Donation Class Blues

There's this not so great thing about teaching yoga. A sticky little underbelly of the industry that can leave a sour taste in teachers mouths. Donation Classes. Sit with it for a moment. It sounds nice at first. It feels like you're doing a good thing. More often than not you're raising money for a charity or a local cause. You feel good about giving back. Unfortunately... some studios are not offering to pay their teachers for teaching these classes. And ultimately using the donation classes as promotion for their studios. To put it plainly, expecting free labor.

Freshly back from my 7-week trip to Europe. Itching to get back into the studio and share my knowledge. My intention when I returned home was to get on as many sub-lists in the area as I could. This led to some interesting discoveries.

My little slice of home is no exception to quirky attitudes and interesting business practices. Oklahoma is actually a state where a handshake is still accepted as a binding contract. This cowboy/ pony-up attitude can lead to some fierce loyalty and some "unintended" exploitation of teachers and community members.

As I started reaching out to studios this phrase kept bubbling up to the surface like a backed up garbage disposal. Donation Class. Each studio had a different approach some perfect, splendid, wins all around. An example to emulate: studio offeres a donation class-- typically the newest teachers in the community will teach. This allows for new teachers to sharpen their skills and ask for feed back. A new teacher is then compensated by the studio for their work and all the money donated to the cause is then given to the charity. Win for the new teacher. Win for the studio. Win for the community. Live it, love it.

Then I stumbled into a different studio. I approached about joining their sub-list. Being a 500hr RYT I could understand needing an interview to check personality and vibes. I was then told that to get on the sub-list I would need to teach a donation class— for free, in the next few weeks… as my audition??? As I was not a fresh out of training teacher, I was a bit surprised.

This was a giant red flag for me. Typically, an audition to teach would be no more than 20 minutes long. In larger cities you may even have an audition with multiple teachers. However, 20 minutes to prove your ability to teach is not the same as teaching a full class.

This didn't sit right with me. I responded, saying that I was “fine to offer a private audition”. The Studio manager responded saying "it's the standard" to teach a donation as your audition.****Sigh. But she "could also have me sub a class and call it good". We settled that I would sub a class. Then I asked ifthere would be anyone there to observe. This was supposed to be my audition right? Wrong. No one would be there. *** blows raspberry. Ultimately, the studio wanted a free class but wasn't able to recieve that from an experienced teacher. Hopefully they’ve since grown.

Studios are no exception to poor business practices. I find that we often see teachers getting taken advantage of -- especially women.( If your curious about learning more about female financial literacy check out the financial feminist podcast Her First 100k ). One thing Tori has taught me that I constantly circle back to is how women will often do more work for less. This can be due to the societal conditioning for women to sacrifice, to be charitable and giving to their communities above their own needs.

While those are all wonderful traits they don't mix well with the competitive nature of being a business-minded person. This studio asking me to teach for free was doing so because it benefits the studio to not have to pay a teacher. As women, we have to constantly balance between being kind compassionate and caring and realizing when we are being taken advantage of.

This topic of Donation Classes can also trickle into free classes. All kinds of classes but most commonly ones that are offered "in the park" typically to promote studios. This is something that also impacts yogis and yoginis around the world. A Polish peer in my Yoga Therapy training became quite passionate when it came to the topic of free classes. Discussing how this practice of teaching free classes doesn't help anyone in the industry. She stated that in fact offering free classes “devalues your skill of teaching yoga as a whole”.

When asking yourself "Should I teach donation classes?" make sure you have all the details. Who is and is not getting paid. Are you in any way devaluing yourself or the practice? Are you helping or harming your community? Ultimately, capitalism reigns, but that doesn't mean you have to grow as cold as the coins it covets. Be mindful.

If you're called to teach a free class to your loved ones don't hesitate. Yoga is a beautiful practice to be shared. But it should always be shared out of love and from a place authenticity. I'm asking that when it comes to the business of yoga, make sure the first person making money off your labor is you.

XOXO

KEN