal sponsor; and we can attach conditions to funding, or offer a specific funding stream to encourage on-the-ground organizers to engage in specific types of work. So without unnecessary mandates that are NOT connected to SWOP’s core values, using other ways to make the changes we desire happen.

4.) EROS Relationships: The SWOP board does not have a strong relationship with EROS, nor as far as I understand, does EROS offer financial support to an extent that should people want to mobilize a national campaign to address the very real issues of price gouging that exist across advertising options — that we would worry about losing a major or future revenue source in doing this.
Again, I want to empathize, EROS’s funding to SWOP has been meager and inconsistent. The ’15 discount codes did NOT pan out and were stopped shortly after they were offered to our board. The ’13 donations were sponsorships of a single event. So my understanding is that funding from EROS as curbing/restraining our advocacy – based on a precident of support or future expectations – has not been and is not an issue. They to date have not and do not provide sufficient financial support to influence what we do in any way.

5.) Why isn’t reducing price-gouging on advertising sites an advocacy priority of ours: Our advocacy agenda was developed directly out of needs assessments completed by 22 chapters. This issue was not listed as a priority. Personally, I think it’s a huge issue, and I would encourage chapters and individual activists who share that as a priority to mobilze and would happy to offer support as an individual human being, unconnected with my role within SWOP.

3.) Do SWOP-USA have the capacity to influence EROS pricing? My impression is that they don’t. My impression is also that SWOP-USA’s connection with EROS is not through a board member or someone working for SWOP-USA.

I can also say that every time (the two times) I have been able to talk with EROS representatives, I have very much stressed the issues you are bringing up; and expressed at MINUMUM the need for TRANSPARENCY regarding EROS finances (eg – it’s possible increases in criminalization are contributing to escalating costs, which are then getting passed on to advertisers–so they say–who knows?) as well as a transparent feedback policy (eg – from advertisers regarding the site). I think other individuals who EROS has reached out to as well have also asserted these conderns. So, frankly, I don’t think SWOP has that leverage.

On that note though, as an individual, I would LOVE a hard-ball T&S interview with an EROS representative about your questions!!

I do understand how non-profit funding works in that it generally comes from corporations washing their taxes and consciences, but that only practically becomes an issue when it is allowed to influence policy as in if they had seats on the board or personal relationships with staff. I think it’s just a bit shocking to sex workers who saw SWOP as a grassroots organization (not saying I’ve ever heard any of you state that) to learn not only do you have significant funding, but that some of it comes from corporations that exploit us.

Your relationship with EROS, known already because of the discount codes you received as recently as summer 2015, was already a topic of great curiosity among sex workers I talk to and mainly just in terms of how anyone at SWOP developed a relationship with them. In other words…no one in the sex worker community even knows who owns and operates EROS since they’re privately held, no one I as an advertiser am able to speak to working there even knows what SWOP is, yet somehow someone at high up at SWOP is in contact with someone high up at EROS.

I’m not implying anything nefarious going on with that, I’m suggesting you attempt to use it as a means to influence their policies. As opposed to Craigslist —who donates to you not because they any longer have a stake in sex worker rights, but because they were targeted under criminalization in the past—or Backpage, who offered free advertising while they were unable to process credit cards—EROS seems very clearly to have a business model that profits off of criminalization. Their rates have increased in correlation with criminalization efforts as they’ve gained an increasing monopoly in certain markets by playing to respectability politics, the latest example of this being their ID policy.

So if you do actually believe EROS is financially exploiting sex workers AND they’ve given money to you, I question whether you have an obligation to push back against them by making this a policy issue. As mentioned, this could possibly be as simple as starting a dialogue with them regarding their business practices.

Then there’s the fact that Katherine explained how the majority of funding from EROS was not processed through SWOP-USA , rather distributed directly to regional chapters. This makes it much more difficult to assess the ethics of this relationship. I suppose it’s really part of a larger issue that SWOP-USA doesn’t appear to have any accountability processes in its relationships with individual chapters (at least that I’m aware of) even as one of its primary functions is to distribute funding to them.

I honestly didn’t know hardly anything about the structure of SWOP-USA before reading this interview, but had a largely negative view based on what I’ve seen in several regional chapters. If you don’t have any control over the policies and leadership of regional chapters, then that takes a lot of the air out of the statements you’ve made in this interview about changes you’re working on going forward since they can only really be said to apply to a small fraction of what most people will see from SWOP generally.

And on a more matter of fact level in regards to the donation you received that was earmarked for work focusing on underrepresented groups (which I’m curious as to why it was left off the donor list…), if you’re passing that funding along to regional chapters you really cannot honestly tell the donor you’re using it as requested.

I also want to address the question of “concrete things we have implemented.” Addressing police abuse and violence is one of the 6-8 concrete advocacy actions on our 2016-8 agenda, which we’re starting by mapping/tracking and monitoring police and criminal justice system brutality and violence nationally.

I want to add — what I’m hearing you say is that what we did do, (which was encouraging our chapters to help raise awareness, reaching out to OKC and asking how we could support, media work and integrating Holtzclaw into all of our communications work leading up to the verdict) was not enough, and there is a bigger issue with advocacy SWOP as a network mobilizes around and HOW we mobilize.

