a little bit yesterday about the session and how we wanted to make sure that it was tailored towards the participants. So I don't know, do you wanna do any kind of introductory to frame the conversation and then we can just dive in? Yeah, absolutely. And I'll also share some community agreements to share into the space. We had a land acknowledgement to open today's sessions. So we will be sharing that with everyone of the email as well. In case you weren't able to engage with us and hear that. So first off, welcome everyone to the conversation on producing and caregiving, session two of day one of the PAL Summit. Some community agreements to share into the space. As a session participant, you commit with us to welcome all caregiving responsibilities and realities in the background or foreground of any meetups, phone calls, exchanges and embrace your life in our pursuit of productive and supportive practices. As a session participant, you commit with us to creating a transgender and non-binary affirming space. All language that includes, but it's not limited to mother, parents, dad, caregiver, et cetera applies to any individual who identifies with the term and we welcome and support it. As a session participant, you commit with PAL to creating spaces rooted in justice and racism in our structures, practices, policies, principles and producing. And as a session participant, you commit with us to creating a safe and supportive spaces for disability access and inclusion and all access needs present in the space. Thank you and welcome. And I believe Tamanya Garza is available to read our land acknowledgement. So I would love to invite her to the space and I will spotlight her. Oh, Tamanya, you are muted and I would love to unmute you. Great, thank you, sorry about that. Thank you. I'm coming to you from the land of the Leni Lenape people whose historical territory includes the places colonially known as Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Long Island and Lower Hudson Valley. For more than 10,000 years, the Lenape people have been stewards of these lands as well as the River of Human Beings or the Delaware River. Over the past 250 years, many of the Lenape people were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and dispersed throughout the country, though some families remain. These families continue the traditions of their ancestor to this day. The violence that removed the Lenape from their homeland is a powerful part of the history of Pennsylvania and we acknowledge that in this moment and that we work and live on these very lands. This is the story of our entire country. We encourage you to learn about the lands where you live and work and the history of the people who lived there before colonization, many of whom still live there today. They're often starved of the very resources they protected for so long, including access to housing, sustainable food practices, safety, clean water and the land where they once lived with their families. This information was provided in part by www.lenape-nation.org. Thank you. Thank you so much, Timania, for sharing that into the space. We receive it and we acknowledge it. Welcome, everyone. My name is Rachel Spencer Hewitt. I am the Director of Programming and Resources at Powell and was also co-lead on one of our featured case studies, The Radical Parent Inclusion Project, which we did unbelievably three years ago with the Playwrights' Realm. It is my absolute joy to introduce our workshop lab lead, Roberta Pareda, into this space and I would like to read her bio. Roberta Pareda is a Tony-nominated Olivier award-winning producer who has developed and produced plays, musicals and event theater on Broadway, off-Broadway regionally in the West End and on tour. She is currently the producing director of the Playwrights' Realm, an off-Broadway theater company devoted to supporting early career playwrights. Roberta is a guest lecturer at the Yale School of Drama and is a Latinx arts administrator, has been a speaker on the topics of producing and inclusion in the arts in multiple forums, including BroadwayCon, NYU Tisch, Syracuse University, Juilliard and Commercial Theater Institute. Roberta is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama's theater management program in Wesleyan University. She is originally from Brazil and lives in New York City with her daughter. Roberta, welcome, thank you so much for this conversation and yes, just so you all know the way that this conversation will work, we are streaming live. So anything that you would like to keep anonymous, please feel free to private message me or Roberta and we will share it into the space in our own voice to make sure that we engage with you but that you are protected. Also on all of Pal's calls, we prioritize safety over civility. So if you are experiencing any harm or you are anticipating any harm, please feel free to put it in the chat, direct message or ask for a hold and we will engage with you directly. That includes Zoom bombing or any aggressions that feel micro to the outsider, but actually are very important to you. We're going to affirm your experience. So that's how we will engage with this virtual space and to get started, Roberta, I'll let you introduce the conversation and share a little bit about your expertise on this topic of producing for caregiver support. And as she does that, I would like to invite everyone on the call to share into the chat privately or publicly what questions you're bringing into this space because this is a workshop lab situation where we're ready to answer the directly the questions that you have on how to approach caregiver support from a producer perspective. Roberta, take it away and thank you. Yeah, and just to encourage the chat, Rachel, even if it's not a fully formed question, even if you just have a thing that says like budget, like that's fine, just give us a thought like where because our whole peer is that we are going to tailor a little bit what we're going to talk about based on the group that's here right now, even though we are streaming live, of course, but there's a lot of ways we can go about this. So I want to make sure that we talk about the topics that are interesting to the people in this Zoom room. So please, like if you want to share anything, fully formed or not, and just uplift what Rachel said as well, if you want to share something that you don't want it to be public, you can private message one of us and we will share. So just in terms of what drew me to this, which was your original question, I mean, the truth is that it was really becoming apparent and then suddenly, I don't know, it was like this veil was lifted, right? Like we kind of live in this bubble and working in the arts can be so challenging now more than ever, I would say, at least in my experience.  And just the thing of caretakers did not come so quickly to me. And it's honestly one of the things that I regret the most, that I had to wait to become a mom for me to suddenly be like, what? How do people do this? Like this is nearly impossible. And this is me having a job, a salaried office job that has generally more consistent hours than a lot of our freelance brothers and sisters, right? And so for me, I wish I had started sooner. And if there's people here in the call that are not parents yet or don't want to be parents and might not even be caretakers and are here just to see how they can make the organization better. First of all, I applaud you. Like you're doing amazing. And thank you for being here. And also the people that this is directly affecting you. Like also thank you for being here. Like it's valid. Like my experience is also valid, but it just took too long and Nancy, I see you on the chat too, you know? But what I did learn from this, I'll say this. I'm making sure that this doesn't happen again with me with other things. Like there are things that don't affect me now and might never affect me even. And I'm making sure that I am really, really being cognizant of these things of my own biases, right? Like the places that I am not providing access. So that was my learning experience and my learning journey. And really how this all started was me reaching out to Rachel with this crazy idea which was creating an off-Broadway production which was fully inclusive. I think originally we did say parents, but then we did pivot to caretakers. We just had another conversation in the other session about once again, that's another thing. Like right now, I am not a caretaker for any of my parents yet, right? So it's not something that I saw as well, but we quickly learned that even before we have even picked the show, I think, and this was partially with Rachel's guidance that it wasn't just about parents, how can it be even more inclusive than that? And so the project is really about caretakers of not just of children, but also of adults that are dependent on you for any reason, really. And there's a lot of different reasons. So that's kind of just the beginning of it, Rachel. Where do you wanna go from here? Yeah, I'm gonna start with my questions that I kind of know the answer to, but I'll take focus on the journey of the questions that I would actually ask you when we were forming this project. And I just wanna share with everyone on this call, the PAL summit is a space where we're not going to have a conversation about whether or not we should be doing this. This is a space where the conversation, as Roberta has said yesterday in one of our sessions, we're not having that conversation. We're having the conversation about not theory, but actuals. We have actually produced with caregiver support. So I see questions coming in the chat. Thank you so much. And I'm gonna start with mine to kind of prime it. Roberta, even before though, you had the caregiver revelation, you were one of the leading voices at least in terms of mentorship that I look to in terms of budgeting your values. Can you put that into language in terms of caregiver support and the intentional commitment to diversity and inclusion that the playwright's realm has and how creating financial, producerial caregiver support is integral to that conversation as a producer. Yeah, thank you. And I actually, there's a couple of questions already. There's some great questions and some great thoughts. Thank you everybody for sharing. And there's a lot of things about budget, right? That is a big question. So I literally teach a class called budgeting your values which teaches people how to think of budgeting, a budget as a moral document, right? So in the capitalist society that we live in, a way that we show value is how much money we spend on. Really it's really about resources. Like as a producer, I think of three resources we have. It's time, people and money, right? And obviously those are connected because sometimes more people means more money because they're paying more people and all of these things in time might be more money too. But it's really about how you allocate your resources and not a simple way, but I guess a clear way to me to see that is looking at your budget, right? So for example, if you say that you are very committed to BIPOC voices and you say that on your social media and you say that and then you say BIPOC artists and then I'm looking at the artists over your last 10 seasons and 80, 90% of them are white which is like not uncommon in a lot of theaters. How is that literally like those are the people you're paying, right? So I'm not even talking about like the like, I'm literally talking about the where your theater of money is going is 80 to 90% white creatives. How is that supporting your statement saying that you're supporting BIPOC creatives, right? So that for me is a place that you would