Bretty is a co-founding member and was the director of programs until 2025 for Seventh Wave, a BIPOC- and queer-led arts nonprofit that publishes art in the space of social issues. He built the brand’s story anchors and their digital community-based programs.
In 2019, Bretty built Seventh Wave’s Story Anchors, which helped catapult the organization as a visible leader in the literary world.
Seventh Wave has since been featured in national outlets, like Poets & Writers and LitHub, and earned national awards and recognition from CLMP, the Academy of American Poets, and more. With a narrative framework in place, Bretty managed the launch of the organization’s new website, which acts as a home base for their digital community of 350+ artists from around the world.
story anchor EXAMPLES
Bretty developed key digital programs for Seventh Wave, like its digital residency and Community Anthologies program, which received major funding from Washington-based foundations and agencies.
program development
In 2023, Bretty began building two new programs for Seventh Wave’s community: Narrative Shifts, a seven-week digital residency program, and Community Anthologies, a five-month, cohort-based publication platform.
On the precipice of its 10th anniversary, Seventh Wave was having the difficult conversations with its advisory board about sustainability: the time it takes to run a volunteer-powered organization; how the shifts in the world were changing the fundraising landscape and availability of major grants; whether there was such a thing as “a sustainable business model” for literary art nonprofits, and so on. To ensure that it could be around for another 10 years, Bretty was tasked with creating two digital programs, each of which would bring in a different kind of funding.
The Community Anthologies program was built to be Seventh Waves major grants program. The pilot program was funded by a major foundation, and has received major grants ever since to continue running. The digital residency, Narrative Shifts, was built to be a revenue-generating program, where participants would pay a fee to join a seven-week long digital program. Since 2024, over 175 writers have participated in the residencies. From 2024 to 2026, Seventh Wave went from $20K in annual revenue to $100K+, as their two new programs brought in significant funding from different sources. Whereas the Community Anthologies was receiving funding from major foundations and grantors, the digital residency was a paid program, and in two years, nearly 200 writers had signed up and paid for the program.
the takeaway
Seventh Wave went from $20K in annual revenue in 2024 to over $100K in 2026, enabling their Executive Director to slide into a paid role for the first time, enabling Seventh Wave to truly build out a sustainable model for its staff and community.