You’re right. I think that is/has been a very very real problem….so the advocacy agenda is great, but toolkits and fact sheets and statements and articles really aren’t enough. Savannah talked about a deeper changing of SWOP’s culture and expanding who, as individuals, make up SWOP, is really important to this…

And then on top of that, addressing the issue of organizer support, training and capacity–I think a lot of people don’t know (heck, for some of these, including me) things like: “How to find out about court dates and locations?” “How do you find out about abuses or cases that don’t show ever even make the media?” “How do you build referrals from social service organizations which might be more likely to have direct contact with individuals like Holtzclaw’s victims” “How do you reach out to victims without revictimizing them?” “How do you engage in victim-centered advocacy?” “How do you mobilize broader support?” “How do you identify and link individuals to other resources?” “How do you establish your capacity, not over-promise, and make support sustainable?” “How do you engage in direct advocacy within the criminal justice system and court rooms and outside police offices when you, yourself, are criminalized?” — which is knowledge that made OKC’s impact so powerful and the lack of which is (I think) really affecting what we organize around and how we do it. Maxine Doogan has emphasized to me the importance of ensuring activists have access to good training and opportunities like labor school, and I 100% agree. So, to that end, in addition to focusing on strengthening connections and addressing our culture, we are trying to address this in particular by earmarking a lot of funding for educational opportunities like conferences, and by putting major effort into building out the training and capacity-building work we do with chapters/organizers, aggregating and sharing resources, and creating E-learning modules with training materials that are more broadly available. I think additional capacity-building and support will make it possible for organizers on the ground to find out about and then provide more direct support and action around similar cases of police brutality and victimization of sex workers in their communities in the future.

SHORT ANSWER: we have been incredibly fortunate to have sufficient “no-strings-attached” (other than maintaining 501c3 status) funding from Craigslist, a donor-advised fund, and individual donors to cover our basic core operating costs (telecommunications and network infrastructure, bookkeeping/accounting/tax preparation, smaller chapter grants/conference scholarships, periodic essential independent contractor work). We are also grateful to have received operating budget funding from the Red Umbrella Fund, which is supportive of stipends to increase the capacity of that core work, at a national and chapter level, but does not constrain what work we do or enforce conditions other than the core values/chapter agreements chapters sign onto when they join. This means that our existence and core expenses are not and will never be reliant on programmatic grants or corporate funding. We

LONG ANSWER: Thank you so much for bringing the issue of donations and conflicts of interest up. National has had many, many, many conversations about this–around not only donations but also board selections. We do not accept and will never accept strings-attached donations which influence our advocacy; nor will we invite board members who could have a conflict of interest to join our board.

Chapters have discretion over which donations to accept or refuse — but I’m glad you are bringing this up, and I think it’s really important to consider.

Regarding funding sources: the bulk of our funding has historically come from Craigslist. Craigslist donations are “no-strings-attached/no-questions-asked,” with the sole exception of maintaining 501(c)3 status. — there are no conditions to the funding we receive through craigslist. We have receive funding through an anonymous trust. We literally do not know who that donor is and we have no information about what they would like us to do with that money. We also have amazing, amazing individual donors. Excluding donations we process for chapters and donations to project-specific fundraisers, these donations are given with no guidance other than “keep up the good work!” The one exception was a large donation to cover compensation earmarked for work by underrepresented and more impacted sex workers within SWOP with the goal of diversifying SWOP and making our work more inclusive and more relevant. This was something we had wanted to before the donor contacted us, and we are incredibly grateful for the funding that will support this. We are also applying for additional project grants around work identified by our chapters as priorities. As you likely know, more funding is available for certain kinds of work; so our capacity may be unequally expanded across our priorities, but ultimately this additional funding will not affect our core work but simply expand it beyond that core work.

Regarding EROS, national does not receive significant or sustained funding from EROS. The donations we have received were:
–>Direct funding to individual organizers at chapters for December 17, 2013. This was coordinated by SWOP-USA and Kate D of SWOP-NYC, but the funding was not processed through SWOP-USA and was payable to individual organizers, at the discretion of individual organizers. Details are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NcT0QgsIfZNxfidnpiH0qW558Xgk2INdF7ylZi-VvCc/edit?usp=sharing
–>Around $1,000 following December 17th as a donation to SWOP-USA in early 2014.
–>500 at a fundraiser in summer, 2014.

Hi there.

I’m sorry you have felt disconnected and under-supported.

It’s definitely challenging to keep a national organization connected. That said, we have tried to diversify the ways that chapters can connect with each other and with SWOP National:
–> The Scarlett letter, a monthly newslletter with national, chapter, and other updates; as well as aggregated information regarding upcoming conference calls and trainings, requests for feedback, and funding information.
–> A national email listserv for asking questions/communication.
–> A closed facebook group, mainly for SWOP chapters but also for allies.
–> Regular trainings and ~monthly national conference calls.
–> Surveys and needs assessments.
–> Regional chapter reps, who you can reach out to with specific issues, as well as [new] a part-time chapter coordinator. You can find their contact information here:

https://swopchapters.wordpress.com/about/chapter-contact-info/

If you are not connected to the SWOP facebook group – Listserv – Scarlett Letter, please email me at katherine@swopusa.org and I can get you set up. If you need support finding resources beyond AR/AO trainings, also feel free to connect directly with me.

Otherwise, many of us, in the role of board members, have tried to provide informal support around conflict mediation, but we did not have a paid position to support chapters. So beginning in 2014, we have had funding for chapter mediation for a while, which was advertised on the SWOP-USA chapter hub. Chapters have not reached out for this funding. Details are here: https://swopchapters.wordpress.com/chapter-funding-finances-2/swop-usa-funding-opportunities/mental-health-conflict-mediation-and-facilitation-fund/

Hi there,

What Chapter are you a part of? I’m sorry to feel unsupported, and would like to do my best to rectify that. I invite you to drop me a line: savannah@swopusa.org.

~ Savannah

Hi Sophia,

As a provider myself, I totally understand frustrations with businesses such as Eros. I chalk this up to a sheer lack of options we all face in a world where our advertising venues are regularly shutdown. My peers and I are invested in working towards a world where we can exercise our right to exist, and where our power as consumers of a business product can have more clout, more options. Until then, I’m perfectly happy to accept Eros’s money to aid us in these efforts.