EQUITY BUDGETING STATEMENTS

EQUITY BUDGETING STATEMENTS are a core tool of equity budgeting practice. Equity Budgeting Statements are short (or long) manifestos that accompany grant, project, & program budgets — typically in the budget narrative section — that succinctly articulate a program, project, or organization’s Equity Budgeting Policy, and how organizational ethics & praxes around fair pay for everyone involved in a project, respect of intellectual property & the sovereignty of community expertise, & honoring long-term relationships, have informed budget categories, line-items, & calculations. Your Equity Budgeting Statement might justify & explain how a $100/hour rate for freelancers reflects the higher cost freelancers bear as practitioners running their own businesses, citing the American Folklore Society & Oral History Association’s recommendations that freelancers rates should be multiple times greater than the comparable hourly wage for a salaried employee with benefits; or it might explain your policy around fair pay for interns, compensating otherwise invisibilized DEI or community liaisoning labor, or your community scholars model and policy.

We’re proud to have taught over 500 practitioners & organizations around the world the basics of Equity Budgeting, & this page will serve as a database & repository of Equity Budgeting Statements from our growing network of practitioners around the world. We simply ask that any Equity Budgeting Statement that is used be fully & rigorously cited. Equity Budgeting is, after all, in large part about an ethics of reparative, speculative, abundant crediting … & we’d love to see, through our chains of citations, how we’re growing this movement together!

The Equity Budgeting model believes, at heart, that our budgets are sites of praxis: where our organizational missions, policies, beliefs, & justice statements go to live, or die. We invite you to reimagine your budget as a place of advocacy: educating funders, fiscal departments, corporate sponsors, & whoeever else is responsible for funding your movement that good work can’t come at the cost of extracting from the people who make the project possible. Together, we can pay everyone more — & sustain fields in which all practitioners can not just survive, but thrive.

CHECK BACK SOON FOR OUR EQUITY BUDGETING STATEMENT DIRECTORY!

The Equity Budgeting Team is also available to consult on custom equity budgeting statements for your project, program, grant, or organization. Jess has crafted equity budgeting statements for a range of organizations, projects, & non-profits, securing payments for high-school students, contractors, artists, musicians, & community scholars. Let us help you build a movement to foreground economic justice in justice work at your mission-driven organization!