About 8th House
8th House was born in 2024, after I donated a grantwriting master class for beginners to the fundraising auction for Romancing the Vote, a writer-led activist coalition which has raised over $1.2 million for organizations like Vote Riders and Fair Fight since 2020. But in a broader sense it was born over a two decade-plus career raising money for artists and arts organizations while trying to support my own creative work.
Many of the networking, skill-building and professional development opportunities available when I was starting out weren’t designed for the uniquely complicated ecosystem of arts and culture in mind. Even with those that were, I sometimes felt othered and out of place. They didn't always feel welcoming to fat queer female bodies like mine. They didn't always reflect my progressive values. Sometimes they encouraged a performance of class markers that felt uncomfortable, as though you have to present as a rich person in order to ask rich people for money. They also didn’t always make space for the thorny ethical questions that inevitably arise when an artist or movement worker or passionate supporter of a cause is forced to put a price tag on their work.
Everything I know about how to do this work in alignment with my conscience, I learned in the field from other people who were doing it. I learned over post-work happy hours and in long, tense meetings; I learned from incredible bosses who mentored me, and from stress-inducing organizations that seemed perpetually in crisis. And I've come away from it all with strong opinions about how a good grantwriter can serve a unique, powerful role within a nonprofit: not just as the person helping keep the lights on and the water running, but as a guiding ethical voice, a vital centralized information hub, and a community advocate helping push the whole nonprofit sector in a more progressive direction.
What's With the Name?
In astrology, the wheel of the sky is divided into twelve wedges called "houses," each assigned to different traits or aspects of your life. If you know your rising, you place it in the slice for the corresponding astrological sign (mine’s Libra) and that becomes your 1st House, which represents the self and identity; then you go counterclockwise around the wheel to label the others. The placement of particular astral bodies with particular properties within each wedge when you were born is said to shape who you become; for example, I have Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto also crammed into Libra, which I assume is what ADHD looks like on a birth chart.)
The domain of the Eighth House includes any area of your life connected to other people's money and assets, which makes it the house of grants and fundraising. But the Eighth House is also ruled by Pluto, the planet of death, rebirth, cycles, and change. Pluto moves slowly, only transiting from house to house every 20 or so years, a reminder that big work takes time; but I think there are a lot of aspects of nonprofit culture and the way arts are funded in America which are ready to be dismantled and remade again as something new.
Land Acknowledgement & Collective Action
8th House is based in the central metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon, which rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River.
Click here to read a recent OPB article about the Chinook Indian Nation's two-century fight for land rights and federal recognition, which was granted in 2001 by outgoing President Clinton and then immediately rescinded by incoming President Bush. Last December they received acknowledgment of their land rights from the federal government and a financial settlement, but still don't have formal tribal recognition yet. This meant that during COVID, they weren't able to access the testing supplies, vaccines or health clinics that other tribes had and were reliant on their neighbors for care and support. (Read more on this here.)
For ways to get involved by donating, signing their petition, or contacting your federal representatives, visit https://chinookjustice.org/.