Tiered Equity Pricing: Reimagining Capitalism and Collective Care

If you’ve ever seen a workshop, course, or membership offered with different prices based on income or access, you’ve probably encountered tiered equity pricing. 

 

It’s a simple but radical idea: instead of one flat fee that assumes everyone’s financial reality is the same, we acknowledge that money lives and moves differently in each of our lives — and we design accordingly.

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What Is Tiered Equity Pricing?

Tiered equity pricing (sometimes called “sliding scale” or “community-supported pricing”) is a model that offers several payment options for the same product or service. Each tier represents a different level of access to financial resources, and participants are invited to choose the price that reflects their reality.

 

For example, a workshop might be priced at:

• Supported Tier – for people with limited or unstable income and resources, or no financial safety net
   

• Sustainable Tier – covers the true cost of the work and sustains the facilitator or business
   

• Community Care Tier – a higher tier that helps fund access for others and strengthens the whole system

 

Everyone receives the same high-quality offering. The difference lies in the recognition that equitable access — not “equality” — is the goal.

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Why It Matters

We live in a world built on extraction and scarcity – profit over people. Traditional pricing models assume that value is transactional and that everyone has equal footing in the marketplace. Tiered equity pricing disrupts that assumption. It’s an experiment in economic justice, an invitation to practice redistribution in real time.

 

This model acknowledges that:

• Money is not a measure of personal worth.
   

• Access to resources is shaped by history and systems — race, gender, ability, geography, class, and colonialism – not just effort.
   

• When we support one another, everyone benefits.

When facilitators and organisations use tiered pricing, they’re not just offering a discount structure — they’re reimagining and redesigning capitalism from the inside out. They’re saying: we can absolutely do business differently. We can centre care, trust, and collective flourishing.

 

Why do we use this pricing strategy?

 

We recognize that we live in systems of inequity, which the SomaPsych trainings speak to. Our tiered pricing aims to contribute toward a fairer system that strives to meet the needs of individual situations and positions of privilege. It seeks to embody our value of meaningful mutual exchange.  

 

How to choose your tier?

 

This is an invitation to reflect on your access to resources and privilege, the value of this work, what you can genuinely afford, and what you might pay for comparable training programs. By committing to what is truly within your means you make it possible for others to show up within theirs and we are all grateful for this. 

 

People from all over the globe, in myriad circumstances, are showing up and continue to benefit from this work. We want to offer this training as far and wide as we can. Our scholarships allow us to share this training with people who are most impacted by these systems of inequity. 

 

Tier 1 contributes towards our scholarship fund. If this is within your means, contributing in this way enables those who would otherwise not have access to this training to share this work with their communities. This price is for those who are financially well-resourced and reflects the value of the course in Western economic markets.

 

Tier 2 is for those who have medium incomes, access to financial resources, and are also able to contribute to our scholarship fund. 

 

Tier 3 allows those on low incomes, with caring responsibilities and from marginalized communities to access this training within their means. 

 

We are committed to continuously reviewing our tiered pricing to make each training accessible in relation to the current financial market. 

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