New Sliding Scale Tuition Model
At Groundwork, we care deeply about making our offerings accessible to anybody who wants to learn and envision livable futures. Given the nature of our work, the people who are interested in our programs are often in lines of work that are not well-compensated: teachers, farmers, artists, those working for the greater community good through local government or nonprofits.
Over the past 5 years, we have experimented with a wide range of sliding scale pricing systems. In general, sliding scales are challenging for an organization. It’s a leap of faith to commit to running programs with an uncertain level of income, but we have generally seen that people sign up and pay all levels of the scale, though they have needed more guidance in choosing which tier to pay.
This winter, we are trying a new system: a sliding scale with fewer, named tiers that give the user an accurate look at what it actually costs to run our programming, and lets you choose how to interact with that. The scale has the actual cost as the middle tier, with tiers that drop to 80% of cost and go up to 140% of cost. This range recognizes that when people in our society have more money, it can be many times more money than those working hard to meet their basic needs. Here’s a breakdown of our new experimental scale. We hope that it gives participants more guidance as to which tier to choose, and offers a window into what it means to budget for programs in a way that balances societal financial inequity with the need for Groundwork to cover our costs in running programs.
Tier 5: Sharing Abundance — 130%
Tier 4: Offer A Little Extra — 115%
Tier 3: Actual Cost — 100%
Tier 2: Small Discount — 90%
Tier 1: Community Supported — 80%
Many thanks to the people at Green Door Folk School, Global Focus Coaching, and A Bookkeeping Cooperative for their input on our sliding scale models.