Our Values

The Fiber Business Collective exists to create a healthy, resilient, and inclusive fiber arts industry. It’s our firm conviction that a critical element of this mission is creating lasting cultural change.

As a US-based business, we operate (and as individuals, have been conditioned) in a culture dominated by white supremacy, patriarchy, Christian hegemony, and other power structures and systems that prioritize the comfort, safety, and experiences of majority identities.

Inequity impacts all of us differently and people of marginalized identities disproportionately, especially when those minority identities intersect. Identities may include race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious group, body size, ability, country of origin, health, and wealth (among other things - this is a non-exhaustive list!). We also recognize that operating in a culture dominated by white supremacy impacts every one of us, and we all benefit when we seek to overcome it and change the culture.

As a membership organization, we also recognize that our responsibility and our impact extend beyond our own business operations. In addition to being committed to operating in alignment with our values, we are also committed to the urgent and important work of creating a more racially and socially-just community and industry.

Our commitment means being clear and vocal about our values, and putting those values into practice in concrete, tangible ways. It also maintains transparency and accountability! As part of our commitment, we’re sharing a selection of practices that support these values.

Our Differences are Valuable

Our community is more vibrant and impactful when we are members of a richly diverse group. Each of us brings unique perspectives, stories, and ways of being to this work, and the celebration and inclusion of those narratives and experiences are critical for our shared success.

Practices:

Create opportunities for community leadership, encouraging members to step into roles where their experiences, knowledge, and identities are recognized and celebrated as strengths.
Seek out employees, contractors, speakers, and other partners from marginalized backgrounds.
Seek and actively invite members from marginalized backgrounds by advertising for the FBC in spaces that serve marginalized business owners.
Provide resources that are accessible to different types of learners, including written, audio and video resources, live and asynchronous learning, and opportunities for small and large group conversations.
Look for opportunities to source professional services and other vendor relationships from diverse providers.
Recognize the value of non-growth related goals, such as personal sustainability, boundary setting, relationship building, and community and global impact. Provide opportunities to set goals and develop resources to help members meet these goals.
Highlight the achievements of diverse members of our industry through case studies in educational materials and workshops.

Everyone Deserves Safety to Be Themselves

Everyone deserves to feel safe to be themselves. That includes being safe from personal attacks, bigotry, microaggressions, cultural appropriation, and other forms of racism and other -isms.

Practices:

Moderate safe online spaces, assigning adequate staff to supervise and moderate our online spaces, and specifically addressing online spaces in our code of conduct.
Share our code of conduct with members during the onboarding process, publish it in our Member Guide, and email it to members annually.
Convey our commitment to DEIB (this document!) to the public and members, and invite conversation and feedback around the commitment.
When offering resources (such as blog posts, books, content creators), vet the source to ensure we are not directing traffic to somewhere readers will be hurt or encounter biased, bigoted, or stereotyped content.
When offering merchandise with sizes, only offer products that are available in a complete size range (xxs-5x).

As a Community, the Impact of Our Actions is Bigger Than the Sum of Their Parts

Each member of the FBC has their own audience, community, and sphere of influence. The conversations we platform, the opportunities we give members to put their values into action, and the practice we get here in our corner of the world has a ripple effect out into the greater world. This is a responsibility - and an opportunity.

Practices:

Platform and champion members engaged in cultural change by highlighting their work on our social platforms and in our member communications.
Our members have social power! That’s the power to promote, collaborate with, platform and celebrate diverse peers, customers, and partners. We bake opportunities to exercise this power into each of our monthly quests by encouraging them to reflect on their DEI values when they’re performing actions such as “recommend a resource,” “pitch a collaboration,” and “research what might delight your audience.”

There is No Success Without Collective Success

To thrive as individual entities in this industry, we need a thriving industry. Too often, power and recognition are granted only to those deemed appropriate by dominant culture. We see a different world, where the collective success of all of us is the key metric for success.

Practices:

Facilitate small group discussions designed to foster the kind of intimacy that drives sharing, collaboration, and investment in each other’s success.
Seek the input of coaches and members in developing training objectives and experiences.
Design gamified experiences that reward group effort instead of individual effort.
Teach collaboration hard skills and showcase collaborations as case studies.
Celebrate the success of our members and peers.
Encourage members to share their thoughts, ideas, feedback, and criticism by direct email or into a form. Members can share their feedback anonymously.

We Are All on a Learning Path

We are all on a journey, and to get to the next stage, we’re going to have to grow. None of us is a finished product, and that means offering each other room to learn, but it also means expecting ourselves to make mistakes.

Practices:

Model our own learning as facilitators, showcasing the way we’ve changed what we recommend and how we do things. Have you seen this blog post on why Anastasia takes back all those things she said about discounts?
Encourage experimentation! This means including outrageous prompts, asking you to generate more ideas so you can eliminate some, and relentlessly asking “How can you get more information about that?”
Leave the pitchforks at home. We stay focused on how we can learn from unfolding events, how we can incorporate public feedback into our own processes, and what actions we can take to create industry change.

You're Invited

This is a living document - we review it regularly, update it, and challenge it. Your questions, thoughts, and suggestions can be part of that process! To share your feedback, drop us a note here. Thanks for being part of our journey!

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