In case you missed it, we posted a GoFundMe campaign a while back to get funding to bulk purchase masks for the store so we can continue our masking requirements. Thanks to the generous support from everyone we were able to raise a little over $1,000, several hundred dollars above our goal of $800 (which would allow us to bulk buy enough masks to last past Free Comic Book Day in May 2025). We now have enough masks in the store to last until the end of 2024 and reserve funds to purchase more masks for 2025! In addition, we will manage to achieve it with less money than we budgeted for; thanks to folks sharing their knowledge on mask vendors we were able to get masks for much less than our expected $0.10 per mask cost!
(If you want more info on numbers and stuff, there’s more detail down below. But first…)
Non-Verbal Communication at Outsider
We now have a new tool for when you don’t want to / cannot be verbal but still want to shop at Outsider! Just grab the clipboard to the left of the entrance. Check the appropriate boxes and hand it to us if you want a recommendation, or if you want to pre-answer checkout questions like “do you want a bag?” before you come to the register. Also great for anxiety! The sheet is included below if you want to print one out before coming.
Want to use it at your bookstore? Library? We’re putting this up with a Creative Commons license (attribution and share alike) so feel free to take and modify! We can also share high-res PDFs or the Canva project; just e-mail us and let us know.
More GoFundMe Numbers / Accountability
Okay so, numbers!
The total amount that we got was $1095.18. As of today, we spent $191 to make several test orders with vendors and purchase a trash can for used mask disposal. We had about 1500 masks when we made the orders and the test orders came out to about 2850 masks; at this point we should have enough masks for the rest of 2024.
At this point, including the money already spent on masks, I’m budgeting $690 on future mask purchases for 2025. That should give us enough masks until June 2025 plus a buffer of $200 for additional masks (in case something good happens and we have tons more customers!) or if prices raise before we have the room to order more masks.
With the vendors we have right now our per mask cost is around 5 to 7 cents, which is much better than to 10 to 15 cents we were aiming for when we started the GFM. The downsides are that the way these are packaged makes them much harder to store in bulk (so we can only store around 4000 masks at once) and that the quantity is inconsistent (empty boxes have gotten in the mix meaning we were shorted 15% of masks from one vendor; but the price is still very good). As a bonus, we were able to get KN95 masks for this price and we can now offer a mix of surgical and KN95 masks for shoppers.
As promised on the GFM page, we are going to be using any money we’re not spending on masks (in this case, $405) on books to donate to Books to Prisoners Seattle. We have a stack of books totaling $406.94 on the counter right now that we’ll be paying for using that excess money and donating as soon as Books to Prisoners finishes moving.
Thank you to everyone who shared and supported. Thanks especially to Texan Reverend (admin of the the Mastodon server we’re on) and Mask Bloc Seattle for providing us with information, resources, and contact for vendors. If you haven’t checked it out yet, Mask Bloc Seattle has a detailed mask purchasing guide and also provide masks free of charge to Seattle area folks.