Adventures in...uh...Feb 16 update
Updates on the updates, a slack, and all the things I cannot say...
When I started this project I sent out an email to a small group of people I knew, who (in exchange for getting the email) would send back encouragement, praise, and occasionally links and leads that might be helpful. It functioned as an emotional support system, giving me some kind of satisfaction and rewarding feedback (you’re doing good! Keep going!) at a stage in the project where the project itself was unlikely to give the reward itself.
In a rush, when I won the Emergent Ventures grant I turned it into a public newsletter, which still has the similar effect of creating pressure to update (good pressure!). Needing to announce something every month narrowed my focus many times, to what could be completed this week, to concreteness, creating pressure away from keeping my head in the clouds.
But there were a few vital nutrients that got lost when the news update went public. For one, I felt more pressure to seem professional, to have my shit together, despite desperately wanting to defend people precisely in the moments when their shit was the least together. Once, I sent the link to this substack to a legislative staffer (who seems like a lovely and also unique person!)--and from then on this congressional staffer was included in the imaginary auditorium I was broadcasting to every time I pressed publish. Writing about the ways in which I was confused, or stuck, or embarrassed or sad, or any of the million other feelings I consider normal (and what I was signing up for!) suddenly felt illegal. I would have to speak in bureaucratic professionalese, and I found that very confining.
The second side effect was that suddenly private victories didn’t count. If something was accomplished that I didn’t want to be google-searchable-level-public then I couldn’t include it. We’ve had a lot of successes in fundraising, with some aspects that are confusing, some extremely exciting, and some extremely weird. I don’t feel comfortable announcing the full amount raised, except to say we’re about over halfway to $100K. Things are still happening.
That is very cool! I’m proud of it, as this is the first time I’ve led a fundraising campaign this ambitious, and a key part was learning from Kim Klein in her book Fundraising For Social Change, which has earned for me the title of bible. I took her online training and didn’t find it as helpful as the book.
Other private victories–getting good leads for people and services to use in the prototype crisis service. Finding a narrower scope for the pilot (that I will discuss later). Deepening of relationships with some key people and supporters, in a way that is satisfying now but I suspect even more useful later. Things that would be boring to announce, like taking advantage of our recent nonprofit status to set up all the nonprofit-discounted versions of services that any organisation needs, regardless of their goals.
Another category of update is ‘situations still in negotiation’. There is a lot of that at the moment, and fits in the category of ‘important but not easy to share’.
Talking about things I’ve learned now also feels more fraught than it once used to, because the more important things I’m learning now look less like ‘this is the basic functioning of this part of the crisis system in many places’ and more like ‘these are the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals and groups involved in this local area’ and I’m much more hesitant to put those kinds of evaluations on the public internet, because a) I don’t want to turn those people off from working with me (everyone has flaws; listing your opinion on them online is uh, not a kind thing to do unless it’s to warn other people), and b) I am grateful for everyone who is working on making crisis care better, and I don’t want bad consequences for them.
This is a fancy way of saying that a lot of the most important things I’m learning would look like gossip if published publicly, but reasonable sense-making if shared with a smaller group of trusted people. So I will be changing the ways I share updates to reflect that.
Some concrete recent successes I can share:
I have recorded three podcasts with people whose expertise I respect and wanted to learn from; once I’ve recorded about eight I will publish them as a series. I hope they are useful windows into the thinking of people who have had unique influences on crisis care one way or another.
The mania guide is now listed as a resource by the National Empowerment Center
Some specific asks:
Fundraising was more difficult than it needed to be because I could not succeed in getting Facebook fundraisers set up for Psych Crisis, despite dozens of support messages over several weeks. The problem is pretty niche; it has something to do with Facebook’s standard signup workflow not handling some aspect of the relationship between my personal FB account and the Psych Crisis page. If you have insider FB knowledge, or have a lead to a consultant who is extremely familiar with the FB charity donation signup process and its bugs, please reach out! This is stopping Psych Crisis from doing fundraising directly on Facebook (which is favoured by the algorithm gods over external platforms like PayPal).
I’m looking for introductions to MAPS (particularly general counsel Ray Allen and Zendo project lead Chelsea Rose Pires).
From now on, some kinds of updates will more permanently move into a less-public venue. This newsletter will still exist, and give the sort of updates that can reasonably be public. I’d still like to be able to be sad, and confused, and weird in this newsletter (or, whoever writes it in the future would have such permission too). That seems like an important part of building a crisis system that is more humane and compassionate, so I plan to keep doing it.
However, if you would like to participate more actively in making sense of what is happening with this project and where it is going, there’s now a slack workspace for Psych Crisis.
If you and I have talked one-on-one and you see yourself supporting the project in some way over the long haul, I invite you to join.
If we haven’t met but you would like to contribute time and effort as an active volunteer contributor then also, please join!
If neither of those relationships to Psych Crisis feel right for you then relax! There will still be plenty of interesting updates in the public newsletter.
Thank you <3