Opportunities Available with BUTCH Voices
The BUTCH Voices Board of Directors are currently looking for volunteers to add to the BUTCH Voices Board, the National Conference Steering Committee and Subcommittees. If you’re looking to volunteer time on a ongoing basis and want a specific role on the team we have a few that are open. Priority will be given to folks identifying on the Butch, Stud, Transmasculine spectrum, but Allies should also feel free to apply. All positions are unpaid and volunteer based.
Board Member Roles
- Building Board
- Identify/Recruit potential board members
- Mentor New Board Members
- Ensure Leadership Succession
- Increase Capacity of Existing Board Members
- Ambassadorship
- Ensure Organizational Integrity
- Keep Mission & Brand
- Strategic Planning
- Ongoing research of issues effecting our audience
Board Member Expectations
- Participate in Board accountability and evaluation
- Available for all calls/ meetings
- Preparedness
- Serve on at least one Committee
- Approve Annual Budget
- Fiduciary Literacy
- Fundraising – Give/Get Potential Funders
- Timely Communication/Response (within 48 hrs)
Board Member Opportunities
- Resource Development Chair
- Prepares fundraising repot/annual fundraising plan
- Identifies and manages prospect (funders) list – Institutions as well as individuals
- Participates in fundraising cultivation & solicitation activities & fundraising events
- Manages grant calendar
- Submits LOI (Letters of Intent), proposals & reports
- Ensures accurate minutes are taken & distributed shortly after the meeting (48hrs – 1week –for board retreat)
- Presents minutes for approval at board meetings
- Maintains records of the Board and ensures effective management of organizations records
- Supports Board Chair in board governance issues
National Conference Steering Committee Opportunities
- Responsible for the planning and implementation of the conference Outreach program.
- Responsible for implementation of outreach efforts.
- Identifies and contacts appropriate community organizations
- Supports Programming, Performance, Keynote , Vendor/Sponsor and Volunteer chairs to spread the word about calls for submissions/performance/vendors to areas that are not being met with proposals from the general calls for submissions.
- Works with Sponsor/Vendor Chair to spread the word about calls for donations/sponsorships/vendor opportunities to areas that are not being met from the general outreach efforts.
- Oversees all sponsorship, fund-raising efforts for donations, sponsors, and vendors for the conference.
- Determines, in conjunction with the steering committee, sponsorship levels and opportunities.
- Responsible for outreach efforts in terms of actively contacting individuals and organizations directly for donations, sponsorships, vendor opportunities.
- Works with Outreach/Media Chair to spread the word about calls for donations/sponsorships/vendor opportunities to areas that are not being met from the general outreach efforts.
- Receives and reviews vendor submissions. Weed out selections not meeting overall conference theme if necessary.
- Coordinates with Conference Chair in determining final selections.
- Acts as direct point of contact for this area with vendors, sponsors etc both prior to and during the event.
- Works with Logistics and Accessibility chair on vendor/sponsor needs on site.
Logistics Coordinator (reports directly to the Logistics Chair on the Steering Committee)
- Supports Logistics chair in ensuring a smooth operation of the entire event
- Ensures workshops and panels start on time
- Helps the flow of patrons at the sign up desk, in and out workshop rooms and evening events
- Ensures venue is kept clean and safe, adhereing to fire codes for occupancy and clear asiles
- Assists in creation of event bible (list of workshops, panel discussions, round tables and events with times, description and people involved)
- Oversees completion and collection of daily reports
- Assists chairs from other departments with requests and completion of tasks
- Updates and maintains the BUTCH Voices website
- Content Management
- Page layout
- Some graphic design possible
- Prior graphic design, Word Press and content management experience are needed.
Webmaster / Web Team’s tasks
Subcommittees and more info
We are also looking to add volunteers to our Outreach and Fundraising Subcommittees for the organization as well.
Prior experience in the role is helpful, but not always necessary. Time involved in each position is variable with a minimum of 5-10 hours per month in an off planning period increasing during the height of conference planning.
Some benefits of being a volunteer team member of BUTCH Voices include:
- free entrance to the BUTCH Voices National Conference
- increased connections to community members
- being part of a great team in the national Butch movement
- opportunities to get experience in various facets in community activism and event planning
BV Regional Conferences are coming up!!
Click here for more info on BUTCH Voices NYC
Photo credit: Moya Bailey
Click here for more information on BUTCH Voices Portland
Networking Dinners
BUTCH Cake Opening Night After Party
BUTCH Voices in conjunction with Movement Productions presents
To download flyer click here
Come get your mingle on with Butch Voices after the Meet and Greet at AJ Toppers.
After party at The Den on Thursday August 20th, with DJ Olga T spinning the wheels of steel for us.
Doors at The Den open at 8PM.
Kimberly Peirce and Jack Halberstam – Added to the Butch Voices Presenters Line-Up
We’re adding two more amazing presenters to this already phenomenal line-up at the upcoming Butch Voices Conference.
Joining Cheryl Dunye, Campbell, and Kortney Ryan Ziegler for the Is That Me on TV? session are: Kimberly Peirce and Jack Halberstam.
Kimberly is best known as the award-winning writer/director of the films, Boys Don’t Cry and Stop-Loss. She’s also familiar navigating the business and media world as a self-identified butch.
Jack is a professor of English and Gender Studies at USC, and also known for the book Female Masculinity, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, as well as co-authoring with Del LaGrace Volcano for The Drag King Book.
We are incredibly excited about the potential for this panel session on the images of Studs and Butches in the media, as well as the newly added session: Boys Don’t Cry and Beyond: A Conversation Between Jack Halberstam and Kim Pierce. Details on this session and the revised conference schedule will be available on the website very soon.
