Why I Built the Advocates Paying Advocates Marketplace

By Shawndell Dawson, Founder & CEO, Dawson Visionary Enterprises

Creating More for Helpers and Leaders

For over 40 years, advocates, survivors, leaders, communities, and agencies have worked tirelessly to strengthen services, supports, policies, and practices for millions of people who are surviving domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, trafficking, and other forms of abuse.

This leadership and advocacy are essential for us all, and the dedication to survivor safety is unwavering. Survivors and advocates have built strategies for improving the financial wellbeing and resources needed to help people and families live in their homes and communities safely.

After 40 years, there are some important facts about survivor advocacy that remain critical to the sustainability of the movement. Access to resources—income, housing, food, water, health care, employment, child-care, and transportation—is essential for survivors, families, and advocates to live safely.

All around the world, economic empowerment bridges, programs, and services have been built for survivors and their children. With the Advocates Paying Advocates Marketplace and Dawson Visionary Enterprises, I have built an innovative platform and supportive communities to help advocates and survivor-leaders in their own economic empowerment journeys or entrepreneurship pathways.

Advocates have always found ways to share knowledge with each other. The APA Marketplace simply creates a platform where that expertise can reach further—and where creators can be compensated for what they share.

For decades, advocates and survivors have developed expertise that others need to help them operate, grow, connect, or scale their work. The APA Marketplace gives the advocacy community a platform to package that knowledge into digital products—policy guides, toolkits, courses, templates—and reach advocates across the country. And with the APA Marketplace, advocates and survivor-leaders at every level never have to figure it out alone—they can find resources that center survivors and their perspectives. Whether they are creating essential job aids, nuanced training curricula, or boundary-spanning resources, advocates have options and flexibility to strengthen their financial futures their way. The APA Marketplace was built to honor Advocates, Survivor Leaders, and the Movement.

Complementing, Not Competing

Let me be clear: we are not here to compete with grant-funded resources. Those services are essential and irreplaceable. Instead, we're adding entrepreneurship, professional growth, career development, and frontline tools for advocates that extend beyond what grants typically cover.

Leadership & Organizational Capacity: Board governance, strategic planning, organizational effectiveness, leadership development

Peer Support & Frontline Tools: Advocate self-care resources, peer support systems, workflow templates, job aids

Enterprise & Business Development: Consulting resources, business development tools, marketing templates for advocates exploring entrepreneurship

A Communal Economy

What makes this marketplace different is who benefits. When you purchase a resource here, you're not sending money to an outside vendor who doesn't understand our work. You're directly supporting a fellow advocate who created something from their own hard-won expertise.

Creators keep 85-90% of every sale. Resources stay within the movement. And advocates support each other economically while maintaining their mission work.

This is what we mean by a communal economy: advocates paying advocates; advocates honoring all advocates’ expertise; and advocates building enterprises with other advocates.  

Your Mission. Your Financial Future. Both Matter. Supported advocates create a sustained movement.

For 28 years, I've worked alongside advocates and survivors in the movement to end violence against women and children. I've seen the deep expertise, the creativity, the commitment, and the tenacity. As an advocate, I deeply understand what it means to need and want more options—more income flexibility, ways to leverage what you know to help your colleagues and peers, and a stronger pathway to improved financial wellbeing that for many includes increased savings, emergency funds, caretaking, and retirement.

Your mission and your financial future can both matter. 

Welcome to the APA Marketplace. We're glad you're here.

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