Dear Friends,

I write this from the TED conference in Vancouver, where I’ll be speaking — briefly, in TED fashion! — about the generative narrative of our time and living the questions and calling. These, of course, are ways of seeing and arts of living that have emerged as a harvest of 20 years of listening to the world and listening to our guests and listening to our listeners. 

It feels like community to me, the universe of beautiful humans who gather around On Being. I’m meeting more than a few of them/you here this week. I am moved every single time I hear a story about how this thing we do reaches into far-flung lives and communities and families — and ripples through your callings of serving and leading, teaching and healing. It puts wind in our sails, as the saying goes — this sense that we are succeeding in our aspiration to be distinctively nourishing and generative in a crowded media world. 

Yet we are not alone on the landscape of media projects and nonprofits who need to create novel forms of support for the foundation beneath our work. So it’s in a spirit of reciprocity, of gift exchange, that I come to you with an invitation I haven’t made directly before. Would you partner in the vitality of the unfolding On Being Project in a new way? Our friend Maria Popova says it daringly, beautifully, and she’s given us permission to adapt her equation. Financial patronage is one way we humans honor what we appreciate: giving = loving. 

To be clear. We have always been committed to offering up On Being for free — and this commitment remains: we will never put On Being and Poetry Unbound behind a subscriber paywall. But there is a fantastic team of 20-plus behind this. Creating the new On Being season was exhilarating for us. We’ll be sending all kinds of love in the form of playlists and extras in the months to come. A wonderful new season of Poetry Unbound is rolling out in May. 

Meanwhile, we’re scaling deep in other ways. We’re delighting in live events, and planning more of the convenings and gatherings — with live streaming and videotaping — that you’ve asked for. We’re hard at work building our Lab for the Art of Living, which will make our archive of 20 years more accessible and usable. We’ve been innovating wisdom practices and digital retreats. Foundations for Being Alive Now is a first offering. It’s also a good introduction to the vision, mission, and theory of change that propel us in this world of pain and promise. Here’s a path to our website, and our story.

Any amount of love and sustenance you can give will be gratefully — indeed, gleefully — received. 

Thank you for considering this invitation, and for the part you already play in The On Being Project. Below are some options to begin.

Gratefully yours,

P.S. If you’d like to learn more, or to wonder about patronage at a high level, please contact Colleen Scheck ([email protected]). 

Make a Gift