be like explain this discrepancy. So I think a similar thing can be applied here as well. And really interesting, I don't know, thing that I came to in this work was thinking about, because you're supporting one thing doesn't mean that you're not supporting other things. Like sometimes it does, but sometimes it can be about the intersectionality, right? Sometimes you can, it can be an and, you know. So for example, in the project that we did because the Playwrights' Room already centers BIPOC creatives the majority of our creative team was BIPOC or BIPOC actually I don't think we have any indigenous artists in that project. But, and then because we were also centering caretakers most of those people were caretakers. And then because of that kind of like the circles overlapping it means that most of the caretakers were black or people of color. And like that's how we did those kinds of things, right? And so like most of the money and the support went to black and people of color for that project. So I think that this idea of layering too is important and be able to think about it's like a 3D way of thinking. You know, it's not just this or that. And you're not gonna be able to do everything. I'm already gonna say this. You're not gonna be able to do everything. But you can definitely do more than one thing. I love that. That's a great place to start. So while we're talking about this, I will ask at the end, I'll give you, you know here's your cheat sheet. I will ask at the end for everyone to have a takeaway of one thing that they can do and another thing that they would love to do. A can and would love, right? Ability and desire in terms of engaging. So. And just to add to that, like I will challenge everybody. I would say we had another session yesterday. I think that at the end of these three days there's probably one lever that everybody can pull here. Like there are things that are gonna be offered not just in the session and all these sessions that don't cost any money that, you know so think about this. Think about at the end of these three days what kind of lever are you gonna pull in your organization to help with this idea of caretaker support? Absolutely, write it on a sticky note put it on your laptop phone whatever you have right now. The question, what can I do? And take that with you into these sessions. Also, the first session of day three is an ask me anything. It's open book. You get to come and chat with us like re-consultation and we'll help you work out your ideas. Okay, so I wanna jump onto this idea that you're talking about before we dive into some of the chats. I love these questions. Keep them coming. They are all right on. A lot of sustainability questions but here's a key factor. Roberta is talking about integrating caretaker support into anti-racism and gender parity. And that is the key to sustainability. I will say right now of the projects that, you know, Powell's handbook was interviews with organizations who had done like childcare matinees and different kinds of support. And it fizzled out. And then there were the projects that, you know like RPI radical parent inclusion project that started as a pilot. And now our integral to the Playhouse Realms programs even virtually years later and consistent. And I would say that in our observations the key is do not treat caregiver support as a fringe accommodation as a benevolence that happens outside. Caregiver support is integral to anti-racism work, integral to gender inclusion and parity and integral to disability support. And here's why because I have had theaters actually tell me to my face when I advocate and remember the next session is on disability care when I advocate and say, started caregiver fund. They say, we don't have time to talk about caregivers right now. We're working on anti-racism. And I always know that they would never say that to me if I was a black woman and a single mother because they would realize that they are separating the two they are dividing people in terms of access needs and it's not holistic. So let's jump into the questions in the chat. Now that we're there, now that we realize that's the foundation we have to keep. Great. So first comes from Susan who says budget, great. If you're presenting your season budget to your board a year to six months before you may even start casting what are best practices to budget without care when it's such an unknown? Our face. This is a really, really good question actually. And I think I'm concerned that lots of people have. First of all, the good news is that as you know because if you're asking this question you have some involvement with the budget or your organization, we guess a lot with budgets. Like, I mean, you know, six months to one year you don't know a lot about your production, right? So you might have some ideas. So first of all, I think that like, let's remember that a budget at the end of the day is your best guess of where something is gonna end up. And everybody who's in this call I'm sure you've had the budget for your project and then the final actual, the actuals at the end how did those numbers compare, right? Rachel was actually just looking yesterday because of Jenna's session at the original budget that we had for RPI that we presented to the funders. And you know, Rachel and I had all these really exciting ideas which were beautiful on paper but it just like they didn't work out, right? And so the end, the final results looked very different from where we started but I guess the point is you have to start somewhere. So this is what I would say. I think that the best thing to do it's actually not doing it by production, it's by your season. And I think you just decide an amount of money that you wanna put there. The most powerful thing that I'll say is this. I have never been able to offer enough money to cover everything for honestly anybody. No, I'm not even just talking about caretaking. I'm talking about everything, right? We have actors that have to come from far away and commute and it's an expensive commute and things like that and we help where we can. But what I have found in terms of caretaking that the radical act is saying out loud that you're offering something. And I think Powell's very good about that. Powell's about, it talks about like just start because I think sometimes the fear of making mistakes and not doing it perfectly is paralyzing to us. And I think this is also true about anti-racism work especially now in this age of cancellation and everything. I think people are so paralyzed by fear that they don't wanna even take like one tiny step. So I think like you're not gonna solve this overnight, you're not gonna solve this over one season. But what happens if you put in an amount, like if you have, you might have an idea of more or less how many people you have in your season, you might do a very rough math and then you might be like, okay, I'm gonna offer $50 per person, I don't know. What happened with us and mothers cause we actually didn't know how many people were gonna take us up on it with a fund. And so what we did is we sent an initial survey. This is once we had the team together.  And then once we had the team together we send the survey that was sort of like they would self-select if they were interested in learning more about this fund. So basically if they have any care, taking responsibilities, right? And we made a definite, like we defined it there. We let people define themselves. Like we are not gonna check up on you, you tell us, right? And actually through the survey we found at least one member of the team who we previously weren't aware that this member actually had elder care responsibilities. This member took care of a parent, right? And by being in rehearsal they were hiring somebody to be with their parent. And we didn't know at all that this was a thing. And this member identified themselves through the survey.  We did reimbursement. So people had to give us the receipts and all of that stuff. I'm happy to talk to people about that. Cause I do, I want to acknowledge that there is there is some administrative burden there, right? Like setting up the system and especially like I'm a small company it was like me and my GM, you know like I literally did a lot of the matching of the receipts because I wanted to get it done, you know? But there was extra work there but obviously we felt like this was the best way just in terms of taxes and everything like that to make it easier for them. So basically I said I can offer up to I think we did $750 and then, but I said submit all your receipts if you have more than that submit them to me. And what ended up happening is that some people use the whole 750 some people use less and then some people needed more and then I was able to reallocate the funds and cover the people that needed more in that way, right? So it was very bespoke and very based on need which I also understand there is there is an administrative burden there and it's like an extra amount of work that we do but for us it's worth it to do with this but once again, it's all about the choices, right? People, time and money. How you're gonna allocate your resources for us this is a priority because this is a key part of our core values. And so that's how we do it. Susan, I just wanna make sure I answered your question is there anything else specific that you wanna go in? If you wanna unmute yourself or put it in the chat. That was perfect, thank you so much. Okay. And it transitions really well to the next question which is from Ashley because we're talking about amounts. So I'll share Ashley's question first and then comment on the process of deciding the amount with Roberta for the project. So Ashley asks, thinking about how to prioritize slash advocate for budgeting for caregiver support in a performing arts nonprofit spaces where financial resources are already limited, right? So that's the strain of childcare is expensive. If we're already strapped for funds how are we going to add to that? And a big piece of the conversation is that valuation does not always equal a large amount being public about your caregiver support creating a work culture that is supportive and anti-discriminatory for artists with families and then saying any amount is helpful put it on the budget line item. The recommendation that Powell made to the RPI project was $500 per person and Roberta put it up to 750. We have consulted with a large off-Broadway organization before and they just created an annual budget of $5,000 and not everyone used it. So what we started to do is research. We asked the team in New York City Elevator Repair Service, which is an organization that thinks to Ariana Smart Truman's leadership at her time there had been budgeting for radical childcare support for decades. And we were like, we need numbers in terms of how much is this costing you because you're doing it time after time after time. And the statistic that came back consistently was that it was less than 2% of the annual budget. So that's the line item that I would encourage you to put if you're like, we're very small, we're strapped I would take your annual budget and put 2% of that on the line because that seems to be a really common reimbursable and supportive amount to start with at the very least, if not to keep up consistently. And Ashley, just a thumbs up or let me know if that's helpful or if you have any further questions there. I just, one of the other things that I also wanna encourage is that tomorrow, I keep saying that tomorrow but I don't know if tomorrow. There's a session on fundraising and Rachel will put it, I'm sure we'll put it in the chat that is being led by my development manager, Jenna Yarley who worked very closely with me with