Please don’t make me take this sponsorship

Hey Y'all Hope things are well,

I was thinking about how we can increase the impact OnPoint has on our community when this DM landed in the OnPoint Instagram:

I have not accepted this sponsorship. 

I also have not *completely* written it off because I have a very juvenile sense of humor. 

… But I think OnPoint deserves a bit more dignity than this sponsorship can get us.

TL;DR for the rest of email:

OnPoint is looking for ways to maintain and grow  our budget for donation matches and paying the various people that are doing this work for free right now, and I'd like your help deciding how we can do that. Help us out by filling out this form:

We had a really exciting first in July: we exceeded the match amount we have for charity of the month! And despite that we still raise $1800, that’s wild.

I love this and y'alls generosity, but it also meant we weren’t able to match dollar for dollar everyone’s donations for the first time too.

And by “we,” I mean me. The match has been coming from my personal bank account this entire time.

Let me explain.

Giving to local charities has  always been very important to me. I saw funding the donation match through OnPoint as a way to increase the impact that my donations were already making.

Smaller non-profits don’t always get the media attention and donations they deserve for all the work that they do. I've been happy to fund OnPoint’s donation match to help shine a light on these non-profits and raise money for them. I have no regrets contributing as much as I have to the betterment of my community.

But I have to admit that funding the donation match personally isn't sustainable and I can’t shoulder this on my own anymore.

In addition, we currently are unable to pay performers or co-producers. Both are as essential as me inputting together the amazing show you see each week. And, of course we couldn't do the show without being given our space for free.

The performers and venues have all been very generous giving us their space and time, but this should be compensated.

So I began thinking about sponsorship and other methods of funding the show. I've been conflicted on sponsorship for a while regarding OnPoint. It has always been self funded so I could support the charities that I and the community want, book the performers I want, and generally be independent. And I don't want a sponsor to get in the way of that. 

But I can't do any of those things without slowly draining my savings. 

There are 3 Options I’ve thought of for funding, likely we will do a combination of these three but I would appreciate feedback:
 

1. A Patreon: A crowd funded platform where for a small monthly fee you can support the show in exchange for some kind of benefit, either full recordings of the shows, premium spots of your team on the show, or help in producing your own show. 

2. A small percentage of the donations collected at each show is taken to cover operating expenses. (I really don’t want to do this one, but if others think it’s a good idea I’ll do it)

3. Business sponsorship: Ideally this would be a small local business (or multiple) who would be able to provide some funding to be used in the donation match 
 

I want your opinion on this. I want this to be a community decision and I don't want to make the show feel like its becoming too corporate or lessen the impact we have on community. I want this to be our show, however we end up funding it.

-Noah

Got Shakey Stage Legs

Wanted to reach out and reminder everyone that very soon we will be back live and in person. We have upcoming shows at Remnant Brewing on June 27th, July 11th, 18th, and 25th all at 7pm. And we get to support Black Lives Matter Boston. Really you can't lose
Sign up to perform here!
But I wanted to address something

Some people have reached out to me regarding some fears around performing again. Not necessarily safety concerns but out of concern that their improv might be a little rough after 15 months.

I’m here to say it's going to be rough and that's ok.

I’ve always considered OnPoint as a place where people could grow and learn and experiment. No Matter how green a team was, no matter if they had ever even been on a stage together before, they got to perform. And yeah, their performances weren’t amazing, but the audiences still enjoyed it and I got to see them come back month after month and get better each time. It was wonderful to see and they were excited with every improvement they made on stage.

We get to live this again, we get to be new performers in a space that’s always supportive, that’s always trying to do some good for our community both inside and outside our little theater kid world.

In Addition, people are hungry for live shows. We are never going to see an audience that wants to experience live comedy more than we have right now. The world is primed and ready to laugh again.

