*DO NOT DONATE if you intend to submit content to The Blast that needs to be separate from your identity for your or your community’s protection from repression.*
To make a general donation to The Blast, CashApp us at [removed on 7 Aug 2022] with a clipboard emoji in the note.
How donations shall be spent
By default, general donations to The Blast shall be apportioned 50% to the discretion of the editorialship and 50% to translators, unless negotiated or specified otherwise.
You may specify if you want your donation to only go to something specific, for example, a writer in a global south country. It is okay to request help in supporting particular types of writers, such as, but not limited to women or trans writers.
In some cases, we will facilitate donating directly to the recipient of a donation.
Contact us for other ways to donate or if conversation is needed for a specific type of donation (highly encouraged to ensure money goes to the right place).
How much to donate for translation
Translation is very undervalued and unpaid work.
To give a translator a chance at making Chicago’s minimum wage (~$15/hr), a donation would mean donating at a rate of 1.5 cents for every word that needs to be translated. To ensure a translator receives Chicago’s minimum wage, that would mean donating at a rate of 3.0 cents for every word that needs to be translated.
3.0 cent donations may help to offset those times when a 1.5 cent rate for other work falls very short of minimum wage since translation is often beset with lots of time consuming setbacks.
For example, an article with 500 words would be $7.50 to translate at a rate of 1.5 cents per hour because 500 (words) * 00.015 = 7.50. The same article would be $15.00 to translate at a rate of 3.0 cents per hour because 500 (words) * 00.03 = 15.00.
When a work is finally translated, it makes it immediately possible to be converted to audio for further accessibility.
Thank you!