Living in the Gift

We offer all our events on a gift basis, which means there’s no financial barrier to participation. This is an experiment in 'doing it differently', which we've embarked on with support from our parent project, The Gathering Gates (a registered charity). Here’s some guidance about the gifting approach we are working with, and the inspiration behind it.

Making a Gift - the essential guidelines

When you register for an event, we will usually invite you to pay a ‘placeholder deposit’. This is a token of commitment to reserve your place. We will also invite you to make an additional financial gift that takes the following into account:

• Your sense of gratitude with what you receive.

• What you can afford.

• Your desire to support this work going forward.

• How much you might pay elsewhere for something similar.

• Your wish to provide opportunities for others who are less well off than yourself.

If you're a taxpayer, we can increase the value of your contribution by claiming Gift Aid and will ask for your consent to this when you register for an event.

Sliding Scale

We will typically suggest a guide amount on a sliding scale, which is based on our estimation of what you might be asked to pay elsewhere for something similar. It’s fine if your contribution is less, or more; you can also choose not to make a gift in addition to your initial deposit.

In considering a level of gift that is affordable, we invite you to bear in mind these three tiers - select the one that best describes your circumstances.

Abundant: I have savings and feel pretty financially secure The top end of the suggested scale

• I’m comfortably able to meet all of my basic needs

• I own my own home or rent a higher-end property

• I own a car

• I’m securely employed or don’t need to work

• I have access to savings

• I have expendable income

• I can afford to take an annual vacation/holiday or time off from work

Standard: I’m meeting my basic needs

The middle of the scale

• I can meet my basic needs

• I own a home or rent securely

• I own a car

• I’m employed or self employed

• I might have access to savings

• I have some expendable income

• I can afford to take a vacation/holiday or time off from work every few years

Supported: I’m not always meeting my basic needs

The bottom of the scale

• I sometimes stress about meeting my basic needs and don’t always meet them

• I rent a house or flat or have unstable housing

• I am unemployed and/or qualify for various forms of government support

• I have debt that worries me

• I don’t have savings

• I have to carefully budget my outgoings

• I can’t afford to take a holiday or time off from work or actively save to do so

 With thanks to Feral Angels Press for the inspiration behind this.

More about Gifting and Sacred Reciprocity

What we create together in these circles is beyond monetary value, and we want it to be accessible to everyone regardless of financial means. And, of course, we also need to be financially viable: venues cost money; the planning, promotion and admin takes time; facilitators need financial support.

In offering this work on a gift basis, the idea is to establish an ethos of trust, and of sacred reciprocity. What we're offering is given freely – and we're inviting a free gift in return. We don't want that to be about guilt or obligation but, hopefully, gratitude and flow.

“ The gift economy represents a shift from consumption to contribution, transaction to trust, scarcity to abundance and isolation to community.” - Charles Eisenstein

A Living Inquiry

Here are some of the deeper considerations around this approach which you may like to reflect on with us:

• How can we make money work for us rather than (as seems to have become the norm) us working for money?

• What if we were all freed up to fully give what is in our hearts to give?

• What if we could escape the apparently unending, and sometimes mindless, constraint of having to 'earn a living'?

• What if we didn't have to justify our very existence by making it count in the monetary economy?

• What if our life is an entirely free and gratuitous gift, and our true purpose is to simply take part in the ceaseless flow of self-giving love at the heart of the universe?

By living our way into these questions, one small step at a time, we sense the possibility of enabling the good that is in all of us to flow more freely.

“ The task before us is to align money with the true expression of our gifts.” - Charles Eisenstein

Many Ways of Giving

Money is just one way of giving, there are other kinds of gifts too, including the simple gift of your presence in the circle with us. There are also other practical ways you could support this work if you would like to; and it may be your gift will be to pass it forward in some way. All of this and more is welcome.

Our experience suggests this approach helps create a strong community ethos around these gatherings, a sense of flow. It helps break down the problematic (as we see it) ways in which economic exchange can commodify our relationships of support and care, boxing us into separate spheres as ‘consumer’ and ‘service provider’. Something is lost in that dynamic, and something valuable is gained by stepping outside of it. 

Some participants have told us that they appreciate it, using words such as ‘expansive’, ‘inspiring’ and ‘beautiful’. Others, we know, find it confusing and uncomfortable, and, if that’s your experience, we hope that what we’ve set out here might go some way to making it at least more understandable. On balance, we feel that the merits of this approach outweigh the challenges, but we want to acknowledge that they exist, and that we’re going against the grain here.

Pulling in Financial Resources

As well as receiving income through participants’ gifts, we’re also tapping into other sources of funding. To date we have received two Big Lottery Awards for All grants, as well as two grants from Norfolk Community Foundation’s Love Norfolk fund. Looking ahead, we have plans to run a Crowdfunder campaign inviting financial support from our network of friends and supporters. These funding sources subsidise our group journey and help ensure we can continue to remove financial barriers for people attending our workshops.

Creating Abundance

Come and join us as we explore how we can create sacred space with our money as well as with what we weave together in these circles, thereby fostering a community of abundance.

Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein

Tree of Life picture by Manuel Jaen