this project, like I went to her and originally and I was like, okay, I have this thing. I mean, this was like not in our budget. I was just like, we have a budget for the show and I wanna raise this much more to be able to do this thing around it to show that it's possible, right? And so she's gonna talk actually about the fundraising we did for the project and then the fundraising we're doing now to sustain it. I know there's another question about sustainability which we're gonna get to but I just encourage people to go to that session and to hear more about this and talk more about raising of the funds because I do think it's possible. Like for example, if you're like, oh, I can't even, like 2% of my budget is spoken for, like I can't put that. Is it possible to find a different pot of money for that amount for the 2% that you wouldn't be able to find otherwise for this work and then add it, you know? And I do think that it's possible. Like we found that there are donors that are interested in this. Like they donate to us to this. And it's not that they don't like the playwright or what we do, but they really like this, right? So like that, what if that is an idea? What if you do a special campaign around that to raise that amount? As Rachel said, a good rule of thumb you can start with 2% and go from there. Yes, thank you. And I dropped it in the chat. The session is tomorrow at one o'clock PM to hear from Jenna, who was the development manager at Playwrights Realm on fundraising for care support and how they continue to do that. And yes, the next question, there was a comment about the next question. Yes, so in terms of that percentage that works for small to medium sized organizations, it may be different for larger organizations, but that's actually up in the air. I think that I know that consistently when folks have committed to the budget line item, every single organization I have spoken to has said it is surprising when the boundaries are clear, how sustainable and affordable this is. So at the beginning, you're trying to consider everything, but it's actually when you put it on the line item on the budget that the boundaries start to organize themselves. And that organization actually it really starts to, even itself out a bit to be more affordable. And I am looking forward to the day when someone's like, oh my goodness, it was not as affordable as we thought and we need your help fundraising. And I will say, yes, I'm there. Supporting caregivers is, okay. So this is a question from Patrick, which is the comment for a larger organization, Roberta. Supporting caregivers is easier on the admin side, I'm guessing because of consistency of employment and knowledge of the care responsibilities, but lots of complexity on the production facing side in terms of budget schedules, continuity of creative process, how can we think about addressing these areas? Yeah, that's a great question. And once again, I think that, there's not gonna be a one size fit all, right? So the people in the session, for example, there are organizations that I don't, like there's a big range of organizations, right? From the smallest budget to the largest budget, Patrick you're on closer to that side of the largest budgets in here. So I think that the answer is that you do what you can for all of this, right? I agree with you that in the production side is very complex. Like actually for mothers, the most complicated thing was not the caregiver fund, it was the scheduling, right? Because things came up and because we literally were creating environments that was completely inclusive, like things would come up, like there was a scheduling mishap about a school drop-off thing that happened and we literally like changed our rehearsal schedule. And I could imagine if you're doing a million shows a year, like you literally can't do that for every run, right? Because if you move for somebody, that might mean it's bad for somebody else and all of that. So I think that first of all, you start where you can and you see, and then you get feedback and you see what happens. And it might be that you have lines in the sand for your organization, like this can't change. Like this has to be like this for these reasons in my organization, you know? Like to give an example, you know, I know that there's a big movement to change like the 10 out of the 12s, which makes complete sense to me, right? But I've also heard some other people on the other side of it that saying that the new schedules that have shorter days, you just have more of those days. So it's sometimes not ideal for them either. And some people have said, like I'd rather get through with a 10 out of 12. Like I get both sides of it, right? But as an organization, you're gonna have to position something and be like, no, this is what we're gonna do, right? Interestingly enough in mothers, we didn't change the 10 out of 12s. We rethought tech a little bit, but we still had our 10 out of 12s because for that team, that wasn't necessarily a pain point, right? I think if you wanna be more specific about it, you could open up a conversation. Like what I'm always clear with people is that I encourage people to come to me if they have any challenges, but I'm very clear that I can't promise and I'm gonna be able to do something about it. And I feel like for me as a leader, that is a very vulnerable position because I am opening myself up to listening to those things, but I have to understand and that I will have to say no at some point. But I would rather people come to me because sometimes there are really easy things, things that like, oh, I never thought of that, like that makes sense, right? So one time, and this was way before our PI, we had an actress that we asked if she could stay for a talk back with some funders, right? And she was like, yeah, that sounds great. And there was like a reception afterwards. She's like, that's great, wonderful. And then a few days later, she came to us and was like, well, would you mind paying for my babysitting? Cause I will have to pay for babysitter. And it just like had never occurred to us. Now, obviously this is a thing that we do for all our events. So for all events, when we invite people, first of all, we are paying people to do these kinds of things, speaking to our board, speaking to donors, all of that people are paid. And then beyond that, we offer them childcare reimbursements. We're actually even offering, we are having, hopefully we'll see with the virus, but we were gonna have a holiday party for our playwrights and we're offering childcare reimbursements for anybody that wants to attend the holiday party and might not wanna bring their child. They're also welcome to bring them. But if they don't want to, we are paying for their childcare during that time. And we did that for opening night too, right? And Rachel, I would love to hear you talk so beautifully about these moments that are not like the official production moments, but like, how do we have opportunities for these other things that are also important? Yeah, that's what I was going to comment on. I think there's a question that asks about it. So we'll just circle back when we get there. But Roberta used the term pain point and I wanted to unpack that. So one of PAL's recommendations, the really built off of Roberta's producer advice for this conversation is you cannot do everything. It's impossible. I know that doing compassion training for an organization this past year. So I was like, but we can't afford $30,000 for the school tuition for every single person.  That's trying to do everything. So what PAL recommends is identifying pain points. Pain points are the areas of overlap where your community, your organizational community experiences distress. Examples could be Tech Week. It could be Gallas because they're in the evening. Opening night parties because you've probably been working through Tech, the previews, then you open the show and then you have to do press in addition after. Anywhere that financial, emotional, psychological, physical and time logistical resources have been expended or will be expended greatly for over a period of time. Identifying these pain points comes from having a conversation and creating a caregiver affinity space. Asking the people in your organization, let's review this past year and we also, I know there are questions about resources. We will absolutely be sending those to summit attendees, but having a conversation in your caregiver group and creating a survey that says, where do you spend the most on childcare over the course of your time here? Or reaching out to artists who are caregivers and saying we would love to pay you for your time to consult us on conversations you can engage with PAL for us to talk about. Where are the pain points for care? I share a story that as an actor, I was working at a very large regional theater with a Lord B contract. And by the end of tech week, I had $9 in my bank account and I was working a full-time job on top of being cast in the show. And the reason is because I was paying for groceries for people, myself, my two children and the babysitter that had to come for 14 hours a day for four days that week. And if someone had said, at tech week we're offering everyone $100 at the caregiver fund, all we can give is $100 per show, per person for the team. But it's gonna be for tech week for any additional expenses that you have on care support for yourself and others. If you have family responsibilities, it would have changed my bank account from $9 to 109 and I would have bought dinner. So when we're having this conversation about like, it's gonna be much more expensive for a larger organization, it's okay if we make the amount smaller. The reimbursable strategy allows it to be applied individually without having to create individual support systems. And then also having the conversation beforehand and giving agency to the caregivers in your community will inform you where the pain points are. So start with the pain points. And if we refer to pain points, additionally from that point, from this point on, that's what we're talking about is identifying the overlap of the greatest distress with the widest scope. I would say just to finish up the last comment from Patrick, just to make sure that, you know, obviously it'll be different from every organization and you know your organization best. But if like all you can do is like, we're gonna, as Rachel said, we're gonna offer a caregiving fund, like nothing else will change. Like schedule says, like everything says the same, but we're just doing that. Then do that, you know? And once again, it could be any amount and you will see what happens, what I have found. Like the playwright's realm this year has pushed this as much as we can with the work we're doing in terms of like, we are offering caregiving, you know, funds to everybody. Like we're literally like, you do a reading with us. Like do you want this? You do a panel. Like do you want this? You come speak to our board. Do you want this? You come participate in one of our panels as an audience member. Do you need caregiving reimbursement? Like do you need to hire a sitter so you can fully participate in this class and this panel? We're literally offering it to everybody that we can. And it's so much less than I would have imagined, right? Like it's like, I don't know. Like, and I guess it could be the perfect storm that everybody then suddenly decides to take it at the right time or something. But I feel like then we, you know, we'll have the, but it's just less than you think is what I would say. And that is the experience that we see not just my organization but Rachel who has worked with a lot of different organizations. This is the