THE CHALLENGE: Trans Families is an online community with support groups for transgender people and their families. Increasing administrative costs and a desire to grow led the organization to consider expanding from a donation funding model to a monthly membership model. With a goal of expanding their membership base without increasing barriers to access, Trans Families requested our services to help guide them through funding model options and eventually build a new model for their organization to use moving forward.

THE WORK: In order to better understand the organization, we started our work with 1:1 interviews of the leadership team. The goal of these interviews was to gather the organization’s mission and vision, objectives and goals for the near future, the makeup of their membership and administrative and organizational hurdles with their current funding model. After gathering information about the organization and their members, we conducted secondary research on membership models. Due to the fact that Trans Families has always been conscious of the barriers to their services, they were intrigued by the recent movement of choose-what-you-pay models. We evaluated 5 companies in 4 different industries that employed flexible pricing models and presented the benefits to each model along with our recommendations to the Trans Families leadership team. After gathering feedback, we then built a custom model for Trans Families and working with their web team, we designed and implemented a new membership page to launch the program.

THE RESULTS: After implementation of a new funding model, Trans Families was able to successful launch their new online resource and support program. The switch to a successful monthly membership program allows the organization to better forecast their future funding. Access to more funding through the new model allows the organization to cover its costs and continue to grow their services and their membership.