#1 - October 28 2024

We have exciting news to share: Woodbine recently signed a 10 year lease extension to stay at our Ridgewood space for another decade! The less exciting news is that over the last few months Woodbine has been running at a monthly deficit of around $1,100.

In order to both celebrate all the amazing work that’s happened at our space over the last decade, and to overcome our deficit so we can keep up programming while worrying about money as little as possible we are running a Monthly Subscriber fundraising drive this fall.

Our primary goal is to close this income gap, both in order to make Woodbine more sustainable, as well as to demonstrate a living example of a solidarity economy in action. If 45 people contribute $25 a month, or 110 people contribute $10 a month, we will break even. 

You can sign-up for monthly contributions via WithFriends: https://withfriends.co/woodbine/join or Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/woodbine 

In the last ten years we have only run a handful of crowdfunding drives, but today we are asking everyone who can to consider becoming a regular contributor. We recently added a section of our website which breaks down our regular income and expenses, so Woodbine’s community can better understand how our volunteer-run space works financially: Support 

Woodbine is fiscally sponsored by a non-profit organization, so we are also able to receive larger one-time donations and contributions, and can provide letters of documentation for any tax write-off purposes.

It’s vitally important we don’t take for granted our autonomous gathering spaces that provide a foundation for the political, creative, and social lives we want to live.

Read on for more of our thought process about the drive and the space’s future:

The majority of Woodbine’s operating budget comes from community donations and monthly subscriptions, which allow us to continue hosting our twice weekly food pantry, speaker series and reading groups, Sunday dinners, fitness and yoga classes, a basement hackerspace, film screenings and community supported agriculture programs, writing and arts workshops, poetry readings and soccer games, and youth tutoring and kids crafts sessions, all of which are offered for free or sliding-scale donation. With the rent increase at the start of our new lease next month, our overhead expenses will soon increase to around $6,000 a month.

Beyond these short-term, immediate sustainability goals of just getting by, we also want to use this fundraising drive to share some of Woodbine’s bigger and longer-term dreams, if we had access to more resources.

What would Woodbine look like if we could own a building of our own to experiment with and plan around? Or if we could rent an additional satellite space to give some of our programs more physical and calendar space to expand their outreach efforts? What if we could properly renovate and redesign our current space, fully upgrading the electrical and plumbing systems to better suit our needs, and build out a more modular layout to accommodate more simultaneous uses? What if we could support many of our long-term and dedicated volunteers with regular stipends and coordinator fees, to free up more of their time to dedicate to Woodbine instead of the wage economy? What if we could update and re-imagine our kitchen’s layout and appliances, which our Sunday dinners and mutual aid cooking programs have outgrown over the last four years? Over the years we have produced a series of videos, texts, and podcasts, including most recently our print journal The Reservoir – what if we had more resources to expand this multimedia output?

By running Woodbine this last decade as volunteers, and by offering our programming free of charge, our intention was to question and critique the normative modes of professionalization and value-designation that typically happen in a thoroughly capitalist New York. We wanted to experiment with alternative modes of work and exchange, and with sharing time and space together in a “third place” that was neither the institutional spaces of work or school, nor the commercial space of a business, nor the private space of the home, but rather cultivate together another option of common assembly that broke from those norms, expectations, and codes. 

The “mutual” in mutual aid means Woodbine itself needs attention, care, effort, and material contribution as well. For the past ten years we’ve built the foundations of a solidarity economy as an experiment in creating a broader social autonomy from capitalism and the state. But this has never meant that the “real” capitalist economy ceased to exist. We have had to raise and manage tens of thousands of dollars on an annual basis to pay our rent and utilities, to purchase and maintain all of the equipment and supplies needed for our programs, including constant curveballs and unforeseen expenses that came from moving, floods, critters, etc. 

As we begin our second decade it’s important to clarify that Woodbine’s experiments in cultivating an alternative economic reality inside the space has relied on our organizers figuring out how to interface with the demands and requirements of the decidedly non-alternative economy of capitalism outside our doors. That is the test and question of our organizing today: how do we build a participatory culture at Woodbine that is not unidirectional aid, charitable service, or merely a free space for entertainment. Just as we share the tasks of programming, coordinating, and upkeep, we also must share the burden of keeping the doors open.

