How does my investment get used?

Good question! Some of our biggest costs go to:

  • Pay Youth Media Collective members as employees, with fair wages and PTO, for their media work + peer-to-peer facilitation + leadership,

  • Pay adult art worker staff and teaching artists - including Listen Up alumni - so we can stay on the air and our youth can learn from older peers with relevant experience,

  • Pay media, arts, and career skills professionals to do workshops with young people in our programming, and

  • Pay for programming costs like food, professional gear + software, and transportation!

Can you get more specific?

Sure! Here’s a few of our estimated costs:

$10 - Weekly cost of keeping YMC members fed during meetings

$30 - Monthly cost of distributing the YouthSoup podcast

$120 - Yearly cost of editing software per PC

$180 - The cost of a Shure m7x microphone

$300 - The cost of a Zoom H5 recorder

$500 - Monthly cost of renting our office / meeting space

$1,000 - The cost of bringing in a semester’s worth of workshops

$2,000 - The cost of a SMI cohort member's summer wage

$3,000 - The cost of a YMC member's school year wage

$7,500 - The cost of supporting a YMC member for the whole year (wages, equipment, software, snacks, mentorship, payroll, etc)