Before we ask you to trust us with your money, here's how we've handled our own.
We haven't spent a dollar of your donation yet. That's on purpose.
Too many nonprofits operate in the red — spending against donations that haven't arrived yet, hoping the next gift covers last month's bills. When it doesn't, the people who pay for it aren't the organization. It's the staff who get laid off, and the programs that get cut for the people who needed them most. We built this the other way.
Every Raven Table, every trip to build a relationship in a new city, every class taught, every camera and canvas and creative writing journal — every bit of it, so far, has come out of the founder's own pocket, not the foundation's. Every dollar donors have given us — $32,000 and counting — is sitting untouched in a 501(c)(3) reserve account, because we refuse to spend a donor's money until we have the operational discipline in place to spend it well.
That's not caution for its own sake. It's what scale and longevity actually require. And it means we're not asking you to fund something the founder doesn't believe in — he believes in it enough to have already spent his own money and years building it before ever asking you for a dollar.
What "self-funded" has actually meant.
No paid staff. No office. No program that's ever run on anything but volunteer hours and a founder covering the gas, the lodging, the meals, and the equipment himself. The photography equipment used to teach every class is his own. The art supplies have come from his own pocket or from companies willing to donate them directly. The advocacy work — including a year-long (1,300 hrs) Silver Star submission fought for a single veteran — was carried out personally, with no budget behind it at all.
Why the money is sitting still.
A newer nonprofit spending donations as fast as they arrive looks active. It isn't always wise. We're building toward full operational capacity and sustainability — the point where a donation funds a program directly instead of funding an organization that's still finding its feet. Until we're there, your gift goes into a reserve.
What that reserve is for.
Every dollar in that account is earmarked for the moment Two Black Ravens can run programs without a single person's personal finances propping it up — real materials budgets, real program costs, real capacity to serve more than a few veteran at a time without someone quietly absorbing the difference.
What we can already show you.
113
Participants served to date
11
Classes taught
3.8K
Hours of advocacy
$32K
Raised so far.
We're telling you this because a donor deciding whether to trust an organization deserves to know exactly how that organization has treated money so far. We've treated it like it wasn't ours to spend carelessly — because it wasn't. That's the same standard your gift will be held to.