Here are our recurring donation pages on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/woodbine or WithFriends: https://withfriends.co/woodbine/join Your donation can range from $5 a month up $10, $25, $50, $100, and more.

You can also make one-time donations via Zelle or PayPal at woodbinenyc@gmail.com Or you can Venmo us at https://venmo.com/u/woodbine585

As mentioned, Woodbine is fiscally sponsored by a non-profit organization, and can provide letters of documentation for any tax write-off purposes. Contact us for more information: woodbinenyc[at]gmail.com

An enormous thanks to all of our volunteers and contributors that have made the space so singular and special all these years. Join us this coming decade to continue building together.

#2 - November 7 2024

As we enter yet another dark and uncertain chapter in our country’s history, please consider supporting Woodbine's monthly subscriber drive so we can continue our organizing work in New York City for another ten years. Since launching our fundraiser last week we have raised more than half of our monthly goal, but we are still about $450 short to overcome our $1,100 monthly deficit. We can get there with 18 more people giving $25 a month, or 45 people giving $10 a month. For more info on our subscriber campaign, click here: https://www.woodbine.nyc/fallfundraising   

Since moving to 585 Woodward Ave four years ago, we have expanded our food pantry capacities, scaling up both our commercial refrigeration and dry goods storage. We’ve expanded our kitchen, hosting both youth cooking classes as well as mutual aid cooking groups. We’ve built out a full gym in the backrooms of our space, as well as a hackerspace and woodshop in our basement. We’ve doubled the size of our lending library. Now in its 9th year, our community supported agriculture program currently brings fresh, organic vegetables directly from independent farmers to Ridgewood nearly year-round. We joined the NYC Mesh Network, and built out a seed library. We offer coworking hours at the space for private and quiet working space. Now that we have signed a ten-year lease extension to stay at our current location, please help us continue all of this and more for another decade.

Monthly donations can be made through Woodbine's Patreon https://www.patreon.com/woodbine or WithFriends:https://withfriends.co/woodbine/join or PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=NQYHWU6ME53NA

As Woodbine gradually picked up our public events programming since 2020, we’ve hosted discussions with some of today’s most important revolutionary thinkers, including Kali Akuno, Silvia Federici, Raúl Zibechi, Andreas Malm, Kristin Ross, Sabu Kohso, Natasha Lennard, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Ben Morea, and many many more.

In December 2022 we published the first issue of our printed journal The Reservoir, with a second issue, “Communion”, coming in September 2023, and a third on its way. In May 2022 we hosted a large conference “On Autonomy and Survival”, which brought together hundreds of participants from throughout North America to reflect on the last years of mutual aid organizing in the aftermath of both the Covid pandemic and George Floyd Uprising. Since October 7th of last year we have hosted a number of benefit screenings, study groups, poetry readings, presentations and discussions related to the liberation of Palestine and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Over the last years we have hosted a number of teach-ins and report-backs related to the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement to Stop Cop City

For the second phase of our monthly subscriber drive, the fundraising committee is encouraging individuals and working groups to self-organize fundraiser events for Woodbine, such as screenings, workshops, skill shares and benefit shows, or to consider collectively contributing a monthly donation. If your working group wants to host a fundraising event at Woodbine, please get in touch with us at woodbinenyc@gmail.com

Your contribution can range from $5 a month, up to $10, $25, $50, $100, and more. Monthly donations can be made through Woodbine's Patreon https://www.patreon.com/woodbine or WithFriends:https://withfriends.co/woodbine/join or PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=NQYHWU6ME53NA

You can also make one-time donations via Zelle or PayPal at woodbinenyc@gmail.com Or you can Venmo us at https://venmo.com/u/woodbine585 For more information on why funds are needed and where they are going, you can check out our website: https://www.woodbine.nyc/support Woodbine is fiscally sponsored by a non-profit organization, so we are also able to receive larger one-time donations and contributions, and can provide letters of documentation for any tax write-off purposes. Please contact us for any checks or any other information or ideas.