You can make an impact wave.
Our impact is collective, and so is our funding.
The Seventh Wave is community-built, community-run, and community-funded. You can read more below about our path to here, but in short, Impact Waves is the major funding engine for our literary arts nonprofit. While we host biannual fundraising campaigns and always welcome donations and support of any size or scale, Impact Waves ensures the financial stability and sustainability of our organization. Are you someone who can help make an impact wave? We’d love to connect with you and talk about ways you can support our work, whether it be through major gifts, partnerships, professional development/consulting services, or sponsorships. There are so many ways that you can help us continue doing this crucial community work; let’s keep dreaming toward these possibilities together.
The first thing we built wasn’t a magazine, but a community.
When we began in 2014, we had nothing but a name, a logo, and a desire to create space for genuine dialogue and exchange. Still, we applied for a competitive grant for social impact projects and were named one of 10 finalists out of hundreds. Importantly, while we didn’t win the grant money, we did win the “community vote” phase of the grant process, so we ended up with a global fanbase of 3,000 individuals before we even published our first issue. You can read more about our beginnings here. This collective spirit has continued to guide our every decision: our community of writers, artists, and readers have helped us reach and exceed every grassroots fundraising campaign we launched since then. In 2018, we began applying for major funding from literary arts institutions, and we’re grateful to the philanthropic organizations and foundations that have supported our community-driven, cohort-based work, including the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, ArtsWA, 4Culture, Magic Cabinet, and others.
Over the past two years, we’ve been approached by individuals, organizations, and companies alike, asking how to get involved and support us, but we were always so heads-down in the work itself that we didn’t have the bandwidth or resources to look at how we could create a mission-driven, community-aligned giving program. But after working closely with our Advisory Board and Board of Directors this past year, we are excited to now share our major giving platform, Impact Waves, with the broader public.
If you are someone who identifies with any of the below, we’d love to be in conversation with you. You can reach out to our Executive Director, Joyce Chen, at joyce@seventhwavemag.com to begin making (impact) waves together.
- If you are someone who is or has been a major donor and steward of the arts, we’d love to talk to you about our current programs and scholarships, as you can single-handedly help us double our impact in communities across the globe.
- If you are someone who works at a company, corporation, or institution that partners with or sponsors (ie. matches fundraising efforts for) nonprofits, especially those that uplift people from marginalized communities, we’d love to connect to see how we can work together to elevate our communities’ voices.
- If you are someone who owns multiple properties or residences — or you are a residency program or venue — we’d love to speak with you about hosting a writers/artists residency at your property. We’ve hosted residencies for more than 8 years, and would be thrilled to bring our program blueprint to your place.
- If you work at an organization that is looking to deepen its connection to its community through digital storytelling efforts, consider bringing TSW in for a professional development workshop, panel session, or as a consultant to share more about our cohort-based storytelling models, narrative frameworks, and more.
- If you are looking to bring writers or poets into your classroom or book club, we’d be happy to connect, as we’ve now grown into a community of more than 300 writers, artists, and activists who are passionate about their craft and the importance of telling their stories.
Are you able to support TSW with contributions of $1,000 or more?
This is for folks who have the resources to make a major and immediate impact to one of our existing programs. Donations of $1,000 or more can significantly impact the health and longevity of our programs. While you could select a specific program to direct your donation toward (or leave it up to us to decide), in 2024, we are currently looking to raise $13,000 for our scholarship fund.
About our scholarship fund: In 2018, we began building a scholarship fund so that writers and artists with fewer resources could access our programs and residencies. Most recently, we used our scholarship fund for our Digital Residency program, which is a seven-week, genre-agnostic incubator for community and conversation. The program itself costs a resident $895 to attend, and each intake brings in two cohorts for a total of 32 individuals. While the Seventh Wave provides four fully-funded scholarship seats, we often receive far more applicants seeking financial aid. For example, 75% of the applicants for our 2024 summer cohort applied for scholarships, which would have amounted to $22,500 in financial aid.
Help make an impact wave: We are looking to raise an additional $13,000 this year to help provide financial aid to folks who do not get a fully-funded seat from TSW. To help make an impact wave for our scholarship fund, please reach out to Bretty, Director of Programs, at bretty@seventhwavemag.com.
Do you own a second home or property that you would be willing to donate?
We are looking to expand our in-person residency offerings. We’ve hosted residencies of different lengths over the years: a shorter weekend residency for rejuvenation and connection; a weeklong retreat for rest and recalibration; and a two-week residency for those with larger projects. All of TSW’s residents are previously published contributors, which helps us ensure that we’re able to curate a safe, inclusive environment for our residents and that we bring responsible folks to these private properties.