experience we see over and over again. Yeah. And I would also say, I dropped a link to our Palhandbook chapter on the step by step process on how to create a caregiver fund. And it includes HR and tax compliance information for the reimbursements. So if that's helpful for anyone, you can just click on it. It's free. You just put in your email address so that we can keep it virus free. And I will say to that, in that chapter, we create like a little hypothetical spreadsheet. When we're talking about the financial burden of childcare, it is even in some cases prohibitive for individuals. When the amount that is prohibitive for an individual is placed on an institution, it's not as prohibitive because the institution percentage wise of that amount, like let's say $500 for an individual, being able to find an additional $500 is always going to be, no matter the size of your organization, more strain on the individual than it is on the institution. So the question is, how are we as an organization adopting communal responsibility to create access so that financially caregiver support is not prohibitive? I also want to talk about this word precedence before we jump into our questions. This word precedent in terms of human resources. When Pal first started, we heard from folks who were like, yeah, we create childcare support. Shout out to Ariana Smart-Trimmond. And then folks who were like, no, that's illegal. Or if we said a precedent, then we can't, that we can't sustain, then we could be discriminatory. And that's a reality, but it's one that is often misapplied. So at the end of this time, I'm going to be talking a bit about precedent unless someone actually has a question about it. And I think we're ready to jump to the next question about sustainability if you're good, Roberta. Yeah, yeah. Do you want me to read that one, Rachel? I'm good so that you can be processing your awesome experiences. And so Emily shares, I'm curious about how to make support of caregivers sustainable over time. You started talking about this, how RPI is still going. You still have your funding program. How do you build from the brilliant pilot into an ongoing program of support? Well, this is what was great was actually, so for the pilots, there were a couple of, you know, Rachel and I had a really great conversation about how we define success of this pilot, you know, version. And one of them was about sharing with the field. Like it was very important to us and we co-wrote an article for American theater that talks specifically about it. I'm sure Rachel Adriana can drop it in the chat too for people to see. But then for me, it was like, what's next, right? So first of all, I will be very honest with everybody. Like what happens at our next show was our show that was COVID canceled, essentially. So we had all these beautiful plans that were ready in place that were like, okay, what happens when we're not doing the show that is like the RPI show, right? Like the fancy kind of brilliant pilot. And so in this way, we also had to pivot. We had to pivot thinking about like what, what does this look like now? But the truth is, is that the ongoing support as we just made it part of our core values. Like if you go to our, I'll also drop a link here. This is what the RPI program is currently. This is what we're still doing. And people specifically will donate just this program if they want also. And so basically we just said like, clearly there's a need for this. Like this is what we proved in this program. There's a need for this. There is a way to support itself. Like we can support this. Like that makes sense to us. Like with the values and the mission of our organization which we think that theater is better when everybody can participate, right? And so how can we make that more inclusive? And we'd folded it in with our anti-racism work basically. And so that is what it is. Like if you look at our values too that we have a lot of the things we've been working on around that, that is all folded in there. And once again, because we prioritize BIPOC creators and BIPOC artists, it ends up being that this work is serving more BIPOC. I guess BIPOC is already people, BIPOC as it should. So yeah, so I think that this, like this was also less scary than I thought it would be. Like the flashy article and everything helped us launch it. But then I was like, how do we keep going and how do we do this for every show? So this is just not for the show that happens to be written by a mother, no mother too, it is for every show that we do, right? This is just part of who we are. And yeah, and I did, and as I said, Jenna will talk more about the fundraising aspects of it, but I feel like the field funders are interested in that. Like think about all your, even like your individual donors, like there are a lot of individual donors that have kids, like they know, they might not know exactly what this is, right? Cause they might have different resources, they have a different background, like whatever it is, but they know, like their kid is also shouting in their face sometimes while they're trying to work, like they still have to go through this COVID thing. So it's sort of like when you speak to these, to people they understand, and they're like, yeah, I'll open my check, like maybe I'll increase my gift, right? The secret is how you do it without cannibalizing money that you already get. So I think there has to be very specific, you have to be very strategic about that. Like how do you identify maybe some people that you're going to go through that that maybe had never donated before, or you asked them for an increase or something like that. So that has to be very strategic, but honestly, that's what we do in fundraising, right? Like that's what we do. Like we look at people and we see what is most likely they will donate for, and then we go to them with that. Awesome, I love that. Just a huge yes, Anne. And an additional challenge to go to the fundraising session that Jenna is doing because she will break down the development strategy that Roberta is talking about, that essentially be strategic, that's part two in the development session. What I want to upvote right now is I spoke at the gala for the Playwrights' Room when you all were sharing about the Radical Parent Inclusion Project, which covered all caregivers, and I spoke in front of donors, and I shared what it was like to go to auditions with my infant daughter and then my infant two children have 90% of them reduced, and then the 5% that I could go to, there are fewer than 30% of the subways have elevators, and so that was like my revelation for the intersection with the disability community that came far too late, and I couldn't even get on the subway, so I would have to walk two hours for a 90 second audition, blah, blah, and I'm sharing all of this, and it sounds very niche. Like I think that's the big misperception in terms of how do we fundraise for this niche program. It's actually not. The global experience of having family responsibilities is so relevant in the conversation because it intersects with everyone's experiences, and after the gala, donors approached me just saying, I related to that so much because when I started my law firm X, Y, Z, and we realized, ah, this is a shared experience that actually our country is terrible about talking about anyway, and that's why we think in the arts that it's niche, but it's actually one of the greatest ways to connect with our audience, our donors, our community, and show that we're a theater or an organization with the ear to the ground because we understand the burdens that they're experiencing as well. I dropped the link to the American Theater article in the chat, and you can also see, Roberta, I believe the team does this as well. There is a designated link to donate for the caregiver fund for the program, and we have heard that that's successful. I was just to say this, we also did like a beautiful piece because we were giving a lot of playwright support in the past two years, just in terms of like relief funding, right? We had never done this before because of COVID, we started giving relief funding, but essentially artists that had care-taking responsibilities could apply for more relief funding, right? And there was this beautiful piece that was written by one of our writers, Asimwe, who basically we helped her get back to Uganda, which is where she was from. She was essentially here in America with her son who was an infant and sort of the funding that we gave her allowed her to do this. So like the way that we also talk about this, it's like this, and you know, she wrote this amazing, beautiful piece that I think Jenna's gonna share tomorrow that we send out to donors and was just like, this is what your money is helping, like this is what you're doing, you know? And so everything becomes like in a way care-taking, right? Like everything becomes about that, which is exciting. Yeah, 100%. We're gonna take a pivot. Bradley has a fantastic question. Bradley would love to talk about some of the non-budgetary aspects. How do you have discussions about schedule, rehearsal and tech hours, school holidays, factoring caregiver support and planning, especially for folks with young children. And there's also a question that I'd like to share into the space that relates to that. So I'm gonna, excuse me, as I find it, to also ask about transportation, parking, providing meals, rest space. I'll talk about the framing of that as well, but yeah, non-budgetary support. Yeah, and I think that's really, really important, Bradley, and thank you for asking that. And you're right, especially people with younger kids, right? And that, honestly, is a hard one. Like the budget part of it, I can, as hard as the budget part seems, like then there's hurdles, right? But the budget part of it, I was like, I can understand that. Like reimbursements, we understand and we know how to do this. The part about being more intentional about this is a little bit trickier, and partially because everybody's needs are so different, which we talked about a little bit before, right? So for example, when Rachel and I first sat down and thought about our PI and we thought what the show would look like, I remember we were like, oh, we're gonna have babysitters doing tech so people can leave their kids and then they can come visit them. And everybody's like, I don't wanna bring my kid to mid-down. Like I'm not interested in that. And I was like, oh, that makes sense. And so what we imagined was a thing that was really gonna help them ended up not being the thing at all, for example. And so I think the best for me as a producer, the best thing that I can do is be very public about the fact that my organization prioritizes caretaker support. So people can come to me with their needs. I am very clear, which I said before, that I might not be able to accommodate all of them, right? And I think you have to be a little bit careful without it, because I think there could be like, why did you accommodate this, but you couldn't accommodate me and all of that. And that's tricky. And I think that this is the tricky part of producing in general, right? But once again, what I said before, we make these kinds of choices, we make these kinds of compromises all the time with shows, right? When we decide what is the set versus the costume budget, when we decide when we are paying people, when we decide when we're paying assistants, like we make those choices a lot and we talk about schedule, who needs to be there on what days, like we talk about this all the time, right? Designers come to me and be like, listen, I'm designing some other shows so I can't be there these days, but then my assistant will cover me and then I'll come back and we figure that out. So I feel like in the same, like this is just another part of that. But I think for so long, the general consensus, and as Rachel said, not just in theater and other industries as well, has been like, you keep that separate, like you keep that hidden, you know?  