Hello friends of The Rhizome House, 

First, we'd like to thank you for your support in our second full year! Y'all really showed up and remind us every day that offering space and sustaining movement infrastructure is work worth doing. To express our gratitude and connect with community, we'd like to invite you all to a winter solstice dinner on Friday, 12/20 at 7:00pm.

We'll reflect on where we've been and where we're hoping to go next, followed by a winter solstice ritual, tea and warming pot grab bags and fire pit outside afterward. Please RSVP by December 17 so we can plan to make enough food! BYOB and bring your favorite soup bowl or mug (though we'll have extras, if you're not able to).

We also wanted to give you some updates what The Rhizome House has done in 2024 - thanks for your support!

Other meetings, talks, workshops, and training topics we've had the honor of hosting this year: workplace organizing, abortion support, street medic, stop the bleed, gossip nights, childbirth education, defying displacement, book tours, trans healthcare, sewing & clothing repair, gender affirming clothing swaps, herbalism, conflict bowl, block printing, tie dye, seed starting, tree distribution, food not lawns, bike repair, history of radical social centers, anarchism 101, podmapping & community care, holiday toy drive, and more.  

Events at the Rhizome House have raised money-credit to support Ahmed Aldaalsa's family in Palestine, Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, the Ohio Boeing 5, Cleveland Pandemic Response, and Food Not Bombs. We did mutual aid support for the Hurricane Helene relief drive with SCORCH medic collective, with our all-volunteer collective holding the space open for 25+ hours over a series of days to gather and pass along supplies donated by our community.

A number of major goals were achieved this year, including acquiring refurbished sound equipment suitable for a small venue, which has allowed us to begin experimenting with hosting one or two shows a month. For the third year in a row, we scaled up our slime-making operation for the annual Heights Candy crawl, producing a total of 175 batches of slime with hundreds of kids, probably the most organized yet (immense gratitude to the volunteers that braved the chaos to help us!). 

We spent about six months demoing, painting, and organizing the Cooper Andrews Center for Technology and Resistance, our new tech and tinkerer lab named after comrade, friend, and early Rhizome House collaborator Cooper Andrews. We are opened this space in honor of Cooper, his comrades and all who have been killed revolting against empire and fascism. 

This year we officially launched our book distro, and also began offering a free coffee/tea and library during Sunday open hours. This has been really successful! More books are being added to the library regularly, and members of our collective have worked tirelessly to curate and catalog the selections. We have been thrilled to see Open Hours increasingly filled with folks checking out the space, utilizing the library, helping out with various organizing tasks, and even just coming by to hang and do their own thing. Being everyone's favorite anarchist livingroom is definitely the dream <3

As long as money exists we'll still be paying the rent, utilities and all the other expenses that keep the Rhizome going . . . So what have we been using your money on?

Donations 11/30/2023-11/30/2024

250 contributions: $6,580
76 different supporters!
Fees: 483.34
Net: $6,096.66

November 2024 - Monthly donations:
$417 total donations!
27 monthly supporters
Averages $14. Between $5-50 dollars.

Rent $300 (may increase to $600)
Copier $100 (starting soon)
Payment fees $20.78 (for Nov 2024)

December utilities estimate:
Internet: $97
Gas $80
Electric $118
Mailchimp $21

Thank you for your support! Since relaunching our Open Collective page just a few months ago, donors had to restart their monthly donations. Returning and new donations have brought us up to $417 in small donations each month!

When we had to clear out our fiscally hosted page, we used those funds to pay rent for our storefront through March 2025. We hope to use the time until then to encourage new supporters to help us keep the lights on and the snacks and zines stocked. Based on this estimate we need to raise an additional $313 per month - or about 31 new supporters at $10 per month.

We also want to be in a better place if rent increased.

You can find a full list of all the nitty gritty capitalist money stuff on our Open Collective Page:https://opencollective.com/therhizomehousesolidarityfund

Note that due to the LLC structure, only donations are reported on the page. We have done our best to estimate monthly expenses above.

Thank you all so much for your generosity and support. We know who you are and we thank you. It really helps the space stay welcoming and accessible, and enables us to keep all events free or sliding scale.

And endless appreciation to the community and volunteers who share their time as well! If you came to help clean, host an event, pull weeds in the garden or even just make the vibes a little brighter, we see your contribution and deeply appreciate it.

With gratitude. In this year and the next,

-The Rhizome House Caretakers Collective

-PS you can join our email list and view our event calendar here for more frequent updates:

https://rhizomehouse.org/event-calendar