Our sliding scale fee structure supports the Social Impact community
Innovation, good people and ideas shouldn’t be held back by smaller budgets
We believe people with great ideas should have access to premium training, workshops and consultation services at fair prices.
Our mission is to create a space where progressive communicators from purpose-driven organizations have the opportunity to come together and learn from each other, regardless of their budgets. Our prices are designed to help reduce financial barriers for folks with different levels of income.
We do this by breaking our fee structure into four rates:
Impact Rate: A modest and meaningful gesture from larger organizations and individuals with the financial means to help fund free workshops for social purpose organizations that serve 2SLGBTQ communities and progressives. This fee adds a 20% premium to the Full-Price rate.
Full-Price Rate: For organizations with larger annual budgets and individuals who can afford it, this rate also supports lower costs and free access rates for others. This represents 100% of our cost.
Solidarity Rate: For organizations with a budget under $1 million and for folks who are still establishing themselves financially. Our Solidarity Rate is a ~ 50% savings for participants.
Student/Activist/Artist Rate: Available for selected workshops and courses for part-time and full-time students, as well as people who are still establishing themselves as activists or artists. This fee typically represents 10% of the full cost. If this fee is still inaccessible to folks, send us a note and we will help.
Appreciation
Credit is due to the progressive practices of so many community-based, queer organizations and spaces that have informal and formal sliding scales at workshops, parties and queer spaces. This is how we learned and first practiced sliding scale pricing at Secret Agents.
We also want to give credit and thanks to Spring Strategies for leading the way with progressive sliding scale options for their work in financial resilience and facilitation training - we were inspired by the accessibility of their learning programs. This post by Britt Hawthorne on Embracing an Equitable Sliding Scale was also helpful in finding language for our scale.
Our Impact
Since 2020, Secret Agents’ sliding-scale fee structure has provided:
14 free places in cohort-based programs
Access for 25 participants at Solidarity and Student Rates
Three free workshops for social purpose organizations that serve BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ communities across Canada.
And, our Virtual Storytelling Summit reached more than 300 participants thanks to a “pay-what-you-want” model that reduced financial barriers to joining.