And most importantly, we are here to help each other. We have the most supportive audience anywhere in Boston and despite me being a nervous wreck most of the time, I was never once afraid to perform at OnPoint and I'm the goddamn producer, I care about this show like its my baby. But I knew I could walk out and know no matter what, my team and the audience was going to be their for me and that's not something you can get anywhere else.

So if you’re hesitant to sign up I encourage you to bite the bullet and get back up on stage. The sooner you start the sooner you’ll be back to where you were before.

And if it makes you feel better, I’m going to be relearning how to host, so sign on up and let’s be awkward together.

Socially Responsible Investing or Vote with Your Wallet

Little known fact: I love playing the stock market. It’s what I do instead of playing slots. But what I love more is support companies that are trying to do good in the world. From solar power companies to companies putting women at the forefront of their industry, researching and investing in these companies are a delight for me. I know that my money is going towards something that I want to support. 

I practice Socially Responsible Investing and make sure that the company I’m investing in isn’t just going to cause cancer in hundreds of people or put their employees at risk for video games during a goddamn pandemic.

But I’m currently in the minority of investors, many investors only care about making a profit off their portfolio while not caring about the greater impact. But this is something that can change.

Just like your day to day decisions can make a difference so can your investing decisions. If people choose to support the excellent employee treatment of Costco over the awful employee treatment of Walmart this can cause Walmart to change its practices in the long term. These changes can only come about if many people decided to make that choice both with their purchases and with their investments. 

So i encourage you to look at what you are currently investing in and look into all the companies, bonds, and ETFs that you have money in and ask yourself “Is this something that I want to support”

Just like with our donations at our shows, everyone giving the small amount they can will make a huge difference. We can turn the tides on these companies that put profits over people and allow the businesses that really care about their people and the world around them thrive.

Why We Do What We Do

I wanted to go over a little history of OnPoint Improv both the show as a whole and the evolution of the philosophy behind it.

The show was started in 2016 by an improviser names Tom Boyer with they goal of giving stage time to newer indie team. It was held at the Cambridge YMCA and enjoyed a year long run. Tom passed the show to me and I continued the show.

In 2016 the shooting at the Pulse Club in Florida happened. I have many friends in the LGBTQ community who were scared and I was struggling for something to do. The only thought I had was to collect donations at my show and try to get as many people in the door as I could. As a result we raise around $200 for the victims of the shooting. It was a drop in the bucket but it was all I could do.

Later that year we moved to the Green Room in Union Square since our deal at the YMCA was over and I could no longer afford the space. And then the election happened and I realized that all the organizations that I supported, that supported immigrants, the environment, and social justice, would need help. So I began featuring different organizations, mostly on the national level but after looking into it there were many many local organizations that didn't have the budget to advertise. Organizations like the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, which is a group of 5 lawyers doing pro-bono legal support for victims of racial and national origin discrimination, or the Mystic River Watershed who have been cleaning the Mystic river ever since Exxon spill oil in to it. I certainly had never heard of these organizations before any many people who attended the shows did not. So I felt that giving these organizations some exposure would be a good use of the show.

Me and Charity

I’ve always believed that supporting charities was a responsibility, whether is was the church i attended or an national organization, I wanted to give back because organizations like this since they had helped me in the past

When I was 15 I was diagnosed with an eating disorder, I was hospitalized and went into to treatment and got to a point that I was stable enough to go to college. Later on in college I relapsed hard and was kicked out of school until I recovered. For anyone whose been in any kind of long term mental care insurance companies can be huge assholes. They weren’t willing to cover the amount of treatment I needed so I sought help from MEDA (https://www.medainc.org/) They gave me the help I needed to survive and helped fill in gaps in the treatment.

I was lucky that they had the resources to help me, but not everyone is. THese non-profit orgs are often stretched for resources and can’t help everyone who needs it. I don’t want to see anyone in that position, I don’t want people to go without the help that they need. It’s why I want to help these organizations as much as I can.

OnPoint’s missions is to showcase these charities to the public in a way that they will listen. We put some of the best performers up on stage and help some of the best charities. I hope to see you at a show

-Noah