Donations
Give to the part of this you care about.
Membership is an ongoing relationship. A donation is a single, specific act — and you can point it at exactly the work you want done. Undesignated gifts go where the need is greatest, which in a first year is usually equipment and printing.
Our 501(c)(3) application is still in preparation, so gifts are not currently tax-deductible. If exemption is granted it is normally retroactive to our formation date, and we will write to every donor when that happens. We would rather tell you this on the way in than surprise you in April.
Designated funds
Eight places a dollar can go.
River Stewardship
Cleanups, native plantings, invasive removal, and the boots-and-bags cost of putting volunteers on a riverbank.
$100 plants roughly thirty feet of streambank.
Oral Histories
Recording equipment, interviewer training, transcription, and the archival storage that keeps a recording readable in forty years.
$250 buys a recorder, microphone, and cards for one interview team.
Publishing
Editing, design, printing, and distribution across River Craft Press, Black Swamp Press, and Great Lakes Books.
$4,500 is the full production cost of one short-run title.
Children's Books
Great Lakes Books specifically — illustration, printing, and getting copies into classrooms and libraries in the watershed rather than only onto shelves.
$600 puts a picture book into twenty regional classrooms.
Artist Commissions
Paying photographers, illustrators, and painters to document this place properly, at a rate that respects the work.
Commissions start at $750.
Fellowships
The River Craft Fellowships — stipends that buy a working writer the months it takes to finish a book about this region.
A first fellowship is budgeted at $5,000.
Conservation
Longer-horizon habitat work: marsh margins, streambank stabilization, and partnership projects with organizations already in the field.
Restricted and held for multi-year projects.
Education
School and community programming — field days, workshops, author visits, and the materials that go with them.
$400 covers a school field day for one class.
Make a gift
One time, or every month.
Online payment opens with our public launch. Until then, tell us what you would like to do and we will send a payment link or a mailing address the same week. Nothing is charged until you say so.
What a gift actually buys
- $50 — archival boxes and sleeves for one donated collection.
- $100 — native plants for roughly thirty feet of streambank.
- $250 — a recorder, microphone, and cards for an oral history team.
- $750 — one commissioned photo essay or illustration set.
- $4,500 — the full production cost of one short-run book.
- $5,000 — a River Craft Fellowship for a working writer.
Larger and planned gifts
Appreciated stock, a gift from a donor-advised fund, in-kind equipment, a named fund, or a bequest. Write to us and we will walk through the mechanics honestly, including where our pending exemption status matters.
Business sponsorship
Sponsor a cleanup, a recording day, a school field day, or a title. We will tell you exactly what your name goes on and exactly what it does not.
Where the money goes
Every designated gift is tracked to its fund and reported at the annual meeting, in public, with the numbers on a slide. Restricted means restricted.
Get involved
A donation fixes something once. A membership keeps it fixed.
If this is the kind of work you want in the world, the steadiest way to fund it is five, fifteen, or twenty-five dollars a month.