Stewardship

Stewardship

Stewards are the Members who keep the gears turning behind the scenes to ensure a safe, accessible, well-functioning community for all of us. Stewards:

• vet our Members
• mediate conflicts
• design and run our website and app
• securely maintain our Member data
• send out Member communications
• market our community to new Members
• manage our finances
• and more!

Stewards are compensated modestly for their contributions.

We pay based on effort, not based on hours or output.

Because we are all Disabled, we don’t get the same output from putting in the same amount of effort. Sending an email, for example, is a task that some Members can do without disrupting their day, while other Members would view it as their main activity for the week.

We don’t believe it’s fair to pay those people the same amount for sending that email when one of them puts in significantly more effort to do it than the other has to. So, at DT4T, how much we get paid is about how much effort we put in, regardless of the size of our output. Organically, Members who are more severely Disabled will end up being paid more per hour than less-Disabled Members will.

To make “effort” a less ambiguous thing to measure, anyone who performs Stewardship work will log those efforts in the DT4T app as “Spoons,” rather than hours. We assign specific values to different quantities of “Spoons” (see below).

The name “Spoons” comes from “Spoon Theory,” which is a common framework in the Chronic Illness community for assigning value to our limited capacities. We don’t endorse Spoon Theory as an accurate descriptor of our universal experiences; we just use it as a linguistic framework.

Our Spoon System

• 1 Spoon: This task didn’t take much effort. I didn’t need to prepare or recover.
• 5 Spoons: Between preparing, doing, and recovering, this task was the main focus of my day.
• 30 Spoons: Between preparing, doing, and recovering, this task was the main focus of my week.
• 100 Spoons: Between preparing, doing, and recovering, this task was the main focus of my month.

Despite our best efforts to standardize it, effort is a subjective measure. Stewards can record any number of Spoons, using the above as a guideline. We use an honor system and trust our guts in deciding how many Spoons to log. 

At the end of each quarter, any profits we make from Membership Dues and Events/Gatherings, plus a portion of grant money, will be divided proportionally among everyone who logged spoons that quarter.

Payouts are made either through Venmo or PayPal, or using Melio Payments.

Stewards who are paid through grant money (including those who require official documentation of their work) will be paid via our Fiscal Sponsor, Disability Power Bloc (DPB). DPB holds all of our grant funds in an official bank account and distributes payment to our Stewards as Independent Contractors through Melio Payments. DPB will also issue tax forms to these Stewards at the end of the year.

Stewards who are paid through Membership Dues and Events (including those who do not have a US Social Security Number) will be paid directly by one of DisabiliT4T's Stewards, who will use their personal bank account to pass through funds raised on Givebutter, our fundraising platform. These payments can be made via Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, or Cash App. Because DT4T is not a registered business or charity in and of itself, we are not equipped to withhold taxes nor supply tax forms. These Stewards are responsible for reporting their own taxable income to the IRS, if applicable.

To become a Steward, Members must be part of DT4T for at least 3 months.

After 3 months, Members can either opt in to help with administrative work (no additional qualifications necessary) or apply for a specialized position on the Vetting Team, Conflict Resolution Team, IT Team, or Finance Team. The existing members of each team review incoming applications. 

Members who consult on accessibility protocols can be compensated even if they haven’t been Members for 3 months yet.