Up until recently, our peer support groups have been free to access. Now we are charging a small subscription for a space at our groups. But why have we done this?
Charging for our groups was not an easy decision. Aupeer is a Community Interest Company. Whilst we have certain perks of a not for profit organisation, we still incur many costs including Zoom license fees, website costs, equipment, training for our facilitators, corporation tax... it all adds up.
When Aupeer launched, we were able to kick start with a grant from HSE which enabled us to get up and running and grow our groups to what they are today. Since then, we have relied solely on donations and grants.
As the financial climate has changed over the last few years, the grant opportunities are less, and have become harder to secure with many good causes all fighting for the same opportunities. It's a bit like dragons den!
Being autistic ourselves, the process of consistently applying, and pitching for grants can at times, feel very stressful and uncertain. Often we do not succeed with our bids. When we do, we celebrate, but we know we are on borrowed time until we start the process all over again. This has sadly led to autistic burnout, high stress levels, and eventually our peer support groups had to close for a period of time, so we could take stock, consider the future, and also reflect on taking our own advice about being kind to ourselves, advocating self care, and meeting ourselves where we're at.
We want our main focus to be you. We want to provide regular, reliable and supportive peer groups for you. By introducing this subscription, we can focus on what's important. Providing a service for you.
Subscriptions take away the uncertainty and the stress about how we will continue from one year to the next. It will give us the time, space and opportunity to grow Aupeer and enable us to start up new groups and meet the high demand for our services. Every one of us at Aupeer is a volunteer. We don't take a pay cheque and we don't profit from the organisation. We are just trying to make life a little better for us all, one day at a time.
We're so grateful to you all, for the warm response we have received from the news of our relaunch and our new way of working. We're so pleased and excited to be coming back in the new year. Our first group is being held on 11th January.
We want what we have built with Aupeer over the years to continue, and we want it to succeed. We believe that all autistic adult should have easy access to spaces like ours, where we can connect with like minded people and be given the space and opportunity to just take the mask off for an hour, and be ourselves without fear of judgement or rejection.
If you haven't already, please do register your details with us so that when a space becomes available, we can offer it to you quickly and efficiently. You can initially register by selecting your preferred group on our 'peer support' page, then we will contact you with a link to register your details with 'Go Cardless'. Once this has been completed, you are on the list!
We hold your details, but we never take payment unless you have been offered a start date and have agreed to take the space.
Extra spaces for groups should become available after 15th December when the deadline has passed for our previous members to subscribe. If you are on the waiting list, or about to sign up, please keep an eye on your inbox! We believe that our new way of working will enable us to keep wait times down, whilst gradually increasing the number of groups that we run.
We hope that this helps to explain why we have done this, and we hope that you continue to support us. As always, please contact us with any questions you may have about Aupeer and we can't wait to see you all soon!
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