The Return of Green Envelope

The mutual aid fund is back!

If you read this, chances are you know I started a mutual aid fund during the WGA/SAG strike last year. It was chaotic and wonderful and we somehow raised 264k and sent grants to almost 3000 people. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever been a part of.

It was also A LOT of work. I had basically started a company and had given myself a full-time job without any safety net, or high-level support. Every decision I made about the fund, I made with uncertainty and with a lot of last-minute frazzled phone calls. But at the time, everything felt chaotic so this was at least a good kind of chaos that felt worth it.

I needed a break for a lot of reasons— my own bandwidth, to make sure I was kosher on the tax front, and it’s also pretty emotionally draining because it serves as a reminder that things aren’t back to normal, (but normalcy in this business may be a thing of the past, anyway.)

But, we’re back baby!

We’re almost at the year-anniversary of the strikes and our industry is in a tailspin. The goal of Green Envelope wasn’t to solve everyone’s financial uncertainty but to provide hope and a reminder that someone’s got your back. To that end, we’ve increased the grant amount to $250.

So far, the response has been wonderful. We have over 100 applications from members of SAG, WGA, IATSE, and pre-union workers, and donations have been trickling in. That’s always been the hardest part of running the fund is the unpredictability of generosity. Even still, we’ve raised enough that I’ve been able to send 10 approval emails, and I hope to send much more in the coming weeks.

The agreement I made with myself (and my therapist, and my parents, and those closest to me that knew I was thinking of re-starting it again), was this time around I was going to get help, and give myself runway to ramp it up. I’ve been recruiting a small team to help go through applications and amplify, and I’m not going to start sending funds until May 1— the day before the anniversary of the strike.

For more information, we have a website now (woo hoo!)

On the personal front, my house is a mess, I still haven’t caught up on Curb, Abbott, or any TV this week, and I’m only halfway through my listening party of The Tortured Poets Department. Things feel like they’re ramping up in a hopefully good way. 

If you want a true preview of my brain right now, I somehow changed the above into “poem-mode” (LOL) and I don’t know how to undo it without retyping it. There’s probably something symbolic in all that, but dear reader, I’ll leave that to you.

Hope everyone is having a great week! xx