As we navigate this fifth year of salons (we’ve now done more than 100 of them! Which means more than 600 talks!) we are looking at this very special thing we have here and how we can plan for a sustainable future, and we are excited to announce some new endeavors around these odd parts: the Odd Salon Membership, Salon Sponsorship, and Patreon Community. 

This project is dedicated to the discovery and diffusion of odd knowledge, to teaching the arts of storytelling for true tales, to the joys and terrors speaking live, amongst a real world community of curious minds in an increasingly digital age. We’ve bootstrapped and volunteered our way to here, but now, for the first time in our history, we are prioritizing the financial stability of this project because we want to plan a future of doing more, together.

We want to spread our wings and try some new things: Workshops for storycraft and public speaking, more training materials for speakers and independent researchers, opportunities to take up invitations to bring Odd Salon to new cities, more videos and ways to share our stories.

It will come as no surprise to you when we say that San Francisco is an insanely expensive city to try and do odd and independent things in, but we think it’s worth it

As of this March, we now fiscally sponsored: What does that mean? What that means is we are now a sort of part-time non-profit. The fabulous people at the InterCulture Foundation are lending us their status as a 501c3 charitable organization for the purposes of fundraising and seeking grants so that we can do more, together. So that means that we are able to offer some sweet tax deductible options to all of you, or to any organization that might be interested in supporting us.

If you like what you see here, and would like to support this project and help be a part of our future — please consider joining us as a member, as part of our Patreon community, or as a sponsor of a salon.

Can’t decide what’s right for you? ? Let us help: