Question Patrons

If you've set up donations at Patreon to support the site, please note that you should be getting notification of charges on Weds (Nov 1st)... and any consecutive month if you don't withdraw your contributions. Anyone who has set up a contribution sufficient for one of our reward tiers (which at the moment are simple sponsorship / advertising mentions - but at some point in the future could include something more depending on the cost/complexity of arranging physical rewards), please let me know... either via Patreon or a PM here... what name you wish to be acknowledged by for your contribution... ie some people may prefer the acknowledgement to their real name, or the name they used at Patreon, others may want their online/site name. Also, if you prefer, I'm willing to post 'sponsorships' as honorarium/memorium listings as well - ie instead of listing your name, you could have me list "In Memorium: Bob Arnold" or something similar... as long as whatever it is doesn't violate site policy.

Also, if your reward tier includes my posting a graphic banner for advertising something for you.... I'll need a copy of your banner.

I think the whole point here is that Patreon eats 20 cents of credit charge for every $1 contributor in the service. They assumed that there would be enough larger contributions that the 10% charge to Creators would cover it. But it doesn't. And they have costs, development, and salaries to pay.They can't afford to take a loss on donations... and they assumed that people with enough money to donate to Creators would more easily absorb the extra than the Creators who are relying on this method of income. It might not have been the smartest choice... but the alternative was probably to not allow 1 or 2 dollar donations because on the lower value donations, the credit card services are making almost as much per donation as the Creators are.

Like most of the people talking about this issue, it doesn't take into account the fact that Patreon is itself a service and not capable of functioning without an income. If the costs of running the service are greater than income that can be earned providing it, it will fail and be unavailable to anyone. More specifically, if a $1 campaign donation costs more than $.10 to process, then giving a $.90 value to the Creator requires Patreon to take a loss. It IS possible to get a service that only costs $.10 per charge process which would mean they were giving every cent left after transferring that to the Creator account (that's the cheapest I've found though, and it does have a monthly charge to have the service at all - and remember, Patreon has maintenance and development costs, and staff salaries).

I think I, personally, would add a shiny little slider device to the contributions page that reflects the three 'values' involved:
1. Patron charge per month
2. Patreon transaction charge for the action
3. Creator account received per month

Then you can run a slider up and visibly see both what is coming out of your wallet and what would go into the Creator's account as a result. Then, if you still want to only have $1 come out of your account... so be it.. but you'll see that you're contributing only about $.63 ($.63 + $.35 + (2.9% x $.63)) = ($.63 + $.35 + $0.018) = $1. Or, if you want to ensure that the Creator receives a dollar, you slide it up until the Creator value shows $1 and you see the $0.35 + $0.029 = $0.38 service fee from Patreon and your monthly Patron charge of $1.38.

By the way, just for a visual on the differences and result service charges, let me show you some numbers:

Google doc with some Patreon charge numbers


I think Patreon's best bet on solving this is really just to drop the extra charge for Creators who divert money from their own accounts to other Creators.. there is no new credit card service involved in this process... truthfully, I was a little surprised to see how much the $1 donation is used given how much stores try to prevent people from running charge cards for anything under $10. And also, since so few Creators share content with the $1 donors. Not that the extra isn't welcome, but there was one point in setting up the account for the site here that I got three new patrons signed up, but the dollar amount on contributions only went up $1. That was the point I kinda realized that the transaction charges were going to be a problem for low cost donors... and that was before. I suspect that Patreon didn't realize that while the Creators were well aware of the service costs/transaction impact on donations... that Patrons were not. That's why the blow back on this from Patrons is such a huge deal.

Also... as an artist in other venues and a student of history in the arts, I have a pretty good understanding of how patronage works. The idea that a Patron would expect the Creator to deal with the charges necessary to accept the donation is... well, its silly. The whole point of the patronage concept is for someone who has money and can afford to be known for their support of one or more artists to take care of the financial burden for those artists so that the artists can be free to be creative, without having to concern themselves with the art also being 'product' or 'service' worth what the market considers 'worthy enough to make a living at'. That's not saying that Patreon handled this change smoothly. They didn't. But their perspective on how to keep their business running and what specifically their service is? Not unrealistic at all.

It's been a good long while since I've seen a company own a problem like that and apologize for it. I think they did the right thing and I think they're going to really solidify their relationship with the people as a result of it.