If you’ve been following us for a while, you’re probably pretty familiar with our ethos: community, community, community! We consider ourselves so much more than a small business. Our goal in existing is to offer all that we can to as many people as possible (while staying in business and paying our staff a fair wage). We believe it’s radically important to provide a place to gather, connect, and create, even if not everyone who comes through can afford to spend their money at our shop. And we also know that a large majority of our customers align with us on this, and want to help share their resources too!
This is why we have both our Little Free Yarn Library (also referred to as the Free Shelf), and our Scholarship Fund. We know that both quality materials and education are equally valuable to our community, and we’re always looking for new ways we can help all of you help everyone else in the craft community.
So when our Scholarship Fund ran low lately, and we were worried we would have to deny people’s requests to use funds to take our classes, we had a little brainstorm. Were there any ways we could help get money into the Fund that didn’t feel like it was taking money away from any other person or program who might need it? Where did we have a source of abundance we could translate into another form to keep this system alive? Then realized: our Free Shelf! We have been getting SO many incredible donations from our community, so much that we often can’t put it all out on the shelves (a fantastic problem to have).
So we started asking people when they donated their yarn to us, “how would you feel if we sold some of this donated yarn at a steep discount to help raise money for our Scholarship Fund?” And every person we asked said yes! So this new support system was created:
When our Scholarship Fund is low, we will take some yarn donated to us and price it well below it’s average retail value. 100% of the sales will go into our Scholarship Fund automatically. The shop covers all processing fees, and the time spent sorting & pricing the yarn. Once the Fund has enough to support covering the costs of several class sign ups, we will continue to put out all the yarn that is donated to us until the Fund gets low again. We put disclaimers on the page on our website all about our Free Yarn Library, and ask everyone who comes into the shop to donate if they’re okay with this arrangement. If anyone wants 100% of their donations to go our for free, we respect their request and don’t sell any of what they donated!
We’re so grateful to everyone who helps make this all happen. We wouldn’t be able to offer all we can without your generosity and support! Thank you for being here. We hope to see you in the shop soon :)