Rahim Ladha on a gigantic red tricycle in front of the Walter Carsen Centre/National Ballet of Canada (Photo: Sabrina Ayton)
As part of his mission to make sure artists are financially supported, Toronto-based fundraising consultant Rahim Ladha has taken it upon himself to fund and award three new cash prizes for underrepresented writers in Canada, ranging from poets who are BIPOC to non-binary illustrators working in Science Fiction & Fantasy. In this month's episode, we talk to Rahim about his intentions for the monthly/quarterly awards, how it's going so far, and his plans for growing the program.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
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Full details on the Spark, Nova, and Echo awards, including eligibility and how to get in touch with Rahim, can be found at shootforthemoon.art. The 'racism in CanLit' article that Rahim mentions in the episode can be found at yilinwang.com/racism-in-canlit.
Transcript
Zalina: Welcome to the "BookNet Canada Podcast." I'm your host Zalina Alvi, and this month we have fundraising consultant Rahim Ladha joining us for a conversation about his new literary awards for underrepresented writers in Canada. You may have heard about his "Shoot-For-The-Moon" program on CBC Books or Quill and Quire over the last few weeks. If you have, the part where he's currently fundraising and awarding the cash prizes himself, at least for the time being, probably stood up to you.
It's definitely an interesting and passionate project that caught our eye. And we're excited to have Rahim on the podcast to tell us all about it. You could find a link to the Shoot-For-The-Moon website, which has full details and all the awards and the eligibility in the episode notes. Now, here's what Rahim had to tell us about the program, why he started it and why it's needed and the CanLit community.
Rahim: Well, I started the organization about a year ago around this time. And for me, one of the things I wanted to do was just help support artists. I had an extensive background in fundraising, really at the grassroots face-to-face kind of level, so we're talking about somebody going door to door, you know, like in the city of Toronto. So, I've seen literally every street in the city three times over.
Zalina: Wow.
Rahim: So, I can tell you things. And just from the fact that when you have that much kind of interaction with people, you just naturally get good at it, you know. If you really love doing it, which I did. I said did and I'm still doing it but in terms of the door-to-door kind of work. And you just get this natural sort of, I would say just your empathy starts evolving because you hear a lot of different stories of what people are going through. At the time, I was fundraising on behalf of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health for their reconstruction.
And so, when you start talking about these things, it starts bringing out your other passions as well because you start caring a lot more when you're doing that kind of work. And, you know, I was over at the National Ballet of Canada and I was just you know, an entry-level rep, exactly the music. I think it is. I was a minimum wage telesales representative, four years ago, and part of that is fundraising. And, you know, I always said if I ever was doing any fundraising for dance, I would just...you know, because that's my background. And I ended up raising something like about $200,000 over a couple of years just by calling people. And we're talking about, you know...You remember when you see Glengarry Glen Ross? It's like the bad leads. I was calling the bad leads a lot of the time. And it's like some guy's gone to Sleeping Beauty six years ago and suddenly he's a member of the Patron's Council and he's like, "How do you do that?"
And one of the things is that there was a commission aspect to these things, and I thought, "You know, what?" And this is where really a lot of the giving started. I thought to myself, "I don't feel right about taking commission on any kind of fundraising, so I'm just going to give it back to the company." So, I became a member of their Patrons Council, one of their, you know, sort of "elite" kind of donors and that caused a stir in HR because they were like," Why is he giving his money? What's going on?" And I just simply said, "Listen, this is my way. I feel like giving back." And from that point on, I was really starting to focus on how could I give better to a lot of artists in general?
So, I started Shoot-For-The-Moon. I was doing fundraising, but also just supporting a lot of proceeds for choreographers. Major passion of mine is to have artists have space and time to work. That's what I had as an artist. You know, I was at York University for four years, but it wasn't really going. I was more like hanging out in classes, working at the radio station, which happened to be in Vanier College at the time, which had to be adjacent to a dance studio, which I would go into every evening. Four years in, I would have people stop me and go, "When are you graduating?" I'd just be snickering at it.
So, what I had was space and time. So, I figured, "You know what, this is something good to give to other people." And then November rolled around and I had a big fundraising campaign to work on at that time, and I got sick. And I got really sick. And then I found out really bad news. And so when that happened, there were projects that I wanted to help support, but I couldn't because I had a lot of family situations to take care of. But by doing so, I ended up making a few artists mad. You know, when you talk to somebody and go, "Hey, listen, we should talk about funding." And then all of a sudden, you're like, "I can't actually do it right now." Then they tend to get a little bit upset.
