Our last event had 164 people ranging from the 20s to 60s in age. Around 20% were looking for primary partners, 30% were open to it, and the rest were looking for something else. 70% identify as kinky, one way or the other. The words people used to help fine-tune their matches reflect the great range we had at the event. People wanted to connect on fiber-arts, fire-spinning, or scuba-diving. People were democrats, conservatives, anti-fascists. We had film-buffs, ice-climbers, and salsa-dancers. Various forms of play were mentioned in all sorts of flavors. Adjectives abounded: silly, sober, smart-ass. There were nearly a thousand different tags used.

Not only are our events about connecting people to people, but they are also about connecting people to nonprofits that we want to support in our communities. We invite our selected organizations to our events to table and do outreach, and then give any profits to these organizations, partially divided up by how daters “vote.” So far we have focused on nonprofits engaged in anti-racist work and who ideally also connect to our wider non-monogamous communities.

At our last event we raised $1085 for four distinct organizations that we think are doing excellent work. This was partially supported by the Armory in Somerville, who gave us a discount on the venue to support our fundraising efforts.  We encourage all to continue to track what our sponsored organizations are up to, and to continue to support them (with money or time) as best you can. The four organizations for this round are:

The Network/la Red (http://tnlr.org)
Donate here: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/541728/

Community Change, Inc. (http://www.communitychangeinc.org/)
Donate here: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/119038?code=CCI+General

The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health (http://www.thecsph.org/)
Donate here: http://www.thecsph.org/donate/
(You can tag their donations to various anti-racist programs they are working on, if you like.)

The Alternatives to Violence Project (Mass) (https://avpma.org/)
Donate here: https://avpma.org/donate/