I have to work, like I'm a single mom, like what am I supposed to do? So I think that having open communication, you know? I've definitely seen theaters look at alternative schedules. Like for example, if a director is a parent and that they have, you know, like they'll look at alternative schedules, so maybe try to accommodate that, right? But I'm very interested in all of the members of the team, especially the members of the team that have to be there really long hours, like the designers during tech, for example. So I do agree with you that there's a lot more than just a budget conversation. The budget conversation for me was kind of the lever that I could pull the quickest and the one that made the most impact because it's the most flexible, right? Like people can use it for anything they need. Like some of our members literally use it to get to higher nannies. Some of our other members hired to do like after school activities for their school age children. So their school age children had like little camps. Sometimes they even went with another adult, right? Or something like that. Or as we talked about the elder care responsibilities, right? So the thing with the budget for me was just the quickest lever I could pull. It was not the only one we did. For mothers, we did a lot more than that. And we did consider all of these things that you were talking about. Oh, I just want to... Mothers is the name of the play. Yes, thank you. Yes, yes, not the actual people. The play we did is called Mothers. And actually we had all kinds of different parents. For everyone. In mothers. Several fathers and yeah. So we were able to be... The other key thing that for us too was very important is that our stage manager was also a caretaker. And because a lot of that fell onto her, right? The thing that is like, oh, but now my babysitter fell through and now I need to go pick up my daughter. So like, can we make sure that we have the break at this time? Like she was incredible and she did this incredibly well and that really helped. But once again, there was added work like for the production. I think it's absolutely worth it. And you know, and as we go forward I feel like there would be ways to figure this out. Like what are the things, as I was talking before, I think as an organization, what are the things we can move and what are the things we can't? And how are we making those decisions so they're consistent through the whole process? Yeah, and I wanna amplify that. That two examples I would love to talk about briefly are after we get through the questions are things that we learned, right? Things that we applied and we were like, that was fine, doing it differently next time. And one of the things is that while stage management handled it beautifully and brilliantly, we want to encourage everyone that as you're applying Caregiver Support, sometimes the burden, where you identify like the burden of applying it is actually just highlighting a burden that always existed but that had been successfully kept invisible. And one of those places is stage management. Powell is a huge advocate for increasing stage management support. That includes your year of the stage manager creating visibility, putting them in your press releases but it also says how in the rehearsal room are you creating support for stage managers whose union and do not protect them in the same way such as if you wanna insist on a six day rehearsal week, do you know that your stage managers are working seven? So that's why we're advocating in this way is because creating caregiver support or identifying caregiver obstacles will highlight other places that need support. And I think that's also what's scary is we think we're opening Pandora's box and to a certain extent we are but we're not opening Pandora's box in a way that's unachievable. We're asking folks to engage with Twitch already there. That is such an interesting question, Lisa. We will definitely jump to it. I just wanna flag that I put the link to our cheat sheet on achievable family supportive scheduling which has actually been retitled humane for everyone because there are six points that I wanna highlight especially for you Bradley and I happen to know you so I know that you will love some of these but we also identify under each point why this is helpful for everyone in your organization. So if you want a place to start where folks are gonna have buy-in, this is a great place. So I'm gonna start with the more radical and it's gonna get more breathable by the end so that you hopefully feel ready to engage. I'd like to throw you in the deep end. So one run tech week without 10 out of 12s. I am a proud member of the cohort no more 10 out of 12s and I am not quite about it. Check them out if you haven't yet. Two, have a five day rehearsal week. We have a chapter on how to engage with the equity contract on running five days. Three, provide advanced notice. AEA has a minimum of 12 hours notice for the creative team for actors to join rehearsal call times. What babysitting are you able to get in 12 hours? Just gonna let that float in the space. So how can we create a schedule that is not just released to the production team but also to the artists who have to arrange their lives to show up in our spaces and not act entitled to their time because we don't pay people at retainer rates. For bank holidays and school holidays, one of the easiest ones, look at your production calendar, circled holidays when the schools in your area are going to be closed, acknowledge that that is going to be a day where it is virtually impossible for caregivers to show up to your space. So what are we asking of folks on those days? Five, school pickup times. How are you navigating school pickup times or required legal events for artists with families to attend a meeting with an adoption agency? How are you opening up your space for those to be valid conflicts for people to engage with in the same way that we're asking folks to identify doctor's appointments and have a safe space to talk about mental health appointments? And number six, understudies and flexible use of office sick days.  I mean, that's a very complicated question. I don't know if we have an answer for that. But Roberta, yeah, just that conversation of, what happens when folks aren't able to enter the space when it's an onsite required position? I think that there's a lot changing in our industry right now around all of this. People came to rehearsal, came to performances sick because there was no understudy, they had to go on, right? So I feel like this is an evolving conversation and we'll see. And I think that this is just like that. Like it's the same thing. Like I don't see that any differently, right?  Like if an actor doesn't show up, the theater has a plan for it. The plan might be we have to cancel the performance. Like that's what we have to do. We don't have understudies currently. We are looking into that. It might be cost prohibitive for my organization to do understudies. So it just means that it's cheaper for us to cancel a show or two shows or how many of our shows we need to cancel. So for me, that is not that different. Like sometimes I think we try to make this really complicated but some of these decisions are not different from any other decisions we have to make, right? As producers. And so I would encourage you of just thinking it like that.  Right. But you know what I mean? Yeah, this is so important because what you're highlighting and this is like my discovery here in the moment. So join me in this is that we actually already know how to deal with conflicts when someone can't show up in the space. The question is, we just haven't adopted caregiver responsibilities as one of those valid conflicts yet. So it's a values situation. That's the conversation, is how would you treat any other valid conflicts? Whatever strategy your organization has for sustainability, it's just asking your value system to include family responsibilities in that. That's great. Very exciting. Hanna has a really good question, I think is the next one. Yep. Yeah. So what do you have in terms of solutions for when you're waiting, when waiting for a reimbursement isn't an option for an artist to participate. This is great. Do you have any advice for offering an upfront stipend? Right. Because sometimes you don't have the money to front for a babysitter so that the... Yeah. And this is a tricky one. We went back and forth through this. At the end of the day for us, the decision became this. We could give more money to people if it was a reimbursement. Because what's gonna happen with the stipend is that the artist is gonna have to pay taxes on it. Right? So usually when you give something as a stipend, you need a 1099, you need paperwork around that because we're nonprofits and we're audited every year. So like my auditor comes, looks at everything. So we need to make sure that everything is being paid properly under the proper thing. So what happens is basically literally the amount of take-home, right? The amount that we can cover will be more if we do a reimbursement. But a stipend is also possible. It just means that they're literally gonna take home less, right? Cause eventually when they pay the taxes, it will be less. Like that is the conversation. So in our organization, we just decided to reimbursement. So most of it could go to the artist as much money as we can give them. But I think other organizations have done differently as well.  COVID is still a qualified disaster right now in America. So this means that you can give tax-free relief funding to people and care-taking responsibilities is actually one of the things in the code that you can give it. So right now, in this moment in time, and this has been the truth for a year and a half, you can give stipends essentially that are covering these if they're care-taking responsibilities that are exacerbated by COVID or whatnot. And so like this is possible currently, but that is not always the case just legally and fiscally, right? So I needed to do a system that my auditor was gonna be happy with. We even had a whole conversation. Actually, this was interesting because we need to provide receipts when we reimburse things. So as you all know, how do you usually pay a babysitter? Like you Venmo her, you give her cash or whatever, right? So we literally went to my auditor and was like, okay, I need a list of what can I use as a receipt? Somebody pays a babysitter, right? Cash was the hardest one, but the babysitter can give you an invoice in the back. Venmo, but apparently like you can screenshot a Venmo thing and that's allowed. And so like that's the thing. I didn't know that before I did this, but I basically working with my team, like I have an excellent general manager, associate producer, Celine, who worked with me very closely. And I was literally like, this is what I wanna do. Like tell me legally what I need to make this happen. And so like she went through the steps, she's like, okay, this is the papers that you need and all that stuff. And so like that's how we made it happen, you know? But obviously you wanna make sure you're not jeopardizing your nonprofit status, all of those things. So make sure that everything that you're doing is by the books and ask people if you don't know. Amazing. Thank you so much. There's a comment dropped in. Patrick agrees that a budget is more easy to accommodate expenses than we think they can. Water filling