We are so proud of Development Manager Nel Taylor’s article in Community-Centric Fundraising earlier this year. Take a look to learn how the nonprofits you are involved in should be centering participant storytellers.

Also, we acknowledge that the personal experience of exploitation Nel writes about was about their time as a Circus Project training company student 10 years ago. We sincerely apologize to Nel and the other students in the past and recently who share similar experiences. We are committed to learning from our mistakes and doing better in the future.

As a white-led organization, The Circus Project has definitely made harmful and ignorant mistakes. We have so much more to learn, and know that we will continue to make harmful mistakes despite our best intentions and our commitment to doing better. We are grateful to have Nel and many others in our community who hold us accountable and are helping to drive The Circus Project’s culture and practices on a long-haul journey toward equity and being community-centric.  

If you would like to share feedback about your experience with The Circus Project, you can email Executive Director Kirsten Collins, kirsten@thecircusproject.org, Education Director Erica Rubinstein, erica@thecircusproject.org, or any trusted staff member. We are committed to listening. We are also launching a community feedback survey in April in collaboration with Ar-tic Consulting. This will be a space to anonymously share feedback. The survey will inform the staff professional development plan in 2021. Look for that link in our email newsletter and on social media in a few weeks.