About our in-person residency program: TSW has been hosting in-person residencies since 2016 — from lengths of four days to two weeks — at private properties that have been donated in-kind. You can see more about our in-person residency programs on our site here. Our original residency was held at a private residence in Rhinebeck, NY, situated on 27 acres; in 2019, we began hosting a west coast residency on Bainbridge Island, a short ferry ride from Seattle, WA. Both properties were spacious enough for us to host four writers/artists at a time, in addition to our staff. Over the years, we’ve been able to bring 41 writers and artists to our residencies for a total of 60 days, helping to provide invaluable space and time for folks to connect and create.
Make an impact wave: If you are someone who owns a second or additional property, and you’re an advocate of the arts, we would love to speak with you about the potential of hosting a creative residency at your private residence. Reach out to us at residency@seventhwavemag.com.
Are you a marketing or communications professional tasked with telling your organization’s story?
We’re taking the skill sets we’ve developed over the past 10 years and turning them into a resource for those who could use a little storytelling support. If your organization is looking for ways to tell your communities’ stories in the digital space, we can help. Consider this a necessary form of professional development: finding fresh ways to tell the world about the important work that you’re already doing.
About our storytelling approach: The staff at Seventh Wave are expert storytellers. We have academic backgrounds and degrees in journalism, creative writing, education, and more. Outside of our work with TSW, we are teachers and editors, librarians and organizers, copywriters and consultants. At the Seventh Wave, we bring our backgrounds together to build community in the digital space through storytelling. We have developed narrative frameworks and cohort-based storytelling models that empower the voices of our community members. This impact wave constitutes our consulting wing, where we provide storytelling services for individuals and organizations who are seeking ways to create voice-driven content strategies for their own communities.
Make an impact wave: Bring TSW in for a single or series of professional development storytelling workshops, or hire us to help you build a community-driven storytelling strategy. We are happy to share our knowledge, and are always ready to bring folks from our community of storytellers into the room to help you craft your message. If this resonates with you, reach out to us at info@seventhwavemag.com.
Are you a company, organization, or philanthropic foundation that cares about community, equity, and inclusion?
We are seeking mission-aligned organizations that are interested in lending their financial support toward one of our digital programs. Specifically, we are seeking sponsors for our Community Anthologies program, which uplifts up to 32 voices each year. As a sponsoring organization, you would be invited into our shared spaces and get to see how TSW builds conversation and community from the ground-up.
About our Community Anthologies program: Our Community Anthologies program is a cohort-based storytelling platform that gives TSW’s editorial keys to four community curators to produce their own digital anthologies on our site — and it’s the perfect sponsorship opportunity for companies and organizations that truly care about the voices of their communities. Our inaugural 2023 Community Anthologies were sponsored by Magic Cabinet, a Seattle-based philanthropic organization. They gave us the resources and budget to produce four truly stunning anthologies of work, which you can see here.
Make an impact wave: At levels of $15,000 and more, you can support TSW’s community-driven work by helping us uplift oft-unheard voices through our Community Anthologies program. Depending on your sponsorship level, you will be listed in select/all promotional materials and/or have co-ownership and permission to cross promote our published content on your channels. Please note: The Seventh Wave fully vets each sponsor organization to ensure they align with our ethos, mission, and values as a social issues-based literary art nonprofit.
Are you a company, organization, or collective that is trying to uplift voices, but you don’t have the platform or the publishing know-how?
This impact wave is for the company, organization, or collective that is interested in either curating or supporting a one-off anthology. These are called “Partner Anthologies,” and are essentially mini-issues that allow folks to utilize TSW’s resources and platforms in order to publish an anthology with their own EIC and contributors.
About our Partner Anthologies: Following the same rubric as our Community Anthologies program, our Partner Anthologies are a chance for mission-aligned organizations to curate their own mini folios to uplift urgent voices and topics from their respective industries and/or demographics. Perhaps you are looking to produce a truly transformative digital anthology of voice, but you lack the publishing know-how or the tools to do so. Or perhaps you’re looking to provide financial support to a curator of our choosing to produce an anthology filled with voices from your industry. Either way, we’re here to help you from the ground up — we’ll help you or an editor-in-chief curate your topic and select your contributors, and then guide you through the editorial process.
Make an impact wave: Our Partner Anthologies start at $5,000 and can go up to $20,000, depending on TSW’s involvement, scale and scope of the anthology, and the desired outcome. But however we agree to structure the relationship, the impact is the same: a collective, powerful anthology of voice that speaks to the heart of your industry, audience, and community.
Are you someone who curates a book club or runs a class?
This is for folks who are looking to bring in a featured book or author into their book club or classrooms. For a curation fee, TSW will gladly work with you to find the right author and book for your next book club or classroom visit, facilitating an introduction with the author and assisting with the purchase of the books, as well as potentially facilitating a conversation with the author for your group (think: live interview).