a glass. Yeah, 100%. I think that, you know, as producers, you all engaged with that in extraordinary ways. And just the invitation is to include caregiver support in the same way that you approach your other budget lines. Nancy asks, can you share the language that was on the registration page as a model for us to follow in terms of access? Yes, we absolutely can. And we will be making a list of resources asked in the chat and try and get those to all of you who are participating. If you are watching this on stream, by the way, you can just grab a ticket even for free. Just jump on in and join us. We'd absolutely love to have you. Yes, so we covered Emily's question. Thank you for that. That was a wonderful question on availability for artists. Oh, interesting. Oh, okay. Lisa shares just a takeaway comment. I think putting something on the programmer website that reads organizational caregiving support funded by ellipses and listing donors would be very motivational, especially to donor prospects who are mothers or caregivers or organization to affiliate with that cause. Well, the other thing that I'll say too is that, you know, we are very public, that we are a company that offers caretaking support in many different ways. So this goes out and all of us, like if you've got an email from us about our classes and workshops, it's there, about you being able to get a reimbursement. And I've been pushing that out even more this year because what I've learned is that the more public you are about this, going back to Bradley's question, the more people feel safe to come back and ask you these questions. And like to be totally honest, like I haven't produced a full show since two years ago when we produced mothers. And so I haven't had that experience yet. It's like we are gonna go back to production next year and all of these things are gonna be incorporated. But I'm hoping that by then the realm will be known as a company that is open to these conversations. And so people can come to me. And even if I have to say no, I feel like being like, I hear you, I understand why this is a problem, but I can't do anything about it, right? Like as a leader, that is important to me. And then maybe I can do something about it next time, right? Sometimes you can't, like as I said, we had 10 out of 12s and now it's something we are not gonna have anymore going forward. So like we are always evolving too. We are always getting better, but we only get better if we have to start somewhere. 100%. And just to amplify this, you know, so many folks are like, well, how do we get started? We don't know what's needed. And if you don't know what's needed yet, my question is always, how much time have you spent with the caregivers in your organization hearing them? Because if you haven't heard either, we're not listening in terms of creating a budget that supports our community or maybe the space hasn't been made safe enough. And that's a difficult but important conversation to have for caregivers to even come to you. I will just speak into the world. The reality that Powell receives anonymous emails all the time from, it's not anonymous sess, but it will remain anonymous all of you, but from folks who say my organization X or I would like to go work at X, but do you know if they discriminate against caregivers? Do you know if I should take, if I should not talk about it in my interview or do you know if they have any caregiver support? And the devastation there is that you, we're all losing talent. We're all losing incredible contributors because we're not creating safe enough spaces for them to come to you directly and imagine how much information you would have about your own community. If the space was safe enough for them to come ask for what they needed and they will only feel safe enough to come ask for what they need if you take it on yourself as the leadership, as the organization to start the conversation through action by creating caregiver support conversation. I know folks who know to talk to the realm about their caregiver needs because they have already proven their values through their action. So just know we've, we're not saying you need to do it perfectly right up front and create it privately and then show it perfectly. That's a lot of white supremacy and oppressive structure behavior. What we're asking you to do is adopt it as a value, be transparent that it's one of your values, pick one challenge for yourself and say, this is where we're gonna start that growth and grow with your community because then that gives them agency as well. And if we're working on dismantling white supremacy, one of the greatest ways is to amplify the voices with the greatest need, right? And are we listening? So, suffering then. Just also one uplift comment that Patrick made a little while ago, just saying that it would be great to include artists in our caregiver groups. And so a lot of companies have, especially larger companies, like in the admin side of my company, I am actually the only person that right now has caregiving responsibilities, but obviously that's not the same in other companies. And so they are groups. And I think Patrick, I think that's a wonderful idea. So, well, I'll say two things. I would say that it'll be great to also pay those artists for that time that they're there as well, since obviously they're not getting a salary from the organization, all of that. And the second thing, I wonder if there's even going a step beyond that, like if some theaters that are similar, either in size or location or whatever could get together and have a care, so like, so a theater like mine, for example, that I'm the only caregiver, like is it possible that there's like a small coalition? And I know Powell facilitates a lot of that, but I wonder if there could be a small coalition where caregivers from several institutions, you know, like not a huge group, but like, and also artists that work in these institutions. Like, because the truth is that we share artists all the time, right? So like my theater is an off-Broadway theater, the actors that are working here are working under your theater workshop, are working at the vineyard, are working at the public, are working at page 73, are working everywhere. And same similar to the designers as well and all the rest of creative team. So I wonder if there's like a step further if there's some coalition building? Like to give an example of one of the less successful parts of our PI, we provided a babysitting during auditions for our open call and then also for callbacks. And for the people that use the service, it was extremely impactful. Like one person who ended up in the show literally said, I couldn't have come here if this wasn't provided because it just didn't make sense financially and they ended up in the show, right? But I was not as happy with a number of people, especially for the open call, they used it, right? Because we had to pay for the babysitters for the whole time and we didn't know who was gonna use it. So I already had a plan to sort of look into this for the future and there's a few theaters in New York that are under similar contract and every summer they do a group auditions for their shows, right? And I had already started the conversation with this group about providing care for those auditions, right? So instead of you're coming in just audition for the realm, you're coming into audition for the realm, WP, I think even the public was part of this group. So a couple of a few theaters together. And so what does it mean? Then the cost first of all could be shared by all of us but I think the impact would be greater. Once again, we haven't been able to do this because we didn't have the group audition. So whenever those are back, we're gonna try it. But once again, like we tried something it didn't quite work the way that I wanted it. It didn't have the impact that I wanted it. So we'll try something different and see if it's better. Yeah, I love that. And I will also say that I put in information in the chat. The PAL cohorts is a program that's starting up in 2022 and I just wanna amplify fiasco theater which is one of our hosts in New York City who is hosting our space in March for the New York cohort. And we're working on, we have about 10 PAL chapters around the country and we're working with our chief reps to find meetings with theaters. So if you're listening, no matter where you are in the country, reach out to us. We're happy to connect you with a local rep or your closest rep. And our goal is this year to create accountability just like Roberta's talking about. Once we start applying these things after the summit, what happens? We don't want anyone to feel stranded. So if you're in New York theater, make the date in March. If you're a theater elsewhere, join the summit. There should be information on your ticket registration on if you're interested in joining the PAL cohorts. It's an automatic end and just a huge yes to gathering in those spaces. I also want to amplify, I dropped a link to the PAL child care grant data. We put together a brief report on the application that artists made to our child care grants. The very first year and it has reports on experiences, impact, really where would a grant of $500 for example be applied and how would that support you? If you are looking for artists insight and artists feedback, that is a great link to read so that I would invite you to be educated before you invite artists into your space to become vulnerable with the theater they probably hope to work at in the future. We have to always remember that as organizations there is a power dynamic. And if you're an individual leader here and you're entering an organization you can acknowledge that power dynamic ask for a stipend that we want to make sure we're paying people for their time, we're creating a safe enough space and asking ourselves, are we a safe enough space yet for artists to come and have a conversation with us? If you need PAL to help facilitate those conversations and bring you data anonymously in a safer way that's also a conversation that we can have. Yes, absolutely, Leila, thank you. Oh, I just want to also amplify, yes, Lisa, this is a point we're really trying to drive home. We really hope you come talk to Jenna about tomorrow. Being public about your transformation and about the programming looks really good to patrons and donors. It's because that's commitment and that's accountability. It's one thing to write them an email and say, hey, we're thinking about doing this thing. It's another thing to put it out there and say we're getting started who wants to join. And everyone who produces notes that that is a different ask entirely. It also transforms your organization, which is the benefit. This is an interesting question from Leila before we start to close out here. Leila, I would encourage the deeper dive for this question at the Ask Me Anything session on Friday, because this is a process in growth, but Roberta, in case you have insight in how you've been engaging with this would be great. So the question is, as an artist who has struggled with access during COVID for this reason to hear or be pointed to resources on how you've been handling the intersections of caregiver inclusion and access in terms of COVID, specifically accommodating staff and team members or artists wherever possible who are immunocompromised or are caregiving those who are immunocompromised, particularly in this liminal time where guidelines are not always clear and what is possible for one person may not be so for those of us who are immunocompromised or caregiving for those who are also just flagging that the next session is on disability and care and there's some overlap. But Roberta, what are