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April 2025: bonus week

It's the fifth Wednesday of the month, which means... BONUS WEEK!

I'm in DC right now, the morning after Soapbox hosted our DC launch event. I met so many wonderful people (including Mwan from our besties Climate Changemakers), enjoyed dinner with a sunset with the Washington Monument in view, and basked in the epic competence of my co-hosts Rob and Natalia.

I figured I'd use this bonus week to give you an update on what's going on with Soapbox overall, especially since YOU are the reason we've come this far since 2019!

This year already, we:

• FINALLY MADE SOME MONEY! I haven't paid myself in five years and made my mom cry since I mentioned in a previous Changeletter that I've been living below the poverty line (woops). Well, we just brought in our first $100,000 in grants! This will allow us to pay our staff (yippeeeee), actually buy the supplies we need, support chefs, farmers, local artists, and more! We're hoping to 4x this number by the end of the year, so I'd say we're making pretty good time.
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• Saw big legislative / civic wins. Thanks in part to Soapbox's role in raising awareness and connecting people with their power, Seattle passed a historic social housing legislation, an $11M placemaking fund, AND a new climate resilience plan! We've been writing to our reps for a YEAR about how we need more social spaces for social change + how critical climate resilience is. Clearly, it's working ✨​
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• Hosted Soapbox vibraries in FOUR cities! We're pretty set in Seattle (weekly) and NYC (monthly trying to go to weekly), and those two are going great. We also launched in LA last month and DC yesterday! (P.S. a vibrary is a community space for collective change. I made it up.)
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• Created 3,000ish hours of community-led climate engagement through our events, volunteer time, field trips, and more. We are on track for ten thousand hours!
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• Piloted the coolest event formats like Dream Sessions (a music concert/conversation night), peer learning, and artist nights. All credit goes to our volunteer vibrarians
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• Made a bootyload of process docs and trainings so we can repeat the magic over and over again. This was a pain in the butt AND the best thing we've done, and now we have like 20-30ish core volunteers across our cities. How cool!
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• Had so much fun

What's next?

• We're hiring a Seattle lead. Apply here by May 15!​
• We're fundraising like hell and if you're feeling generous today, click this​
• We're scheming more city launches, probably SF/Oakland, Chicago, Vegas, Vancouver... got any suggestions? We're not limited to the US; we're only limited by my desire to go somewhere

If you have some ideas:

• WRITE BACK TO ME! I read all of the emails I get. I also reply to most of them, even if it takes me months.
• Let's chat! My calendar is here: calendly.com/niviachanta (pls use it with kindness and respect, it may be a little unhinged to share my calendar with 8,000 people around the world but here we are)

Okay that's it for bonus episode! If you want to catch up on any prev content, our Action Pack archives are mostly updated: https://soapboxproject.org/archive

Love,

Nivi

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