Do you want to revive Con or Bust?

[kate_nepveu]

From 2009 through 2019, I ran Con or Bust, which helped people of color/non-white people/BIPoC attend SFF conventions. Since 2019, it's been dormant; but it remains a tax-exempt not-for-profit corporation with various assets. I've decided that it's time either to actively hand it over to someone willing to revive it, or to formally wind it down.

Please read on for: background information on Con or Bust; Con or Bust's current status and potential options under new leadership; how to volunteer to be that leadership; and what will happen without new leadership.

Background

Con or Bust raised funds through a yearly online auction and distributed those funds to literally hundreds of BIPoC fans to help them attend SFF conventions. More detail on Con or Bust's history is available at the Wayback Machine.

In spring 2019, I stepped down from Con or Bust. The existing Board was overcommitted, and subsequently sought volunteers. I offered to help contact people sometime later… and sent out one round of replies and then literally never opened the email account again, because I found it too anxiety-inducing to look at that inbox. (And here you see why I stepped down.) My very belated, but also very sincere, apologies to the Board and those who reached out.

Current Status and Possibilities

Con or Bust currently has:

• Status as a tax-exempt not-for-profit corporation;

• A domain name;

• A PayPal account; and

• A bank account, with money in it.

Con or Bust could:

• Resume helping BIPoC fans attend SFF conventions, by, for instance,

  • Raising funds through the traditional online auction;

  • Adopting another method of fundraising; or

  • Distributing donated memberships to SFF conventions, without engaging in fundraising yet or at all.

• OR support racial diversity in speculative fiction in some completely different manner! Despite the name, Con or Bust's corporate purpose is much broader than conventions. To quote its corporate bylaws, its object is:

  the charitable and educational purposes of promoting the arts and culture in the form of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and related genres), by increasing racial diversity in the production of, and audience for, speculative fiction. [Con or Bust] will widen access to creative industries producing speculative fiction and encourage engagement with speculative fiction among non-white people, by providing financial and other support to creators, critics, and participants in community and professional events.

In other words, as long as Con or Bust is seeking to increase racial diversity in speculative fiction by providing some kind of support to people, then it's acting within its corporate purpose. That leaves a lot of room for all kinds of projects.

If Con or Bust is revived, it will need:

• A website;

• A mailing address; and

• Tax returns to be filed for 2020 and 2021 (very simple; I can help).

If You Want to Revive Con or Bust

Email me at knepveu@steelypips.org and tell me about yourself, anyone you're planning to work with, and what you'd like to do with Con or Bust. You should be over 18, and either you or one of the people you're planning to work with should be in the United States. Please email by Friday, November 5, 2021.

Because these are going to my personal email, and because I'm making a public commitment with a deadline, I believe I will be able to avoid the anxiety-induced lockup that caused me to never act on the last request for volunteers.

Immediately after November 5, I will determine—in consultation with any past Board members who are available—whether any plausible candidates have been received. (I say "plausible" to exclude trolls and so forth.) If so, I will report back here and commit a specific period of time to the transition to the new leadership (ideally by the end of the calendar year).

If Con or Bust Is Not Revived

If I don't hear from any plausible candidates for new leadership, I will distribute Con or Bust's current funds to other charities with aligned purposes and formally dissolve it as a corporation. I will make a full report on those steps here.

Please feel free to leave questions in the comments here; you can comment without logging in, but I do ask that you sign your "anonymous" comment with a name or a pseudonym for continuity of conversation.

Finally, please distribute this link far and wide!

(Edit: here is a Twitter link if you prefer to RT!)

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Not an expression of interest: thank you so much for running Con or Bust for those years.

[kate_nepveu]

No comments will be taken as an expression of interest, I assure you! Email only. And thanks.

[princessofgeeks]

Signal boosted. Thank you for doing this all those years.

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks!

[badgerbag]

Tweeted! I admire your responsible handoff attempt!!

[kate_nepveu]

Round two or three, really, but I have hopes for this time! Thanks.

[cesy]

Thank you for all you've done for this.

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you!

[asakiyume]

Having been involved with small nonprofits, but not in the lead position you've been in, I can only say how deeply I admire what you accomplished and how long you did it for. I *completely* get the overwhelmtion and lockup from before.

This did really good work. I hope people do come forward--it's so well set up to do what it does. But if no one does, your plan for unwinding it is a good one.

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you, I appreciate it!

[happydork]

Thank you so much for all your work on this, and I really admire you for picking this up again to hand on after the first attempt ran aground against the (highly relatable) rocks of anxiety.

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you, I appreciate it!

[ladyjax]

As a Con or Bust fund recipient, I appreciate the care and thought you put into all of this.

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you so much!

Question

[jennielf]

I am very interested in what you feel the qualifications are. Someone who just has a lot of passion but no real non-profit experience? Someone with related experience and some passion but not completely plugged into fandom and its quirks? Someone outside fandom completely?

As someone who has quasi- non-profit experience, and quite a bit of passion, but has never really been plugged in beyond lurking a lot and occasionally donating to these types of things, I am curious as to just how overwhelming learning all the ins and outs would be.

I am jennielf on twitter and instagram.

Re: Question

[kate_nepveu]

What a good question, thank you!

I didn't have any experience when I started. I did have the advantage of being a lawyer when we incorporated, but that's all done now and the necessary yearly forms etc. are all simple and have examples already done.

If someone wanted to keep focusing on the convention side of things, then I do think familiarity with conventions would be important, the same as familiarity with any area that was going to be the focus. But this isn't a single-person job--it's a corporation, it needs at least 3 people on the Board, and those could be people someone brought in as a group or recruited later or who all were interested solo and decided they could work together.

I hope that's useful!

[(Anonymous)]

"Status as a tax-exempt not-for-profit corporation;"
Just on federal level or also on state level? If on state, which state?

[kate_nepveu]

New York!