Equity Budgeting is a model for paying everyone in a project fairly, & rethinking who it is who is doing the work. But it also extends to other arenas of practice: intellectual property, & stewarding long-term, non-extractive relationships with communities, partner organizations, & contractors. It’s about money: but also about the countless other ways mission-driven work relationships can be made more equitable & more ethical.

Equity Budgeting grows out of the work of Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History in Marion County, Ohio — co-founded by cultural worker Jess Lamar Reece Holler & anti-racist educator Johnnie Jackson — & has further been developed by Jess Lamar Reece Holler & Sarah Dziedzic as a series of workshops, workbook, & an emerging community of practice, advocacy program, & certification.

Equity Budgeting was born in the cultural, arts, & heritage organizing space; but is application for all organizations: including grassroots groups, non-profits, cities & municipalities, & funders/philanthropists/foundations.

The Equity Budgeting Manifesto grew out of the direct community-collaborative work of Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History, as a response to both the systemic undervaluation & cultures of not paying oral history narrators, participating cultural artists, & community collaborators, and the systemic underfunding of cultural worker labor. Equity Budgeting means paying everyone more. If your non-profit is relying on unpaid or underpaid labor, you are operating in the red. Equity Budgeting means that equity begins at home: in how you pay your community, how much, & how transparently. Read it HERE.