Donations and Other Contributions
to Shared Journeys

Our groups are donation based, and individual participants decide what, or whether, to contribute financially according to their resources, the value they perceive, and their giving philosophy.  

We expect participants to engage in service activities that further the goals of Shared Journeys as they live their lives. We collaborate as individual persons with organizations and institutions to sponsor events and engage in public examples of Shared Journeys opportunities.  

When participants cannot contribute financially, they may provide service by initiating community projects, supporting each other’s work, assisting participants with personal issues—or, at a baseline level, showing up to groups regularly and contributing fully.  

You might think of Shared Journeys as an effort parallel to the voluntary actions of community organizing initiatives or self-help traditions, such as Twelve Step programs. Like Twelve Step programs, we pay our own way as we go, we promote fellowship, not the organization, but we are not “anonymous.” We can be transparent about our lives and lived commitments in our wider communities. Like community organizing efforts, we sharpen the personal agency skills of participants to address voluntarily the political and personal issues of their lives in informal, cooperative arrangements with collaborators, but we do not attempt to form organizations or institutions, as the structures undermine the benefits of organic community.