It was probably, I would say, the worst time of my life, and I've been through a lot. I have a friend at the National Ballet of Canada, and I was getting to know her mother, of all things. You know, when you're just writing over Facebook, you know, that kind of situation? Mom's totally awesome, and she was coming into town for a performance, and she was, "Well, I wanna see you, I want to meet you." And she ended up bringing her husband. So, it's Gina and Val and me and we were sitting in Boxcar Social, and it's March and I'm in the east end and it's a hard time because I wanted to do so much good work, and I had done so much good work. I was just like, "Wow, there's so much good. I want to help, but I feel so bad about helping right now." Because I felt like I had been a little bit crushed out of will by circumstances.
And then Gina and Val and I sat in there, and Val relayed a story to me about whatever he walked by somebody who's homeless, he'd stop. And he would be like, "What's your name?" And he talked to the person. And that had...you know when you just have the light bulb goes off and everything else? I thought about that experience of just going, "How are you feeling?" Because it's a question people don't necessarily ask. And when Val was telling me about how he would keep doing this, how he'd stop people who were struggling, see how they were doing and I thought, "You know what, you have so much compassion in your heart. I mean, your name is Rahim, that's basically the meaning of that. Your parents must have given you that for a reason. And there's so many people to help and you have the capability of doing it and here you are feeling sorry for yourself, first of all." That beautiful gift of wanting to help others, I sort of had let it die off or die down, you know. I had it beaten down really bad and I was just like, "You know what? You're gonna stop."
It was literally like a switch. So, you're just going to give to everybody you come across who needs help, which was quite a fascinating experience because there are a lot of people in this town who need help. So, from there, that's when my brain just started going, "Okay. Pick yourself up. What are you gonna do? What are you good at? Fundraising. Okay. Start doing consulting work again. Start going to old contacts, seeing if they need help. You have a house, it's an asset now, leverage it. Turn it into something that you could actually give back to people."
I don't have a family, I'm not attached to...you know, I don't have a partner, I don't have kids. So, I was just like, "Okay. Well, you've got investments and things like that all tied up, are you really going to take it with you, or are you just going to just do something with it?" And I decided, "Let's do something with it." So, mix it all together, I'm like financially, suddenly everything is pretty good, suddenly I'm working, suddenly I'm doing a lot of consulting work and I'm like, "Okay. What am I gonna do with this? How do I start Shoot-For-The-Moon again?"
And [inaudible 00:07:21.372], posed for a racism campaign and I'm sure you've seen it, of course, as well. And, first of all, I was horrified just in terms of, you know, because you know privilege exists, you know you'll run into it in your career every day, no matter what kind of professional you are. And it's so frustrating. I've had my fair share of it where opportunities have been denied for one reason or another, people can extrapolate from that. And I looked at that, and I was mad, first of all. That was my first reaction was like genuine anger. And then I thought, "You know what, you have the opportunity to do something about that. So, what is that?"
And I literally just start taking advice from people. Friends versus looking at the Twitter hashtag, and I was looking at everything and I was just like, "Why is there not more money?" Just, you know, whether it's an award or just grants for process, you know, things like that. A process was a very important thing for me in terms of dance-wise, so I was thinking, "Okay. You know, why don't we treat the time that a writer has, even if they're just sitting around staring at a blank page," which is going to happen a lot. Why don't we treat that as valuable time to at least know you're supported in one way or another?
So, I figured, "Okay. Budget out for three years." That was my first reaction. I was like, "Budget out for three years. How much money can you either have or will have? Like, look at the numbers." And then when I saw what was doable just in terms of doing one award, I thought, "Okay. Let's do it." I just announced it, and you know what? When I announced it I looked at the numbers we got and I'm like, "Well, we kinda have room for another and there's..."
Zalina: Sorry, which one was the first one?
Rahim: That was Spark. So, that was for queer, trans, two-spirited, Black, Indigenous, persons of colour. Literally, the dialogue was "$1,000 a month seems good." That was literally the dialogue. And I was sitting down going, "What should we give?" And I had no conception of what the other awards were. I didn't even know what the Giller Prize was giving out. You know, I mean, I was a really bad writer when I was a kid. So, even in my adult life when I tried to be a writer, no, you don't want to see the archives.
But I was paying enough attention to know that it felt like that at least could be a start. And I felt almost apologetic that it was only that. So, I looked at things a little bit more. And just off of the #racismCanLit, I was looking at just sort of the branches on the tree in terms of like, what else is needed, and then I saw...Okay. Well, listen, accessing disability. Someone who has disabilities, you know, we have a list. [inaudible 00:10:13.759] It was so frustrating to see that people weren't doing more and I was in a mood where I'm like, "Okay. I guess I'll have to do it myself." So, once I saw that I thought, "Let's put up Echo." And literally, these names, by the way, if you want to know the origin of the names of Spark, Echo, Nova, they're what popped into my head. The first thing that pops into my head. There's no sort of...
