Financial Aid at Firefly

Welcome to our revamped financial aid program.

Here’s something we never stop thinking about: How can we nurture genuine, open-hearted community within the container of a business?

It’s complicated. Our deepest longing is to create nourishing and reciprocal relationships, but we need to do that while sustaining ourselves and our families within capitalism. This tension is at the core of every heart-based business.

Our goal here is to create a system of financial aid that’s ethical and intentional. We’ve tried a lot of things over the years, this is our latest model. As ever, we welcome your feedback.

We’ve removed questions relating to financial need for this program. Instead, we trust that the people who apply for our bursaries need them, and we will give them out via a lottery system each season using a random number generator. If you don’t get one, it’s purely luck, and you’re encouraged to apply again next season.

Here’s how the program works:

• Each season, 10 days before early bird registration opens, upcoming workshops and retreats will be posted.

• Bursary applications for the Summer 2024 season will be open from April 19-28, 2024. If you’d like a nudge when bursaries open, you can sign up for our email list.

• You can apply for any workshop or retreat that you’re interested in and available for in the upcoming season.

• The day before early bird registration opens, we’ll place all applicants into a random number generator and let it decide who will receive an award. We’ll contact all applicants — even if their number wasn’t picked.

• If you are awarded, you will receive a bursary code to use at registration. Then you can go ahead and register with everyone else.

• We recommend you use your code as soon as possible; since our workshops and retreats are small, they can fill up quickly. Your bursary doesn’t guarantee you a spot.

• If life takes a turn and you decide to not take part in the program you chose, your bursary will go to the next person in line and you’ll be encouraged to apply again.

• Questions? The answer is probably on this page.

To help this program work well, here are some questions to consider before applying:

• Are you asking for a bursary because you require it in order to participate, or because you’d simply prefer to pay less? If it’s a preference, consider using a payment plan instead, so that we can release funds to people in immediate scarcity.

• Take into account your identity-based privilege, earning potential, access to financial support from your family or network, and savings.

• These can be hard things to reflect on. Very few of us are taught to talk openly about money. This infographic by Alexis J. Cunningfolk at the Worts and Cunning Apothecary may help.

• We offer this program as an act of solidarity to those who are struggling, and a concrete gesture of our values.

Bursary applications are open until
Sunday April 28, 11:59PM EDT

Want to donate to this fund? OMG yes.

If you have access to disposable income and you want to help make our community more generous, we’d love that. Every dollar received will be added to what we give out.

We want to thank everyone who helped create this system.

This includes Lesley, Kitty and Heather who did the heavy lifting of dreaming and implementing this, the people who sat on our community bursary committee over the years, the badass thinkers and writers who influenced us, and everyone who has donated to our bursary fund. We’re especially shouting out Bear Hebert, whose language around discounts helped shape the text above.

We believe that writing and community are our birthright, all of us. We want to build a place where anyone can feel supported, nurtured, and seen regardless of access to resources. This is one step, as we keep moving towards this goal.