2021 Recap & Patreon Changes For 2022 🥳

This is likely our last formal Patreon post of 2021, so to get started: Happy holidays & wishing you an early happy new year! 🥳

1. Recapping 2021

2021 has been a massive success for the Techlore Patreon. We've accumulated close to $10,000 throughout 2021, in addition to hitting each and every one of our Patreon Goals! This proves a large number of people coming together can truly make an impact! This money has been used for equipment upgrades, paying ourselves, bringing on a community manager, and many smaller costs to keep everything we do free for the world ❤️We can't thank you enough for this opportunity you've given us, and we hope to see many of you next year as well!

2. Let's Talk About 2022

2022 is going to introduce some of the largest changes to our Patreon, almost all of it with the goal of simplifying things. Here are the changes:

• First, we are unpublishing our $1 tier. For current $1 patrons, you will still be able to pledge that amount and keep your current perks since you've been grandfathered into the program! Unpublishing will only prevent future individuals from joining this tier.
• Second, we have updated our Patreon goals (because we hit them all!) You'll find our new goals here:

• Third, our perks have been changed to the following:

➽ $5/month: Support our mission, & gain access to our exclusive Signal, Patreon, & Discord communities

➽ $15/month: Have your username in our video outros, & access sneak-previews of our upcoming content & projects (+ previous perks)

➽ $50/month: An audio shout-out in a video outro, and your name listed on our website's support page (+ previous perks)

~We will be updating our #benefits posts in the coming days to reflect these changes.~

3. Necessary Highlights

To avoid confusion, it's important to highlight some previous perks that will no longer be offered. 

• Personal Signal Number: As previously announced, Henry's personal Signal number is no longer available due to time restraints & misuse of private messages. This has been extended to all platforms. Some members have been grandfathered into this perk, but it is no longer a formal perk going forward. The number is still visible via our Signal community, but no new DMs will be accepted.
• Ally Consulting: As previously announced, we will be discontinuing monthly consulting sessions for our allies starting in January. These have been a massive time commitment, and there has been too much confusion surrounding this service vs our formal consulting service. We hope that allies enjoy our new perks for them!
• Monthly Meetups: As fun as these were, we were not getting a high turn-out for them and they took a good bit of time & energy to execute. We may bring this back in the future as we gather more patrons, but it'll be discontinued for now.

There were some other changes, but these are the big 3 to keep on your radar. Again, we'll be publishing some updated #benefits posts to reflect these changes shortly.

4. Why?

The ultimate goal for us is to balance our tiers & perks in a way where we can still dedicate time to what you likely came here for: our public content and tools! We have nearly 200 patrons and only 2 people managing them; this has made it very challenging to stay on top of our other projects. Going forward, we are going to be more careful with our time & energy--hence, the simplification of our tiers. If you are upset with these changes, we totally understand. We don't want you to feel forced to stay, so if you're upset, please feel free to put your money towards other causes. (If you're looking for recommendations, we recommend the EFF & Tor Project for donations)

5. Final Words

To finish things out, we want to thank each and every one of you for helping us hit so many of our goals in 2021. We're spreading our message to more people than we ever have, and the support you've given us is a large reason for that. Let's chase after some goals in 2022 and make as big of a splash as we can! Thank you again, and happy new year! 🥳

PS:

We apologize for the constant Patreon changes in 2021. We wanted to experiment with different tiers/perks to see what you all enjoyed and what we could realistically implement for you. We are going to try our best to stick with these tiers & perks for the entire year of 2022. Thanks for working with us, and hopefully we can offer you a more consistent experience going forward.