Licensing

One of our goals with our licensing is to use our power and positionality to spread our impact (beyond training). We have a lot of team discussions about the depth of our impact via training. Heidi wrote a Fakequity blog titled 'We can't train our way to racial equity' a few years ago. We believe training is a tool that white dominant society is comfortable using (and appropriating and weaponizing). And, while organizations will probably never give up on training, we know that we can use our position to push people to think about organizational racial equity work in different ways. We aren't licensing for our financial gain and end up paying forward almost all of our licensing profits. Still, we can use our ability to ask for license funds (on a sliding scale) to shift financial resources to organizations doing racial justice work that is led and embedded in communities of color. We are proud to have distributed over $80,000 in licensing profits in our community.

We value centering a relational approach to increase impact and minimize the weaponization of our tools. We believe our materials don't stand alone. They are a part of our team forming a relationship with individuals and organizations for the greatest impact. And unfortunately, we have also seen racial harm done by weaponizing our materials in the workplace. We require people to ask for permission to use our tools so we can engage in a dialogue and be in a relationship (even if it's just in a small way). The licensing process allows people who use our materials to understand the intention and impact of using the tools. Our main hope is that our relational approach increases effectiveness and minimizes any potential racial harm done via our materials.

We view licensing our work as a way to respect our Women of Color Team. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, doing racial equity work, we pay a heavy tax at the intersection of racism and sexism. And one way we ask that people respect our work and our team is by not appropriating our labor.