Experiments with Money at Youth Alliance

“Money itself isn’t the problem. Money itself isn’t bad or good. Money itself doesn’t have power or not have power. It is our interpretation of money, our interaction with it, where the real mischief is and where we find the real opportunity for self-discovery and personal transformation.”

― Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life

There are many dimensions to the work we do at Youth Alliance - immersive journeys with young people, community cultivation and alumni support work, leadership work with organisations. However, we perhaps do not share enough about internal experiments and practices that keep us centred and on the path of 'a world where each individual lives in harmony with oneself, others and nature'. 

This piece is about sharing one of our experiment with money. The first part shall describe the context and the 'why' for this practice. The second part shall be about the experiment, and the third would be its implications, possibilities and learnings. 

Context of prevailing mindsets around money

Typically money fosters scarcity, accumulation and insecurity. It is because of the very design of the debt-based money system we have which has scarcity built into it. And also cultural reasons that draw on the survival mind. The consumerist society that we have become keeps us locked in insecurity of not having enough and pursuing money as a means to get more. Almost an end in itself. 

The question is how does an organisation of under 10 paid employees cultivate its relationship with money to fosters trust, awareness of needs and sufficiency.  One of the ways we responded to this question was to make the salary decision commons. We began to come together periodically since April 2019 to have a conversation driven towards the decision but not limited to it. It began to bring forth conditionings that all of us have inherited about money.

A big realisation has been that while money is such important part of our culture, yet conversations about it happen in the shadows. And hence lies a vast field of unexamined assumptions that inconspicuously determine our relationship with money and how we design our life around it.

Context of Organisation's History

From the beginning of YA's existence, we would always hear Prakhar say that money can never hinder the work we intend to do. And we all have seen it manifest in various ways in the last decade. Sometimes we would get an unexpected gift from someone just when our wells would be drying up, sometimes we all sailed through without drawing compensation for a month or two at a stretch. We have also been blessed with various other forms of capital - time that mentors give us, furniture, alumni contributing their time etc. These experiences helped create a solid foundation to look at money through the lens of abundance.

Deepening this understanding and our relationship with money, we began to build the practice of having open salary conversations, here's more about it.

The experiment

The team would get together to have an open salary and appraisal conversation. As opposed to an authority figure deciding the salaries and appraisals for everyone or a pre-set performance management structure determining it -  we collectively decided to hold these conversations with trust and authenticity.

Each person shared what they received currently and what their expectation of the next year’s compensation was based on their self assessment of work, needs for themselves and family and also keeping their relationship with money alive. Then everyone would share what the other members of the organisation would receive from their point of view. A part of it happens in the conversation and a part by adding comments on the excel sheet. Sometimes a member would push the other to receive an amount more than s/he proposed pressing to build a small savings fund / or a learning fund for her/himself. This open conversation created a deeper level of transparency, collective decision making for all of us.

This year, we supported with parameters that would enable each person to make a proposal for themselves and others:

• Experience in the organisation
• Skills/Gifts I continue to nurture YA with
• Role in the org.
• Commitment to org.
• Needs: What are my present and anticipated needs, based on the lifestyle I want to live?
• Gender: Separating compensation from gender dynamics. We realised women may need to draw more, since men tend to benefit from family wealth.
• Sustainability: Am I able to save enough for my future financial security/stability/ uncertainties?

The final decision rested with the individual having heard everyone and oneself. 

Covid Response and 2020 Salary Conversations - With economic slow down and so many people loosing their earnings, it gave us yet another opportunity to deepen our practice around multiple forms of capital. We all came together to reassess our needs and expenses given that most of us had no travel, no eating out, no swimming lessons or daily commute. Each person shared what they wanted to receive as compensation and collectively we all covered for each other. Like if one-two people were okay to draw less, it supported others to continue drawing the full amount. With open conversations, trust, believe in abundance, we all supported each other yet adapting to the push of the circumstances.

Significance, Implications and Possibilities

I am remembering Gandhiji's quote here - "Whatever you do in life will be insignificant but it is very important that you do it". Here's what I see emerging from this experiment:

• Deepening of our practice of community: The first emergence is deepening of relationships with another dimension of our co-existence brought to light. The fears, the insecurities, the judgements related to money - brought forward to be engaged together. The amount isn't as important as much as the process of talking about it. Perhaps in our little way, we are seeking to re-embed the economy in the larger container of community.

• Collective Ownership of the organisation: This in turn builds co-ownership by removing the barriers from it. The one in discussion here being money and conversations about it. When one gets a say in each other's compensation - it is empowering and responsibility inducing. The pressure of sustaining the organisation and allocating resources is shared further creating collective ownership.

• Inner work by examining conditionings: Like we said earlier, so much about money is in the shadows. This simple process support us to encounter conditionings related to money and cultivate a life where we can transcend the barriers that dominant material culture places on us through money. I don't think we have reached a place yet to have a liberating relationship with money - we are in the process of doing the 'tapas' - one conversation at a time.

• Medium of Family and Market: All of us exist in the medium of family and market that's almost always is calculating an individuals' worth based on money s/he earns. By talking about it - it would enable us to walk this path of service over a long period of time and respond with strength and compassion to the pressures exerted from family and the market.

By sharing this, we invite you 

• To see the possibility that such processes and practices exist in the organisations
• To create a similar process in your organisation / work place if your context allows
• To share with us a similar or different experiment, you are doing with money

Leaving you with the question: How do we cultivate a relationship with money that fosters trust, abundance, awareness of needs and sufficiency? 

At another time, we hope to share about our other experiments with money and otherwise.