Help PushPull stay afloat and get out of debt

Maxx Follis-Goodkind is organizing this fundraiser.

Donation protected

This is Maxx Follis-Goodkind, the Founder & Director of Push/Pull.

For over a decade, Push/Pull has striven to support Seattle's amazing creative community by creating space for them to show and sell their work, share resources, teach classes, and more. We've curated many dozens of gallery shows, represented the work of hundreds of artists, taught many cohorts of teens for free, and helped connect artists in all points of their careers to patrons, peers, friends, and fans.

We're now in our 11th year of business, and we could use your help.

In 2021, we moved and expanded into the old Dakota Art Supply space. It was an opportunity to save an art supply resource in our neighbourhood, but also a chance to save our own business, which had become unsustainable because of the pandemic. Unfortunately, we had very little funds with which to start this new chapter for Push/Pull, and took on a lot of debt in order to do so.

The last few years in our new space have been amazing in many ways, but it's also been a learning experience and a struggle.

Along with the pandemic, taking on the art supply business has required us to change and adapt many processes. (Balancing the supply and demand realities of stocking thousands of retail products is very complicated!) We're finally feeling more confident in those processes, and we know our business is sustainable long-term -- but a slow couple of months has meant the cost of our debt has been catching up with us.

We urgently need funds to help us pay off debts and get on more stable footing as we prepare for a busy summer. Essentially, we're doing what we should have done when we committed to our expansion, but it was difficult to ask for money in those deeply uncertain days of the pandemic.

It's still hard to ask for help, but we know taking on more debt (with current interest rates!) would mean more trouble in the longterm. We don't want to follow the string of recent local business closures, so we're turning to you, our beloved community, for help.

$10,000 gets us out of the current emergency, but $50,000 would get us out of debt entirely. We're hopeful that this one-time fundraising will get us to where we need to be to be able to serve our community for another decade, and more!

Aside from donating, you can also help by signing up for classes; buying gift cards, products, art ; sharing our posts on social media ; and just generally spreading the word!

Thanks so much for your time, consideration, and continued support.

Maxx and the Push/Pull Team.