With more than fifty years of leadership sustaining this organization, its publications, gatherings, and community, the current DSA Board is thrilled to be launching the Leadership Circle Giving Society in 2024. In 2024, we kick off this major gifts program to take up the essential work of diversifying DSA income in support of below-cost membership rates that minimize financial barriers to membership for an increasingly contingent community (in explicit alignment with DSA’s mission and values).

We are thrilled to share that a few important members of our community have already joined DSA’s 2024 Leadership Circle as Charter Members, through 2023 & 2024 gifts that exceeded $250.

Leadership Circle funds are unrestricted and support DSA general operations, including compensation (administrative & editorial), costs of publications, digital infrastructures (website, e-commerce for registration, abstract submission portal, mobile app/conference program), additional organizational costs (insurance, accounting, etc.), and more. DSA is working towards a reciprocal community of care, wherein the members with secure institutional affiliation and/or personal access to capital will help subsidize organizational accessibility and continued participation for members who are contingent workers, independent scholars/artists, and graduate students without funding.  As our field is increasingly populated by the critical contingencies of academic labor, DSA’s Leadership Circle asks that past Board members, past Editors, past Editorial Board members, and past senior members of the dance studies discipline join in this effort.  The Leadership Circle is an opportunity to support the Dance Studies Association’s organizational health and longevity, as current Boards continue pressing toward anti-racist action, equity in access, diversity in leadership, and reciprocity in radical care. 

In summer 2023, DSA’s Treasurer, President, and Executive Director undertook significant work to move DSA’s investment funds in explicit alignment with stated values and with the goal of endowment building.  This project includes a focus on diversified income streams, development programs (like this one), and endowment building to converge and help DSA navigate the ongoing financial and structural changes to academic publishing, service models, access and internationalization, and more.  This is all to say that we are moving with critical care to ensure that DSA acts tactically within the parameters of nonprofit possibility.   

We look forward to welcoming Leadership Circle members during a special reception at the 2024 conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and plan to host this reception annually at subsequent conferences.  All those who join this effort throughout 2024 will be charter members of DSA’s Leadership Circle and listed as such in perpetuity (unless requesting anonymity).  Thank you for helping us build a culture of reciprocal giving throughout this growing community. 

Please reach out with questions or concerns to DSA's Executive Director, [email protected]