Support our mission
Help us keep Austin weird
To us, a weird Austin is one where creative people can afford a creative lifestyle. It is a place where people have enough peace of mind to dream, enough free time to make, and enough opportunity to participate in an urban village economy. A weird Austin has a culture, and it’s shaped by the people who live here.
Your private donations enable us to support this mission in the following ways:
Provide affordable retail space for makers via our consignment and pop-up programs
Actively promote local artists and brands
Sponsor and facilitate one-off events such as markets and group shows
Incentivize creative leadership within our community
Surface work and collaboration opportunities to community members
Facilitate regular creative meetups for artists and musicians
Employ creative people and create meaningful leadership opportunities for a diverse staff
Private donations put slack in our leash and help us serve the community more effectively.
The primary disadvantage is overhead. Significantly more administrative hours are needed to maintain two business entities. Dear Diary Coffee can invest in community services, accept donations, and even form a board of advisors without official non-profit status. We are most likely to form a non-profit after our revenue would cover the cost. This is another reason we really appreciate your donations.
Non profit Status
Dear Diary Coffee is currently an S-Corp / LLC owned by Amalia Litsa.
The easiest path to non-profit status would be to separate Dear Diary’s charitable arm into its own non-profit business entity. This new organization would have no owner, and would be controlled by a board of directors (Texas Business Organizations Code Chapter 22).
This has some key advantages:
Private donors could become members of the non-profit organization
Grey would have the help of a board of directors
Dear Diary Coffee could more easily quantify its charitable donations
Our programs would qualify for public grants
Our business structure would better match our relationship to the community
Thank you for supporting our ongoing effort to preserve
Austin’s creative culture
Our Values
Creativity
In many ways, creativity is an outcome of emotional safety. Connecting with others over creative activity is such a special phenomenon given so many people find their creative safe space in solitude. We try our best to create safety for our staff, customers, vendors, and community by practicing kindness and openness, and by seeking diversity.
Trust
Barista work is so team-oriented, it’s impossible to enjoy the job without trust. As such, our team is tiny, but highly collaborative. We exercise a lot of transparency, from day-to-day FYIs to quarterly financial status updates. Our trust comes from a place of mutual respect, and the distribution of leadership within our team is a reflection of that. The transparency required of non-profits would be a natural and easy extension what we already do.
Community
We are employed by our neighbors. 100% of our revenue comes from simple people, most of whom live within walking distance of us. Because we are so accessible, we are far more likely to respond to the needs of not just our customers, but everyone who comes into contact with us. Relationship-building is almost too easy given our shared experience of living and working in Austin.