Red Tent donation policy
Making Red Tents Sustainable
We believe that Red Tents can and should be a community endeavour where women come together to create a regular Red Tent space they can share & invite more and more women in their communities to be part of.
We believe that in the long term this makes tents more sustainable because rather than relying on the hard work of an individual the responsibility for them can be shared amongst a group of women. We also envision them as inclusive spaces accessible to women from any backgrounds and with differing access to resources.We think of them as women finding out connections to one another across our differences.
Fundamentally to us this work is about creating ‘the village’ of women in contemporary community where women can hear, witness and support each other.
Because we understand them in this way we think of them as a bringing together and sharing of collective resources rather than a business project.
This is why we only list donation based and free tents on our site and invite anyone wanting to list with us to consider how their tent is set up to be a shared and inclusive project.
Making Red Tents open
We request hosts to help make Red Tents sustainable by minimising the costs of your gatherings. It really isn’t necessary to provide food or have expensive craft materials or pay for a posh room if you need to hire space.
What makes a Red Tent special is the invitation to come as you are, share what’s important to you, listen to others, hear yourself and be heard by others and to sit in the community of women as women do all across the world. However we do recognise that Red Tents sometimes cost money to organise.
There are 3 ways to organise your Red Tent in terms of money:
- Offer it for free. This is the most straightforward way. Please acknowledge those who have contributed to the Red Tent being free in your publicity.
- Ask for a non-specific donation e.g. by saying something like ‘donations welcome’ on your publicity. The amount received from donations is variable and rarely very much. People need to be reminded to donate at the start and end of the session.
- Request a specific donation e.g. £4 per person. If you do this please clearly set out what the donation is going to be used for so people can see that it accords with our not-for-profit ethos. A specific donation is different from an admission price in that people shouldn’t be excluded who aren’t able to afford it. The whole ethos of Red Tents is about welcoming women to gather for replenishment and connection while asking for help to organize it and sharing resources.
