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| Alternatives to Marriage Project F.A.Q. |
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Answers How did the Alternatives to Marriage Project get started?
The Alternatives to Marriage Project was founded in 1998 by Marshall Miller and Dorian Solot, a committed long-term unmarried couple. They were surprised and frustrated by the enormous pressure to marry and discrimination that they experienced. After several years of discussion, dreaming, and research, they decided to take action. The organization clearly met a need: within a matter of months emails and phone calls from around the country began to stream in. Since that time, the Alternatives to Marriage Project's mailing list has grown to include over 8,000 households representing all 50 states and more than 65 countries. AtMP staff, members, and volunteers appear in the media hundreds of times each year to educate the nation about unmarried lives. Appearances include CNN, the O'Reilly Factor, National Public Radio's Morning Edition, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. In November 2005, Lisa-Nicolle (Nicky) Grist assumed leadership of the Alternatives to Marriage Project as AtMP's new Executive Director. [More about the Alternatives to Marriage Project]. No, we are not "anti-marriage." Different types of relationships work best for different people, and we recognize that marriage may be a great choice for some people. The Alternatives to Marriage Project provides information, advocacy, and support for people who are living together before marriage, choose not to marry, cannot marry, or are questioning marriage and seeking information as they make their decision. Likewise, we strongly support the right of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people in same-sex partnerships to get married. Everyone should have the option of choosing to marry or not. Indeed, one reason why people in male-female couples might choose not to get married is because the choice is not available to everyone. How can I stay in touch with the Alternatives to Marriage Project? There are two ways to stay in touch with AtMP. You can sign up for our e-newsletter, which we send out once a month, the Alternatives to Marriage Update. Or, if you'd like to be part of an interactive community, you can join our discussion listserv, AtMP-Talk, where people have email discussions about issues related to unmarried life and post articles of interest. Subscribe to either one on our Subscribe page. How is the Alternatives to Marriage Project funded? By people like you! As a grassroots, non-profit organization, our primary source of funding is individuals who make donations to support our work. Less than 10% of our support come from sales of books. More than 90% of our funding is from people around the world who care about support and social justice for unmarried people. Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution by giving online through Network for Good, mailing us your check or money order payable to AtMP (our address is at the bottom of this page), or calling us at 518-462-5600 to make a contribution by credit card. See Get Involved for more information about how you can help. I'm a student working on a research project, paper, or speech. Can you help me? Because of the volume of requests we receive, we are not able to provide individualized assistance to students working on short-term projects (we are sometimes able to help with theses, dissertations, and other long-term research projects). You'll find the information and links on this site fairly extensive, though, so we encourage you to spend some time exploring. In particular, you might be interested in our Statistics and Experts Say pages, as well as specific Hot Topics sections of the site. Good luck with your project! How can I get involved as a volunteer or intern? We'd love your help! AtMP's work is carried out by hundreds of volunteers around the country, and dedicated interns. See Get Involved for a list of ways volunteers can help, or see our Internship page for details about applying for an internship. Can I get an Alternatives to Marriage Project representative to come speak to my group? We offer workshops, lectures, and keynote speeches for a variety of types of groups. Call or email to tell us more about what you're looking for. Where do you get the photos on your website? All the photos on our site are friends and supporters of the Alternatives to Marriage Project. We need more, and we are particularly interested in photos that reflect the racial, age, and family diversity of our membership! If you'd be willing to let us use your photo, send it to us along with a note giving us permission to use it on the website and in other materials. If you have the photo in digital form, fill out our contact form and we'll email you the address to send the photo attached to an email (sorry for the extra step -- we've taken all email addresses off this site as part of our battle against spam). If you only have a hard copy of the photo, you can mail it to us, and we'll scan and return it to you. Please take me off your mailing list. I'm getting married. Of course we always honor requests to be removed from our mailing list. But we want you to know that married friends and supporters are always welcome! Many people tell us they remain interested in the Alternatives to Marriage Project's work even after they marry, because they see marital status fairness as a civil rights issue. We like married people as well as unmarried ones!       |
