Lavender Update!

We meet again!  After briefly spiraling for a few months due to *gestures at the general state of the world*, The Lavender is back! This publication is honestly the best thing I've done, even with the chaos. So thanks for keeping up with us and please know that even when we disappear we'll never be gone for long. Now for a bunch of structural changes that hopefully won't burn us out! 

1. No More Prints

I love the print editions so much, but at least for the moment they gotta go. It's so amazing seeing these awesome stories and creations come to life in print, but it's also taking up most of our time and the little money we do make from this venture. We hope to bring them back when we find a more steady flow that feels sustainable, but for now this actually leaves room for something even more exciting...

2. We're gonna start paying people

Since any money we make won't be going to making, printing, and mailing our print editions, now we can actually pay people to write and create for us! It'll be more of an honorarium for right now as we work on building consistency, but we hope that this show of appreciation will allow more community members to create some awesome stuff with us at The Lavender! 

Here are our Rates:
Listicles, Essays, and Reviews under 800 words - $15
Essays over 800 words - $30
Reported features under a thousand words - $30
Reported features over a thousand words - $0.03/word Other Types of Creative Works - Case-by-Case basis

This is the Schedule we are working towards for our content:

• Four columns that post monthly
• One Listicle/Essay/Review posted weekly
• One reported news story posted weekly

Money Transparency
Full transparency, we've never been the best at making money. We work on The Lavender because we think it's important and we love the work, but us focusing on paying ourselves and our contributors has come from recognizing that a little bit of money can help us and others sustain this publication. With this plan we will be able to fund the above schedule for two months without more paid subscribers. 

Ways to Help The Lavender

• Subscribe for one of our paid tiers! At our lowest tier of $5/month, we would need only 62 paid subscribers to meet our goal. Our monthly tiers go from $5/month to $50/month, so give what you can to help us create some great stuff!
• Sponsor a Writer: Our newest tier allows you to sponsor a writer! At our current rate, you can sponsor one writer for a year for $180, and sponsor a journalist or longform writer for $360! These are for folks really seeking to be a patron of the Lavender arts, so if you have this funds this can really keep us going!
• Contribute!: We are in need of folks who want to write and create with us. We want to fill this community with more queer writing and art and news, and we’re waiting on you to make it! Hopefully a little cash in your pocket will be the push we all need to create some great stuff. 

3. Specific Roles We'd Love to Fill

• Queer Music Columnist: Starting in October, we will be launching a queer music column! We're looking for a columnist who is plugged into the local queer music scene, as well as popular queer music in general. If you only listen to white dudes playing Midwest emo, you need not apply. The columnist we're looking for is interested in highlighting all kinds of genres and queer musicians of all stripes, races, shapes, and sizes. Ideally this column would include highlights of new releases from local queer musicians and occasional essays on the state of the queer music scene in CU/Central Illinois/the world. This columnist would publish monthly and would be paid $30 per column written.
• Gays Guide Columnist: Are you a queer person with a specific area of interest? Then we would love to have you write for our Gay's Guide column! These can be random special interests or more pragmatic pieces of info, all are welcome! Some examples we've heard folks in the community ask for are info on car maintenance, more info on places to meet queer people in town, and tips on apartment friendly decorating. We previously posted the Gay’s Guide column every two weeks, but this is now switching to monthly. A Gay’s Guide columnist would be expected to publish four columns over four months on their chosen topic. All columnists are paid $30 for each column they write.
• Journalists: We’re looking for folks interested in writing news about our queer community and the things that affect our lives. You don’t have to be a professionally trained journalist, but you will have to follow the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. Overall as long as you’re willing to learn, we would love to help give some on-the-job training for young journos or folks interested in the field. 
• Writers: We’re looking for writers for our short-form content as well. We want to have an essay or listicle published each week, and they can be on any topic related to being queer, and it doesn’t have to be about anything specific to Champaign-Urbana. We’re just looking for fun and interesting writing from folks in town, so reach out!

If you're interesting is working as a columnist for us, send us an email at thelavendernewsletter@gmail.com!

4. The Gayslist

Our final change is us bringing back a low-fi version of something we attempted at the very beginning of The Lavender Newsletter: The Gayslist! One of our favorite things from the original Lavender Prairie (of which this newsletter is an homage) is that you could post essentially personals to the newsletter. People would post looking for roommates or places to crash, they’d post in search of missed connections, and there were even folks looking for people to join their pick-up basketball games. We wanted to bring that quality to The Lavender website, so each week we will publish The Gayslist! Submit your posts to us by Friday at 5pm each week and all approved submissions will be posted Monday at 6 am. Not sure what you’d post? Check out the form for links to examples, and then get to submitting!

5. Save the Date: August 30 is our Lavender Open House!

Join us in the Busey Bank Conference Room at the Champaign Public Library from 3-6pm for our Lavender Open House! Come look at prior issues of the Lavender Newsletter and the Lavender Prairie as we talk about what we hope for this relaunch. If you’re interested in writing or creating with us, come ask questions and sign up to write for us! We’re here to help you make your gay ideas gay realities, so let’s work together!