Dear SDS community members,

I hope your holiday season is proving to be restful and fun. As we enter this new year, we have a number of big changes coming to SDS, all of which we hope will support the longevity and goals of the organization and its community.

As mentioned in my recent president’s letter to the membership, we are currently undergoing a transition to a new membership platform. You can now register for membership through Patreon, which is available here:

https://www.patreon.com/SocietyforDisabilityStudies

This is an exciting move for the organization and is serving as a spur to reimagine what organizations like ours can do for our members. Beyond supporting Disability Studies Quarterly, maintaining our community listserv, and organizing our conference, Patreon will also provide us with a home for hosting online events, like new book talks, workshops for students and faculty, and other community-building opportunities. (if you would like SDS’s support in hosting an event, fill out this form.)  In addition, Patreon will integrate a Discord server and video archives of past online events. We’re working on planning a year of events that will maximize our use of Patreon and the platforms that it integrates, and we’re hopeful that all of our members will find engaging and supportive events to participate in. We’re also hopeful that with a wide variety of new platforms (like Discord), members will have access to modalities that address their communicative and social desires. We’re very hopeful that the transition to Patreon will be rewarding for all of our members; if you have any questions or concerns about adoption of the platform, please feel free to reach out to the administrative staff at SDS for support.

You’ll see that our membership rates have changed. This was an enormous decision for us to make and I want to explain, briefly, why we’ve made the choices that we have. Currently, the costs to run SDS–which include monetary support for a number of staff associated with SDS and DSQ–is approximately $33,000 annually. In addition, we have costs associated with many of the online platforms we use (e.g. Zoom, the listserv, etc.), fees for accessibility support, and assorted payments associated with being a nonprofit organization. We have streamlined the kinds of membership available and adjusted rates to coincide with inflation and our economic needs. You’ll notice that the lowest membership level is now $60 annually. This is a significant change to what was previously only $40 annually, which applied to our student and low-income members. It was a hard decision to make. Ultimately, we made it because of one simple factor: Patreon allows people to stop and start their membership at any time. If you choose to only pay $40 annually, you can do that by enrolling as a member for eight months and then discontinuing your membership for the remainder of the year. This will impact a member’s ability to access live events and online platforms, but because of our new archives, they will be able to regain access when they renew their membership. We hope that this won’t be the case and that people will choose to support SDS monthly. If this proves to be a financial hardship, please let us know; we’re working hard to make our membership system adaptive to the needs of our members.

We currently cannot offer an annual subscription rate and need to be established with Patreon for three months before doing so; if you would prefer to have an annual invoice, please wait until this functionality is enabled. In addition, I’m sure there will be some logistical challenges as we work on this migration to Patreon, so please be patient as we work with you to identify and overcome them. We’re hopeful that, after this transition process, membership will be more meaningful than ever and provide our community with robust forms of support and exciting opportunities for exchange.

Thank you for your continued support of SDS and DSQ,

Matthew Wolf-Meyer