Accountability

Because we’re such a small, independant podcasting studio, it’s taken us a while to fully understand what being accountable might look like for us. What information about how we run our team is important for the public to know about, how do we think critically about our processes, and how are we going to address issues as we find them? This is a work in progress, and as time goes on, we’ll be continually developing ways to be accountable for what we do here at Hanging Sloth Studios.

Our intention is to update this page every six months to a year, or as is pertinent. We’ll make sure there are links to historical data whenever this data is updated, so you can be sure we’re not hiding anything from you.

This data is present to you as accurate to 16/07/2021 (Sunday, 16th July, 2021)

Context

Hanging Sloth Studios is currently registered as a Sole Trader, under Eira Major, rather than a Limited Company, due to the lack of considerable income from the business. Voice Actors working with Hanging Sloth Studios are considered freelancers, which is standard practice in podcasting.

Currently, Hanging Sloth Studios makes an average of £50 pcm. This comes from a variety of sources, mostly from our patreon.

Voice Actors entered into contracts for Season One under the full knowledge that Hanging Sloth Studios would not be able to compensate them financially for their work. In Season Two, Voice Actors will be contracted under a Profit Share model, where they will receive a percentage of Hanging Sloth Studio’s income within a specific, mutually agreed threshold. This threshold accounts for day-to-day running costs as well as actor’s time spent rehearsing.

At the moment, besides freelance voice actors, all work on the podcasts produced by Hanging Sloth Studios is done by founder Eira Major. This is including but not limited to:

  • Writing the show
  • Editing scripts
  • Distribution of scripts
  • Directing
  • Quality control of recordings
  • Dialogue Editing
  • Sound design
  • Sound engineering
  • Meta-data and show notes
  • Compiling content warnings
  • Running episode transcripts
  • Publishing episodes

Eira is also responsible for running the studio. This includes:

  • Creating and maintaining this website
  • Managing finances
  • Creating and managing content for the patreon
  • Creating and engaging with social media
  • Providing tax information

Eira works full time running and managing the podcasts and the studio, balancing at an average of 50 hours per week.

Areas where we excel

  • We have a very high percentage of those involved who are trans and/or nonbinary, way above the national population averages for the UK (in which we are based).

How can we maintain this? We are trying our best to make the auditions process as inclusive of trans, nonbinary and GNC people as possible, with Eira using lived-experience as a trans nonbinary person and consulting with other people about how to make the process as inclusive as possible.

  • We have a very high percentage of those involved who are in some respect LGBTQ+.

How can we maintain this? As above, we are aiming to make the auditions process as inclusive of LGBTQIAP+ people as possible, and continually seek out and implement feedback both from people involved in our podcasts and within the broader community.

Areas where we fall short

  • We currently cannot pay voice actors for their work on our projects.

How are we planning to address this? Our patreon is growing every month, and we get a couple of people purchasing things from our Ko-Fi store every month. We will be relaunching our physical merchandising store in the near future. We will be running a funding campaign in the coming months in an attempt to get enough money to reimburse our actors for their time.

Money Stuff

It costs us £180 to host our shows online.

In July, we made £49 pcm from patrons on patreon.

In July, we made £10 from merchandising.

At the moment we make £0 from other sources, including advertising and sponsorships.

As such, we function at a deficit of ~£156 per year, which is made up for with self-funding from personal savings.

At the moment, all Voice Acting is done on a voluntary basis, and our actors as such were not paid for their work. They were made aware of this prior to signing up to the projects on which they are involved.