Zalina: [00:10:36.982]All right.
Rahim: Yeah. I was like, "That sounds right. Let's do that." There's still Spark, makes sense. Echo actually makes sense to me for my own personal reasons, and so does Nova, even though Nova in its own meaning. When you actually look at the meaning I'm like, "Well, let's just alter the meaning." And for me, I was just like... I kept looking at the budget and I've been working as a fundraising consultant, and work has been going really well.
So, the more that work goes well, I was just like, "Okay. We've got room for more, let's build more." And the fascinating thing is, unlike what happened with Shoot-For-The-Moon last year where the medical circumstances came and I was thrown for a loop. This time at least the resources were there, even though the medical circumstances came up again. I was like, "Okay. We're taken care of at least." You know, three years are budgeted for, it's tucked away, I don't have to stress, worry, none of that.
So, now I have time to figure out how to build it up, which is a key sort of next step, which I'm sure is part of the question in terms of what the next step is. But now I've got that time and opportunity to really build things up and that means a lot of different things, which I'm still trying to figure out what. I know part of that is going to nonprofit status, continuing to find ways to fund the prizes, but turning them over to other people because frankly, I won't be around in a few years to manage it, or I won't be in a capacity where I'll feel comfortable with that. And also as well, you know, it's like you wanna be the spark for something, but this should belong to other people. I feel odd even being in a position of judgment where I'm the one who's determining who gets these awards. I know it's my money and maybe I shouldn't feel bad about that, but I do.
Zalina: How ideally would you like to see them judged and awarded?
Rahim: I think that's part of wanting community input as well. Because it's one thing to say, "Okay. Well, I can turn it over to three or four different people." But I'd also like that to be a rotating group of people. I'd like as many people as possible involved. One of the problems that we do encounter is...I mean, privilege can come in many different ways. Gatekeepers can come in many different disguises. You wanna make sure that you have as many people, for me, at least, I wanna have as many people at the table making decisions as possible.
When I was writing emails for the first Spark Awards, and I was writing people back, I felt so apologetic because the work was so good. And my natural instinct because I had the budget for it was to say, "Okay. How would you feel about a small monthly donation just to..." I mean, if I see really incredible work, I wanna support it. And one of the things you run into is, you know, I run into it with the National Ballet of Canada is when you're giving thousands of dollars to an organization, how much of it do the artists see? For me, it was also about creating an organization where it could go directly to the artists.
Zalina: Can you tell me a little bit about how the reception has been from the CanLit community?
Rahim: Yeah.
Zalina: Especially since you just wrapped up your first month.
Rahim: That's correct.
Zalina: Yeah. So, what were the submissions like, how did the winners feel? Tell me all about the reception you were getting.
Rahim: Yeah. One of the fascinating things, I've been waiting to publish the first award and the third award, and both of the writers asked me for more help because they're new to publishing, they haven't really had anything published before. That was one of the exciting things, seeing a lot of people who've never been published submitting their work. I've loved that. And for me, I was just like, "Okay. How about I help you build a website and you can showcase your own work?" Which is literally, after we talk, what I'm gonna go do. Because I want their submissions up. I want people to read their work.
And we already have Lindsay's piece up, Lindsay Wong who came in second for Spark Award. And Echo has had a longer submission period. The quality of the work is incredible for this first month. I'm gonna have a really hard time actually only giving three awards. I'm not even kidding right now. I'm seriously thinking...and this is one of the things, admittedly, that is kind of fun about having control of this. You can bend the rules to people, which sounds horrible in one sense because it's not about bending the rules for any negative thing, but it's like we can give more.
Zalina: I don't know if anyone would complain.
Rahim: I don't think people will complain if you're doing nice things, right? I was looking at submissions and the reception from people, it's interesting when you're communicating with people just through email. People are happy that they actually have something to submit to. I think, also the fact that it's ongoing, it's continual, you have opportunities that if you do win an award, you're still eligible for another one within a calendar year, that we have three different ones that you could go to. And I've even had a conversation with people where it's like, "What should I submit to you?" I'm like, "Well, you can submit to all of them. Because you know what? People do qualify for all of them."