your thoughts? I think that, so a thing that I say is the way that you do one thing is the way you do all the things. So I think that this is another one of these questions. Like this is actually not a question about necessarily caretakers. Like we're talking about anybody was talking about centering the most vulnerable, be there elderly, somebody that's immunocompromised, child, like it all falls into that. So I think that as organizations in the past two years we had to discover who we really were, because when times are flush, people are coming to your shows, everything is fine, that's easy. Like when you really see like going back to the budgeting of values, how people are living by their values is when times are not easy, right? And so different organizations chose to deal with this in different ways, right? We haven't totally fully gone back to in-person programming. Literally like as we speak, I think right now our first in-person rehearsal is starting for an internal reading. We already had, I was up till midnight last night dealing with late PCR tests. So like that's what's up, like that's what's happening. That's part of my new job now, finding clinics that do PCR tests in 30 minutes or less in midtown. So I think that once again to your answer, and I think that maybe there's a way to have a bigger conversation that they ask me anything, it's just like this what shows what the organizations are and how their values are gonna be shown and who they're gonna center, as Rachel said. And if organizations have clarity on that, hopefully the last two years helped gain some clarity and obviously I'm not just talking about COVID, I am talking to Thread on Black Lives, Indigenous Lives. Like I think that we are seeing who organizations really are and we are seeing change. Like I actually think that real change is happening. My question is if the change is gonna be sustainable as we all go back to business as usual, right? So this is my question. Like as we all go back to production, the productions are harder to do, more expensive. So they take more resources than ever before, ever before. Like I never was involved in a reading of the scale that's happening now and I'm fully involved with it, right? So that's my question is how can we sustain the spirit and the change and this moment that we're in while still doing all the things we need to do? Yeah, huge, huge and thank you. Yeah, there's an expectation of many places in our field that everyone can just jump back in if we are vaccinated, et cetera, but that's not true for all of us. Yes, 100% Layla. And actually we have a lot of conversations at PAL with artists and with producers, even campaigning, we can celebrate that some theaters are able to put on productions. The Broadway's Back Campaign is designed to instill hope in all of us that we can start producing shows again, but I just wanna create visibility and acknowledgement for folks who are not back and will not be able to be back physically until the community has access or there's less danger, physical danger in participating in theater. And I would just encourage everyone to hear Roberta's words that I actually think returning is not sustainable and not possible, but rebuilding is the only hope for sustainable work. And as we're still in the middle of a pandemic, middle being a vast and identifiable ending scope, we really need to commit to centering the most vulnerable because otherwise people will be compromised or we're just gonna go back to excluding people and our programs for access are gonna be a waste of money. Imagine all the investments that all these organizations are doing in like consultants and everything. And then we just go back to saying, okay, everyone's vaccinated, let's go. So we're not tethered to our space anymore, it's only centering people who weren't tethered to before. And this is huge for the next session in terms of disability and caregiving, having a conversation that before the pandemic, folks were tethered to their space in ways that theater did not create access for. Folks needed mobility access in a way that theater did not create access for. That includes caregivers, that includes folks with infants, small children, children who are immunocompromised, disability, folks with children in the disability community, folks with disabilities themselves who are also caregiving and folks who engage with both aspects of that. The question is, are we engaging with the reality that these access needs that the pandemic just brought to the mainstream, it did not make them exist, that these access needs have always existed, our mission now should be, how do we create a world where those access needs are considered forever, not just while COVID is around, because COVID is just asking us to recognize that people have been asking for this support since the dawn of time. The only difference is that now folks with privilege have to zoom into the living room and engage with it in reality. So that's the challenge that I offer you. And now in the last six minutes, I gave you homework, so sorry, not sorry. If you could just type into the chat one takeaway, something you can do that you wanna challenge yourself to do. This is only visible to those of us in the Zoom. But if you're watching in a livestream, comment, go for it. One thing you can do and then one thing you will add to that, give yourself your own timeline, but throw that in the chat, be bold, be brave. Just as a reminder, there are super easy things like we talked about just being, how can you be transparent about this? How can you add this on your website somewhere? How can you add, and then there's a lot like Rachel gave us like a list of five things that were from the most bold to the least one. So like what are those things? What are the levers that you personally, you literally can make a change, right? That's what we're, because all of this stuff adds up like everybody's pulling levers, like this is how we make change. Awesome, I love it. The challenges come in is we can increase our rates and we can create a childcare supplement and events. Someone shares, when I give gifts to theaters, I will request that they go to the caregiver fund. If there isn't one, I'll start a conversation. I love that. Start donating to caregiver funds and start starting the conversation with folks included in our messaging and websites and support that we offer. What we offer to caregivers and encourage our partners to do the same. I love this. We can include a budget item for caregiving reimbursement the next season. Love it. Yes, commit to your future. Reimburse for childcare. And as a freelance artists working as a playwrights, I can advocate for caregiving support and contracts for myself and for actors and other artists who have less power in those conversations. Oh, thank you for that. Rather than being paralyzed by the perfect dream, start with something and start changing lives now. That is key. Thank you for sharing that. Ask every prospective employer what their caregiver support plan is. Share that plan and transparency with my collaborators. 100%. If you feel safe enough in the room, the line that Powell offers all of you is exactly that, Bradley, is ask what is your caregiver support plan? And I hope that all of the organizations in the world are put on the spot with that question and that by next year, everyone has an answer. We can reevaluate how and when to schedule training sessions for our teaching artists and other freelancers who are caregivers based on actual communicated needs, not our assumptions. Ooh, I love that. We can create a caregiver fund designation on our giving page. We can talk with artists about how to switch their caregiver stipend into a reimbursement. This is stunning change. This is a stunning change. And it's all thrown into that chat. Come to the AMA session if you wanna talk about how to apply these. But I wanna thank everyone for making that commitment. And I'm feeling- I did drop my email, just Rachel just added. So if anybody wants to talk more, have more questions or anything, my email is there, I'll put it again down here just so it's not lost and feel free to reach out. Thank you so much. And I just wanna say thank you to Roberta for making yourself so available and committing to this idea for the past three years and creating support for everyone. Thank you all so much for coming. We're gonna take a quick five minute break. Thank you to our ASL interpreters from Pro Bono ASL for their gorgeous work all dates. Our next session is on disability and caregiving. Join us, we're with Amy Chu and Johanna Maynard Edwards to talk about the intersection. And I'll see you then. I'll see you in a few minutes.


Thank you Anju. Good morning everyone. It's great to see you all like I think it's one of the biggest wordcams I'm attending in India. So I'm glad to be a part of this wordcamp and thank you for giving me this opportunity. I'm Puneet Sahalot. I run a WordPress design and development agency, idea box creations. We started as a WordPress services agency and then we moved into WordPress product development. So in the same process that I've learned, I'm trying to share it with you. The recipe of building a WordPress product. So why I'm calling it a recipe and not a process or not a workflow or something else. Why isn't there a technical term? Because I'm trying to keep it simple. We can easily relate to more than just food. And there are a few things which I've learned from my experience. First thing was that when we were young, we might learn how to make tea at home. We start learning. That's how we start learning that if you want to learn something, you first get a task at home. Either bring water or bring tea. So when I learned how to make tea for the first time, I found out what are the defaults. Like you need to add sugar, water, milk, tea leaves. Boil it for a while and then check if the tea is ready or not. And then you serve it. So once there was some guest at home and excitement, I said that I'll make tea. So I said okay, make it. We'll sit and talk. So I went and made tea. I added the defaults. Sugar, milk, tea leaves and water. I took two cups out and kept it on the table. In this process, I didn't understand what was wrong or what was right because my mom was giving me looks. What is this happening? Can anyone figure out what must have gone wrong in this? So the guest told me that this is not how you serve the tea. You have to bring it in a tray. So I got to learn something from there that presentation is important. You are making something, how are you serving it, that is important. Then I got to know that the defaults are okay. You added sugar, milk, tea leaves, water, everything is okay. But to make it better, you can add some more things. What can be done? Yeah, I added cardamom, ginger, black pepper. To improve a product, we need something else apart from the defaults. Those are the options. It is not like you will learn these things in the first time. We will take time to learn these things. When you master the defaults, then you will be able to start working on options. Then the second stance happened at home that I was hungry. I was hungry so I thought I would make something. And our universally accepted hunger killer is one. Maggie. So I went to the kitchen and made Maggie. At that time, my younger sister walked in and she was like, What are you doing? I said I am making Maggie. She looked at Maggie and was like, Is this how you make Maggie? I mean, I have been making this for so many years. Is there anything else in it? So she said, let me do it for you. You just sit outside and wait. Then she did something. She made some add-ons and then she made me a vegetable Maggie. So then I realized that you cannot do everything. You