Is That Me on TV? is scheduled for Friday August 21st, and Boys Don’t Cry and Beyond is scheduled for Saturday August 22nd.
If you haven’t registered yet, what are you waiting for?
Don’t miss out on this fantastic event!
Modern Times Books
Modern Times Books, located at 888 Valencia Street in San Francisco, is a progressive resource for the Bay Area and a neighborhood bookstore for the Mission. Collectively operated since 1971, we are a vibrant progressive and literary bookstore offering wide-ranging literature on globalization, politics and media, as well as an array of graphic novels, fiction, and criticism. We are proud to offer some of the best queer/trans and feminist sections of any bookstore in the Bay Area, and feature one of the Bay Area’s most extensive collections of writings on Latina/o history and culture, including a full selection of Spanish language books. And did we mention our children’s books? Modern Times also fosters a vital literary community with an exciting calendar of events, a blog, and community resources. We are a surviving, thriving indie bookstore in the face of chain stores and Amazon, a fiercely queer and radical community hotspot, and a place where independent literature is in bloom. We’re proud to be Butch Voices official bookseller. We look forward to attendees checking out conference presenters’ books and browsing a fine selection of books andmagazines by and about butch lives, butch/femme cultures, identities and sexualities, queer and trans liberation, erotica and more!
BUTCH Voices Video Contest Results
We are grateful to all of our participants in the first BUTCH Voices Video Contest. For a look at all of the submitted videos please visit our YouTube Group.
1st Place
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec371YVeh5Y
Our 1st place contestant in the BUTCH Voices Video Contest is Linda Miller for her video, “I Know, I Know, I Know.” We felt this piece was an awesome example of the complexity that is Butch identity. In this piece Miller offers a song she’s written about a lover whom “she knows” she’s not right for, as she croons, “I’m not the one you need.”
I am a soon to be 50 year old. I am a medical professional, surgical technician to be exact. I have been a surgical tech for 28 years. I dabble at the singer songwriter thing here in Nashville, TN.
Top 5 Reasons
Top five reasons Butch Voices attendees should stay at the host hotel, the Oakland Marriott City Center:
5. Everything is at your doorstep: workshops, restaurants, public transportation, impromptu conversations, networking and maybe even a potential hook up or love connection too.
Hey, what happens at Butch Voices, stays at Butch Voices.
4. Easy access to your room, to have a quickie, a disco nap, or a refreshing shower before dinner or your night out.
Long days and/or long nights over the conference weekend? Naps or downtime in your room can prove to be just what is needed to help you decompress.
3. It’s really the only place to be with so many Butches, Studs, Aggressives, Tombois, Doms, and Allies – ALL in one place.
For the conference weekend, the Oakland Marriott City Center will be THE central place to see all of the attendees and presenters throughout the conference weekend. It’s OUR space, even after the sessions are done. You can run into each other in the halls, you can meet up for some coffee in the hotel restaurant before a session, network over a drink with your newfound friends in the evening – ALL without having to leave the hotel.
2. Roommates help to offset your housing costs.
Schon Wade is taking emails to hook people up with roomies at the host hotel. schonwade@comcast.net Add a rollaway bed to your room for $30 for the ENTIRE weekend, and split your costs with a fellow BV attendee.
1. By staying at the Oakland Marriott City Center, you’re actually helping the Butch Voices team keep expenses down by helping us to fulfill our room block.
Yeah, it’s not a sexy reason, but it is true. Butch Voices was able to negotiate our meeting spaces at lower rates by having a contracted amount of rooms set aside to be fulfilled by you, the attendees. So every room, even just for one night, helps Butch Voices.
Butch Voices needs all you local, hella cool Bay Area people, to come out and support us. We would love for you to spend a night or two in the host hotel, where all of the action is! In exchange, Butch Voices will cover your parking at the hotel during your stay. Just reserve your room before July 31st with the Oakland Marriott City Center. Then show your id confirming you are a local resident, upon check in at the hotel, to get your parking paid for by Butch Voices.
Take advantage of the reduced conference rate of $109 a night, today, as the cutoff date of July 31st is fast approaching. Online registration for the hotel is available here or by calling the hotel directly at 510.451.4000. Be sure to mention the Conference Hotel Code: bvcbvca.
We look forward to seeing everyone at the Oakland Marriott City Center.
Butch Voices Conference Raffle and Sharon Bridgforth
And most recently we’ve received donated copies of the Bull-Jean Stories by Sharon Bridgforth. If you don’t know who she is, you should totally check her out on her website. Butch Voices tapped Sharon to participate with us at the conference in Oakland this year, but unfortunately for us, she will be attending a writer’s retreat during that same time. Instead, she is offering up ten copies of her book The Bull-Jean Stories from Redbone Press, and three cd versions of The Bull-Jean Stories read aloud by the author, herself. She was also kind enough to send us this pdf version of her amazing essay, a wo’mn called sir, specifically for Butch Voices to “get it to the bois.” Enjoy Sharon’s essay and be sure to check out her books and website for more information about her upcoming performances and presentations.Sippin on Ink and Radio Boiz Radio Appearances
BV will be a guest on the Sippin on Ink radio show , Wednesday July 1st at 8pm EST. Please tune in and join the chat discussions as well as call in to support us on the show!
Can call in to join the conversation by dialing (646) 378-0402.
The show is aired LIVE and you can join the readers in the chat room at: www.blogtalkradio.com/Sippin-on-Ink
After the show is aired it is available for download at www.blogtalkradio.com/Sippin-on-Ink
BV was recently a featured guest on the Radio Boiz blog talk radio show. Check out the archived show at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/TheRadioBoiz (scroll down to the section “On Demand Episodes”)