You know, it is really fun to see people actually excited. And again, it's fun to send interacting transfers of money to a writer who's struggling. It's like a really cool kind of thing to just be able to do. So, reception's been positive. I think there was one negative comment I saw online. I wish I had framed it or something because it's pretty hard to be negative. But again, I don't want it to continue in this fashion just because I really do wanna turn it over to people who are more qualified. To be honest. I'm not an editor. I've thought about, in fact, should I go ahead and hire people to actually oversee this right now while we're becoming a nonprofit? Because it's gonna take a little bit of time, but the process of incorporation is underway. So, I mean, things are great now, but I don't want to do anything to make things not so great. So, you know, I wanna get out of the way as quick as possible.
Zalina: Build on the momentum.
Rahim: Build on the momentum as well, but also just the micro-investment in writers. I really wanna explore that a little bit more where, even though it's small monthly donations, they add up to more than the actual prize amounts. I think just knowing that you have a little bit of ongoing funds coming in, whether it's through their Paypal or their fundraising page, or just simply emailing people money.
And then again, if somebody needs help and they come to me in an emergency, which a lot of the fundraising work that I do is usually emergency based where a grant didn't come through, or, "Oh, we're $100,00 short." It's like, "Okay. Let's get you 100 grand in...what do you need? Like a couple of weeks? Okay. Let's go get it." But my enthusiasm for this is so overwhelming at this point that after the mistakes I've made, I don't wanna make any more. I am in total, "What do you think" mode. The input that other people offer, I take very seriously. And if it sounds sound, I'm not gonna have an ego about it. If I make a bad decision, okay, let's correct it. Or if I'm thinking about something and people say, "That's a bad idea." I'm like, "Okay." What does the CanLit community want is really my sort of focus now in terms of what can we do next because I don't want to let things stagnate, we're just an award, and okay, it's another one, and it's another one. It still seems like it's not enough.
Zalina: So, what things are you doing to get the word out? I know that you've been in the media a little bit talking about it.
Rahim: Yeah. It's been a little bit challenging because I've been trying to think what the next step is. Because you could send out press releases and people can be interested, but the news cycle is such that, you know, things disappear rather quickly. So, in all honesty, I'm still trying to figure it out. Like, what to do next.
Zalina: I'm sure a lot of writers saw it for the first time. I'm sure they bookmarked that.
Rahim: Yeah. I...
Zalina: Probably for a while.
Rahim: It was funny because I put a call, I was just like, "I have no Spark entries coming in right now." And literally, there was a period of seven days where I had no entries for... And I thought about setting a deadline and then more interest started coming in, and I'll put the word out again, and everything. And even if only 100 people submit, which is still a lot of people, and that's a lot of reading. And I read everybody's piece throughout the period. So, maybe I'm not necessarily seeing something the first week I read something, but maybe the second week I do. I'm gonna give everybody's work as much of a chance as possible.
Zalina: I really hope people hear about this and writers do work on this. And I do wonder has anyone said, "I don't actually believe. This sounds too good to be true. I don't believe that you're actually out there giving out this...I wanna see the details and receipts."
Rahim: Yeah. I've actually told people, I said, "Listen, if you want to actually come on over, or if you want me to mail you stuff..." And I think that's one of the reasons for switching over the nonprofit status as well. It's just because you want that full transparency at this point, or at least I do. Because I don't even want to deal with those questions. You know, it's one of those things where it's such a drag. And again, I'm just excited about the fact that people are excited because when I see that I'm like, "Okay. What more work can I actually do?"
There's still ways to get better and I've got to figure out what those are, and I'm gonna need help doing that. And I think that's one of the things, you know, when I start going into nonprofit status, when we start switching, I really envision just having the money there and working on the fundraising end of it to keep it going after three years. But I'm pretty content with not being the decision-maker. We needed somebody to start something. You know, it was really crucial that we need somebody to start something and it just ended up being me. And for me, I feel more privileged and honoured to be in a position to give at this point. But yeah, if you wanna see the receipts, come on. Just email me and I'll assist you with that. But yeah.
Zalina: Well, definitely I'll make sure to include lots of contact information, I mean, your website and everything in the episode notes. So, anyone who wants to get involved or submit, or just send you questions.
Rahim: I encourage as many questions as possible. It's going to be quite interesting this upcoming month because we'll announce the...on August 15th for the first time we'll have the Echo winners and the Spark winners. So, that's gonna exciting because I already know from the entries, just looking at the entries I'm like, "That's gonna be a good day to read. That's gonna be a really good day to read.
Zalina: All right. Well, thank you so much for telling us all about your project, and best of luck to you.
Rahim: Yeah. Thank you very much.
Zalina: Thanks to Rahim for joining me on this month's podcast. To find out more about Shoot-For-The-Moon, visit shootforthemoon, all one word .art, A-R-T. Thanks also to the financial support, to the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for this project. And of course, thanks to you for listening.