About our community of writers and artists: The Seventh Wave has published more than 300 writers, artists, and activists from around the world, many of whom have published extraordinary books that we love to champion. For instance, Gabrielle Bates’ Judas Goat (Tin House 2023), Omotara James’ Song of My Softening (Alice James Books 2024), Callum Angus’ A Natural History of Transition (Metonymy Press 2021), Ariana Benson’s Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press 2023), Sarah Ghazal Ali’s Theophanies (Alice James Books 2024), Saba Keramati’s Self-Mythology (University of Arkansas Press 2024), Meredith Russo’s The Shimmering State (Atria Press 2021), to name a few. We love introducing and connecting folks to new voices, and our past and present contributors represent a wide range of demographics, genre, and voice.
Make an impact wave: If you’re looking to find the next book or author for your book club or classroom visit, reach out and we’ll help you find the right person and book. We also have a list of soon-to-be published books, if you’re looking to support a debut author or a paperback release. Curious to learn more? Reach out to us at info@seventhwavemag.com.
All of the information below can be found on this page or on our FAQ page, but for accessibility purposes, we’ve rounded up some commonly asked questions about our Digital Residency program:
- Why is it called a “Digital Residency” and not a class, course, or seminar? We call our program a digital residency because it is a participatory, cohort-based, form- and genre-agnostic, seven-week experience. Our sessions are not lectures or classes in the traditional senses Unlike a traditional class, we invite and expect residents to be active participants in each session: there will be plenty of prompts and free-writing sessions, breakout rooms and opportunities to get to know other residents, as well as roundtable shares where we want residents to speak from their lived experiences and perspectives. There is a curriculum for the entire program, but unlike most traditional classes, courses, or seminars, it is not tied to a specific form or single theme. We bring in poetry, prose, and experimental forms alike. And while we do zero-in on specific forms, the central goal of this program is to provide writers exposure to different types of writing.
- Is there a workshop aspect to this program? No. There is no formal or traditional workshop session or experience. We assume and expect residents will be working on pieces or manuscripts during their time with us, and we provide many opportunities for residents to bring their writing, questions, and obstacles into each session, but there is no designated “workshop.” The focus of this program is generative.
- Are sessions recorded? No. To preserve the intimacy of our sessions and the privacy of information shared, we do not record any of our sessions.
- What happens if I can’t attend a session? And, if I know I can’t attend one of the dates, is it still worth it to apply? If you know that you can’t attend more than two sessions in advance, you may want to consider applying to a future cohort. However, if you know in advance that you can’t attend just one session, we still recommend applying, as you will receive the resource packet, continued resources, and activities/prompts from the session, so you can still go through the activities asynchronously.
- If I can’t make my cohort’s session for one week, can I join the other cohort’s session that week? Each digital resident will get one “Session Transfer.” Meaning, if you can’t attend one of your cohort’s sessions, you have the opportunity to join the other cohort’s session for that week.
- How often and how many digital residencies do you offer per year? In 2024, we are hosting two intakes — summer and fall — each with two cohorts/tracks.
- How many digital residents do you accept per intake and/or cohort? Within each intake, we offer two cohorts, or “tracks,” as we call them. Each cohort will have 12-16 residents, and each cohort has its own “track,” or meeting date and time. For example, for our 2024 Summer Program, we will be selecting 12-16 people for our Monday cohort and 12-16 people for our Saturday cohort.
- Are there any differences between the two cohorts/tracks? No. This is simply for scheduling considerations. We offer two cohorts in order to offer two options for meeting days and times, as our Digital Residency is meant to bring writers from all over the world — and therefore timezones — together.
- Where did the curriculum come from? We commissioned poet and librarian Emilie Menzel, who is also a senior poetry editor for our annual literary magazine, to develop the continuing resources for this program, which includes 42 items — books, podcasts, platforms, published pieces, resource centers and more — to help you continue creating after each session, and most importantly, after the residency is over.
"Without The Seventh Wave, I would never have had the courage necessary to write the piece that was waiting to emerge."
"The virtual aspect of the residency didn't take away the magic of what it is. Rather, it solidified that our closeness, our vulnerabilities, and our joys exist beyond physical space. If you are a writer who wants to reawaken the wonders of writing, this digital residency is for you."
"The Seventh Wave community is one of the warmest and most supportive writing and artist communities I've ever encountered."
"The structure of the residency makes sure to reinforce your creative life — not overwhelm it — and the availability of The Seventh Wave team for any and all questions, thoughts, and advice, ensured that I was well-cared for."
"The beauty is that we commit to showing up for each other, and prioritising the community."
"From the first session to the final, our conversations were infused with the colours of who we were on that particular day, truly living rebellious joy, and re-holding space for both its nuances of 'again' and 'in response' to being."
"I've taken away so much from the residency, so I think I'll try to sum it up in one word that best described my experience: peace."