YG2D

If you’d rather not use GoFundMe or can’t, here are a couple other ways to contribute to this fundraiser. You can send payment to...

PAYPAL: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=U3SXBEUX79EW2

OR

Venmo: https://account.venmo.com/u/YG2D_nonprofit

OR

You can mail a check Payable to "YG2D" to:

YG2D

PO Box 720040

SF, CA 94172

And if you need us to accept another form of payment, just email us!

NOTE: If you contribute with any of these other options, we’ll happily account for your contribution by adding it for you to our total raised here on GoFundMe. Just let us know if you’d rather remain anonymous!

Help us continue the success of our fundraiser preparing us for a strong 2026 with:

—> Any $$$ amount at all!

—> Contributions matched by your employers!

—> Foundation & Trust Donations

—> Grants

—> Shares of our fundraiser with community you know who would care about the work we do!

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If you made it to this fundraiser and are reading this, you have some sense for, compulsion towards, or likely a belief in, what our creatively conscious mortality nonprofit is up to in the world. So first of all, THANK YOU for taking the time to see what this fundraiser is all about. It's over a decade-long story in the making, but I think we can keep it to an effectively informative three minutes of reading time!

You’re Going to Die (YG2D) is a nonprofit bringing diverse communities creatively into the conversation of death and dying, inspiring life by unabashedly sourcing our shared mortality. Since last year’s community fundraiser, this mission has brought us to communities all over the world. Bolstered by your generous support, we’ve been able to help create spaces for creative catharsis and healing connection with communities inside multiple prisons, with groups of exonerated and freed people in California and Ohio, with cancer patients at UCSF, at the bedside of the dying through our hospice partnerships, with the public through our grief & gratitude open mics in San francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, and with community globally through our online writing workshops.

Keep reading to learn more about our growing programming and find out why we need more support from YOU, our community, than ever before!

ALIVE INSIDE PRISON PROGRAM

In addition to our ongoing work at San Quentin — facilitating weekly training for the Light Keepers, a peer support suicide prevention program, and monthly open mic & writing workshop programming — this year we were able to expand to two California prisons, providing recurring programming at RJD in San Diego, and CMC in San Luis Obispo, thanks to a new partnership with Arts in Corrections, a California Arts Council program.

Our Alive inside team was able to return to the Innocence Network Conference for the fourth year, offering open mic grief & healing space and writing workshops for wrongfully convicted individuals who are now exonerated or freed, their partners and loved ones, as well as Innocence Project legal teams, social workers, journalists and advocates to support them in their invaluable work and help them keep going.

CANCER PATIENT FACILIATION

We continue our work facilitating creative space for cancer patients, with workshops online and at the hospital bedside, offering a chance for healing in community through creative self-expression.

SONGS FOR LIFE HOSPICE PROGRAM - NOW IN SF & LA AREAS!!!

Our Songs for Life hospice program serves hospice and other end-of-life communities, wherein musicians meet with participants to play and create music inspired by their lives and experiences. The program is designed to help create meaning, connection, and offer a musical holding that has the power to remind us we are not alone. We are currently expanding this program to the Los Angeles area, training a new cohort of musicians in partnership with a local hospice organization.

PODCAST

We have just recently returned to a new season of our creatively conscious mortality podcast, kicking it off with an incredibly moving conversation with Francis Weller released just a few weeks ago. In past seasons we had the great honor of interviewing Naomi Shihab Nye, Ani DiFranco, Prentis Hemphill, and Andrea Gibson.

GRIEF RELEASE

We continue to provide a FREE weekly online Grief support group every Wednesday at 5pm Pacific time. This is a drop in space for folks to share about their grief and connect with others, supported by music and facilitated by experienced professionals.

ALL THE SHOWS AND WORKSHOPS

After 15 years of hosting our mortality-forward open mics in San Francisco and the SF Bay area, we finally branched out to a WHOLE NEW CITY! A little over a year ago we started our LA branch and have been offering open mic events regularly ever since. In SF we’ve continued to hold it down with our ongoing Grief and Gratitude open mics as well as some themed open mic events including “Your Planet is Going to Die” for climate grief, and “Losing my Religion” about the loss of leaving religious communities. And sometimes we do really big shows like hosting The Bengsons and Sonya Renee Taylor at the Freight and Salvage!

We continue to offer writing workshops both online and in person. Some of our themes this past year have been Family Estrangement, Death of a Parent, and our newest offering: Writing about grief with Literary Craft.

IN CONCLUSION! (WHY WE NEED YOUR HELP)

As you can see, we are doing A LOT. And we have invitations from more communities, prisons, and organizations who want to work with us. We need to sustain and grow our team to continue making all of this work possible. As our programs expand and our leadership team grows, we need more support from our community than ever before. We need your help raising at least $70k this year! Our generous community match program donors have already committed $15k to this fundraiser, so every contribution you make will be matched, up to $15k! For example, if you contribute $500 it will go twice as far toward our goal, adding a total of $1k to the campaign!

PLEASE CONTRIBUTE TODAY TO HELP US REACH OUR GOAL!

And thank you - we couldn't do this work without your support.

With So Much Love & Gratitude,

Ned Buskirk, Executive Director

Chelsea Coleman, Creative Director

Jordan Edelheit, Director of ALIVE INSIDE

Caitlin Jemma, Director of LA Programming and Song for Life

Nick Jaina, Podcast producer and designer

Charlotte Johnson, Volunteer Coordinator

& the ever-growing team of dedicated musicians and volunteers who make this work possible

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And thanks to over 30 organizations, foundations, & community members participating in our COMMUNITY MATCH PROGRAM!!! The deepest gratitude to our Community Match Contributors. They are:

The Mayerson Foundation • The Bryan Harvey Marathon Fund • The Schuft Family Trust • Sarah Rogers & Bob Hillman • Emma Peck • Diane Cheng • Tim Seelig & Bobby Jo Valentine • Nathan & Megan Walsh • Carol Dabrowiak • Lucia Sayre • The Nixon Family • Bob & Marcie Wright • Terri Hinton & Will Rogers • Jon Jackson

THANK YOU! WE LOVE YOU!