Next Steps

Earlier this month I shared in our newsletter and on Instagram, Bolt’s commitment to being an anti-racist business. Today, I want to share with you the concrete steps we’ve taken thus far and ask for some help with future steps.

• We’ve signed The Anti-Racism Small Business Pledge from Rachel Rodgers of Hello Seven. As part of this pledge, we will be publishing quarterly progress reports on the blog. You can see the Pledge here. Be sure to scroll down, and while you’re there, check out the Town Hall.

• We set up a monthly donation of $100/month for Don’t Shoot PDX.

• We donated $1050 to the Black Resilience Fund.

• We are moving forward with equity assessment, training, sustainability planning and community outreach with Portlander Lillian M. Green’s equity, diversity and inclusion consulting firm, North Star Forward.

We would like to make our space available to anti-racist groups and Black and PoC teachers when the store is able to fully reopen. Although we don’t know when that will be, we do want to put a call out to the community. Are you a BIPoC crafter or do you know a BIPoC crafter who would like to teach at Bolt? Please contact us! Are you organizing an anti-racism group and need a space to meet? Please contact us! While we may not have a space to share right now, you are invited to use our space when we reopen.

We are also working on making sure our spending supports Black businesses and businesses with an avowed anti-racist agenda when ever possible. To that end we are doing research and are in conversation with our vendors. If you are a Black-owned business or know of a Black-owned business we should be working with - independent pattern designer, textile designer, embroidery pattern designer, for example - we’d love to hear about them. While we are most certainly doing our own research, we always want to know what our customers are drawn to.

As always, thank you,
--Gina