Questions about organizing artist initiative
3 months ago
Do you know how to organize initiatives that offer art for donating to mutual aid?
Specifically, artists collaborating and offering their services to anyone who donated.
I saw this post on bsky and it honestly motivated me to participate in something similar but for EECCA countries.
I know there was one initiative that was specifically EECCA countries oriented, but I don't remember how it's called and if it's still active. That's why I'm considering either organizing one or helping someone else with it.
Questions I have:
- Which terms are comfortable for artists? I'm thinking that when someone donates and requests art, artists should communicate who exactly will pick the request. Since these are not commissions but requests, artists themselves choose whatever is comfortable for them to draw, a simple sketch or something more polished. Those who request don't pick an artist and type of art themselves. I think this is reasonably fair since artists are doing their services basically for free.
- What to do, when none of artists are available to offer art? Artists have their lives, they may feel burnt out, have no time, deal with financial/mental/physical problems themselves, many-many cases that I understand very well myself, as I tried to pull this out alone to support a trans shelter. This is the main reason to start or join an initiative. But what to do when no one is available? I honestly cannot really come up with any solutions than temporarily freezing the initiative or making posts seeking out one-off or recurrent artists.
- How to avoid burn out for recurrent volunteers? I think there should be both one-off and recurrent artists, as again, they're doing this for free. The question is, how do I support artists who are willing to volunteer recurrently?
- Specifically for anyone from EECCA countries: what is the safest way for artists to communicate? I'm thinking of Telegram, as it's mostly used by folks I know and many organizations have channels there. I also think that it'll be reasonable to not list artists publicly for at least some anonymity and safety here.
- Which platforms are the best to work with? I see many organizations work on Instagram and Facebook, or Twitter (this one will be a hard no for me, though). I myself am familiar only with Bluesky, Fediverse and Furaffinity, so I feel like I need additional help with managing social media. I will consider managing Furaffinity account as a viable option, as furry community is very serious about mutual aid and generally if not them, me and my found family would die, not even kidding. This doesn't mean that all artists have to be furry oriented, though.
- Who else should volunteer aside from artists? I think most obvious for me are people who write alt text, help to manage social media, chat moderation, graphic designers. I also didn't mention it, but it's obvious to me that there should be a site, I'm thinking Carrd will work here, so that I can update it very easily. I can do some of these jobs on very first days, but being one man behind it all is my bad habit that will guarantee burnout, so probably I should seek these volunteers first, if I plan to organize myself.
If there is something else I need to know, please let me know. If I get to organize myself, I want to be prepared as much as possible even for a very small initiative that will contain like 3-4 artists that also do these alternative jobs I mentioned above.