need to have right resources. I know how to make Maggie but I only know how to add defaults. But my sister knew how to make it better. So the right resources can help you make things better. The third instance recently happened that I met a friend after a few years and we met at lunchtime. So we shared lunch and I got to eat a vegetable raita. So I found out that vegetable raita can be different. Like vegetables were perfectly chopped. And the buttermilk, our curd was perfectly blended. The cumin and salt that was perfect in the right amount. So from there I got to understand one thing again. That the add-ons and defaults need to be blended perfectly. If they are not blended properly, then your product can be spoiled. And if the blend is good, then your product can be very good. So I understood from all these things that the way of making a product is also a recipe. That is not a process. If we can relate it to the process of making food, then we will be able to make it in a better way. So the first thing is talking about the ingredients. The ingredients for our product are problems. Where can we get problems? Problems could be your personal problems. Like I am working on something and I realize that there is no such product available in the market. This particular function is not available. This particular feature is not available. I am working on a client project and I realize that I need to build something for this particular client. But this particular project that I am working on can be generalized for a few more people. And can be generalized to a lot of users. That can be one way. Similarly, if you have heard of this plugin called Easy Digital Downloads. There is another plugin by the same developer, Pippin Williamson, which is called Restick Condent Pro. So these two plugins were made from this type. Restick Condent Pro came into existence because Pippin wanted to sell some tutorials on his website. A membership website he wanted to build. And he realized that every other plugin in the market is bloated. It has a lot of functionality. It is complex and not easy to use. So he built Restick Condent Pro. And over the time he kept improving it, he was building a few more plugins. Then he realized that he wants to sell those plugins. Now he was looking for something with which he could sell those plugins. Or he couldn't find anything specifically for selling digital goods. So the idea of Easy Digital Downloads came into existence. And then he built it. And now we know this is probably the best plugin for selling WordPress plugins or themes or any other digital goods through WordPress websites. So the idea can strike anywhere. It can be a personal problem. It could be a client problem. It could be a general problem that you can figure out from a large user base. That's what you need to figure out first when you start working on a product. You should solve a problem. Now I have a problem. I have prepared a list of things that we can do. But how to actually get started on solving that problem? When we make tea, again I will come back to that example. We make tea. We have milk and other things. But you should know how to use it. How to use these resources? How much time do I have to boil it? How much quantity do I have to use? Then only we will be able to make the right tea that we can serve. So the same thing is with the products. You have listed the problem. Now it's time to start planning. How to solve this problem? What options you are going to start with the first release and what options you are going to add in the coming versions of your product? After all this is planned out, why do you need to figure out? Do you have the right resources or not? The other example that I understood that resources are necessary. Now I am wondering that I can think of a size product for WordPress or something very fancy. And I realized that I don't have a skill set for this. Do I have the resources? Do I have the time? Do I have the money? Will it be a side project? Will it be a personal project? Will it be a full-time project? It is necessary to figure out all these things. Otherwise it will be like you start working on something and then over the time you realize that now I don't have money left or time left to continue working on this product. And this is still unfinished. So with proper planning, you also need proper execution of your resources, time and efforts. The product planning stage has started. Now when you are building it, another important thing is that you should keep it in a way that it is scalable. That code should be properly maintained, documented and it should be built in a format that you can reuse it or scale it with new options, new features in the coming versions. Initially if you are building it in a way that you can deploy it and launch it, then we will figure out what will happen later. So you will not be able to actually scale it. So maintaining proper code formation and documentation is important. And along with that, when you are serving it to the audience, when you are making it public, so you need to figure out that you have fixed the obvious bugs. When we make tea, we might taste it first. Is everything in proper quantity or not? The same thing applies to your products as well. The obvious things, the defaults you have to use, make sure that you have the right quantity of options and everything is working perfectly as expected. Apart from that, you will fix that after the product is released. When it comes to serving the product, the presentation thing is that you have to take it to the tray and serve it. The same thing applies to your product as well. It should have a proper branding and a marketing strategy. We have to decide the pricing, we have to decide what is the growth process, and what will come next in that product. If you have heard of this plugin called Search WP and there is another plugin called Facet WP. Both of these plugins don't have a free version and they solve a specific purpose, a problem. Search WP is solving a problem of fixing the default WordPress search. Search WP improves your search abilities for your WordPress website but it doesn't have a free version. So this is how the product has been positioned in the market that I don't want to keep this product free. This product is going to solve a problem which is faced by a lot of users and probably not everyone is going to use it but whoever is going to use it will be happy to pay for it. So the product has been positioned in such a way that it has a good documentation, it has good pricing structure and there are ongoing updates as well. So Search WP is one example, Facet WP is another example. Facet WP is used for filtering your content. Your e-commerce store or a simple membership website or a listing website, you will be able to use Facet WP to filter your content just like you see on any e-commerce website. You use different filter parameters like sizing, colors and material or the style or pattern. Similarly, you can use Facet WP on your WordPress website. So branding and marketing are the most important things which I feel which can help you either promote your product or all your efforts can go waste. Whenever a product is launched, or whenever you see in real life examples as well, even if a new mobile is launched, you see they make it grand. They make sure that everyone is aware of the new product in the market and they try to portray the unique features like how it is better than existing products. So whenever you are launching a new product, make sure that you pay attention to the branding and marketing part because there are many times that developers lack on that part. They feel that we go to some marketplace, we'll list our product there and we'll start selling it there and then we'll figure out how this product is going if it's working good. Then maybe we can think of building a website and then start selling it on our own. But this might not be the right approach in all the cases. So it's better you research first, you figure out who is our target audience and if we need to properly position it through a marketplace or through our website. Personally I prefer that I would build a personal website for my product and brand it and market it that way. So I am avoiding market fees, licensing issues, commissions, and it's also easy to build credibility that this product is a team or a developer and on that you can maintain all the ongoing support and documentation. After you have launched the product, the product has gone into the market and everyone is using it, make sure that they are not happy that they will not be able to use your product and you will not be able to sell your product. So a proper onboarding process is important for your users. Whenever they are getting started with your product, make sure that you help them get started. If we are talking about real life examples, even if we get a new TV at our home, there will be someone from the TV company who will come to our place and give us a demo. Similarly, we will also have a user guide to get started with our TV or any other equipment that we are buying. So make sure that your users understand how to use your product and keep it easy for them to use your product. Finally, when we have cooked and served the food, we clean the table again and we move on to the next part which is feedback. Whenever you are visiting a restaurant or you are going out with your friends, you will realize that after having food, usually people will ask, how was it? So the same thing is how was your product? How was your product? How does it taste? Like your users like it? Is there any scope of improvement? Did they complain about it? What things can we fix? It's time to get feedback from your users. So make sure whatever feedback you are receiving from your users, you take it positively. Maybe some users will be like that who will say that they want a refund and your product is useless. Don't get disappointed with it. Just try to figure out what you can do in that process. How you can ask your users what is the reason for their refund request and how you can improve on your product and how you can make it better for them. After all of this is done, product we have made, built, sold, took feedback, what's next? The most important thing is what's next? Every product has a life cycle. It starts with an idea, it grows, it matures and then you see a decline phase. You see a decline phase. This is important to stop this decline phase. If we talk about Facebook, Facebook started with basic features. But over the time it kept improving, it kept improving, it added new features. You have to share photos. Let's start sharing photos on Facebook. You have to share videos. Let's start sharing videos on Facebook. You want to go live. Let's start that feature as well. But now what's next? Everything is done for users. What's next? Now let's introduce Facebook for business. So now businesses can use those features which users were using to interact with their customers. So the same thing applies to your product as well. If you have built it, if you have taken it to a level where you feel like there's no more scope for development, you need to figure out what can be done next. If you are building a plugin, you need to figure out can I build another plugin which will coexist with this plugin? If I am building a theme, can I build a plugin which will coexist with my theme? Or can I build another plugin or a theme which will coexist with my theme? Or can I build a set of products which will be used by every WordPress agency or a freelancer? So that's how you need to figure out that building a product is not important. You need to figure out what is going to be the life of that product. So that's all from my end.