Toniic runs Membership as a separate Line of Business from its philanthropically-supported publicly available programs (T100, Impact Terms, and Outreach). Our goal is to cover all the costs of the Membership Line of Business with earned revenue, and we publicly disclose those costs and associated revenues in our annual impact report. The costs of delivering Membership services still exceed earned revenue, and we are thus still reliant on grant support from our Board and members to support Membership services. We have, however, (at least pre-COVID-19) made steady progress in reducing that subsidy each year.
The majority of our earned revenues (70% in 2019) comes from membership dues, with the remainder coming from event registration fees, sponsorships and fund listing fees. Unlike many others in our field, we do not open attendance at our events to non-members, except by invitation. This keeps our events small and intimate, which is a large part of their appeal. We seek to price events to reliably cover our internal and external costs in delivering them, rather than using events as a primary revenue contributor. While event registration is a minority of Toniic’s revenue, it is still important to our survival. In fairness to all, we do insist that members attending events pay the associated fee.
During COVID-19, we have followed the shift to virtual programming, and many have observed we are leaders in the quality, interactivity and quantity of our virtual events. While our costs for such events are lower than in-person events, we still incur costs to deliver them, and ask members to pay the associated fee for those events which we do not offer for free . We charge a registration fee “per device” rather than per person – so if a household with two membership seats gather at one screen to participate, they may pay one registration fee, but if they will each log in from separate devices. two registrations, please.
Toniic exists not only to provide services to its members, but also to amplify their collective voices to effect the change we wish to see in the world. We are deeply appreciative of the financial support of our members in this challenging time, from simply renewing membership to making supplemental grants of unrestricted support. Toniic has come too far, the need for our kind of thinking is too pressing, and the opportunity to fundamentally shift the financial system is too compelling to allow this temporary economic disruption to cause Toniic or our movement to fail. Together, we will emerge stronger, as beacons of hope to an increasingly frightened world.