Our Fee Rates
Due to our anti-capitalist collectivist approach of caring for people over profit and our commitment to economic equity, you won’t find a fixed fee listed for any of our events.
All fees for certificate courses, workshops, and community events are determined through a holistic “green bottles” style sliding scale. Our “green bottles” approach considers people’s financial privileges and disadvantages across a variety of factors. You can read more about later insights we have applied from the developer of the “green bottles” approach here.
This means instead of having a fixed cost for each course, we use four fee rates:
★ Actual cost rate: This is the actual cost of providing the course or event for you in a way that spreads between participants the real world cost of compensating our facilitators and collaborators fairly for their the labour, materials, resources, and any disability, neurodivergent, cultural, or other accessibility support they need for equitable inclusion. This is equivalent to a “standard rate”.
★ Pay it forward rate: This is similar to a “high income” rate. This rate also applies to people with financial privileges regardless of whether or not they have any income. This rate applies to people with homeowner privilege and inherited wealth privilege. This rate applies to you if you own your home outright (i.e., without mortgage payments or government equity-sharing schemes where the government owns part of your home) or if you have disposable income that makes it possible to pay for holidays or dine out at restaurants regularly. Fees from this rate above the actual cost will be used to subsidise hardship rate slots, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander “Pay the rent” hardship rate slots, and charitable donations to community-led organisations and initiatives.
★ Hardship rate: This is for people who struggle to pay for their rent and groceries. This category applies to you if you are not a homeowner, you do not have sufficient funds to go on regular holidays or dine at a fancy restaurant once a month. For people in this category, paying the actual cost of this course would interfere with their ability to pay for rent and groceries.
This category is for people who do not have capacity to pay for this course due to financial disadvantage; it is not for people who would have capacity to pay but choose to spend their financial resources on other priorities. Due to our limited resources, we can provide up to a maximum of 2 slots at this rate for every 8 people paying the Actual Cost or Pay It Forward rates and up to 20% of available slots for events with more than 10 people. Due to our class size limit of 8 students total for certificate courses, we have capacity to provide a maximum of 1 slot per certificate course cohort at this rate.
★ Pay the Rent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander hardship rate:
This category is only available for open only for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants to subsidise the cost of attending our events and courses. This fund is distributed between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants on the basis of financial disadvantage and need. Due to our limited resources, we can provide up to a maximum of 2 slots at this rate for every 8 people paying the Actual Cost or Pay It Forward rates or up to 20% of available slots for events with more than 10 people. Due to our class size limit of 8 students total for certificate courses, we have capacity to provide a maximum of 1 slot per certificate course cohort at this rate.
This category is opt-in, available to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who choose this option when selecting their rate; if you are eligible for this rate, we respect your autonomy by making sure that you decide whether or not you would like to receive this rate.
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
MAYA ANGELOU
Our Payment and Cancellation Policies
As we have size limits for our courses, workshops, and events, cancellations can have a significant impact on the group. We also recognise that the more marginalised your lived experience, the fewer financial and other resources you have to address unforeseen life events that might interfere with your participation in our courses, workshops, and events. However, our facilitators are also people with marginalised lived experiences, neurodivergent and disability-related challenges, and/or limited time, energy, and financial and other resources. For this reason, we need to consider the impact of cancellations on our team as well. Based on these considerations, we have attempted to provide fair and transparent payment and cancellation policies that are sustainable for us as a small Centre.
The Centre has a fixed cancellation fee policy (i.e., cancellation fees apply regardless of the reason for the cancellation, without any moralising or punitive aspect implied). This fixed cancellation policy makes it financially sustainable for us as people from lower income backgrounds of intergenerational forced displacement, people with entirely self-funded chronic health and disability-related needs, and/or people without intergenerational wealth privileges to dedicate our time, energy, and other resources to the Centre while being able to pay for our basic living expenses within our respective unfortunately capitalist Overcultures. Due to the extensive advance preparation required for our offerings, we require advance payment for courses, workshops, and events.
★★★ None of the Centre’s payment and cancellation policies take away your consumer rights to repair, replace, refund, or cancel under the conditions specified by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). We strive to uphold the highest standard of interpersonal ethics, which includes notifying you of, and respecting, your rights. ★★★
Courses:
Our certificate courses have a maximum cohort limit of 8 students. These courses typically involve substantially more advance preparation work for course facilitators, which means that we need more advance notice with courses than with workshops to cover facilitator work time and to minimise disruption to our course schedule. However, unlike workshops, our courses are typically offered on a recurring basis. This means that it is often possible to defer your attendance and apply part or all of your payments to a future cohort rather than to withdraw entirely from a course. Our default course cancellation policy has been designed accordingly.
Advance tuition deposit:
★For all accepted students at the Actual Cost and Pay It Forward tuition rates, 50% of tuition is due in advance within 7 calendar days to the hour (7 x 24 hours = 168 hours) of when you receive your formal course acceptance email. The remaining 50% is due 14 calendar days prior to the date when your course becomes available in our online Learning Management System (LMS).
★ Students on General Hardship, Pay The Rent Hardship, and bespoke hardship-related instalment plans are only required to pay a 20% tuition deposit within 7 calendar days to the hour (7 x 24 hours = 168 hours) of formal course acceptance, unless the advance deposit requirement has been formally waived to meet your hardship needs. The remaining 80% is due based on your personalised hardship agreement with the Centre.
★ Students on Actual Cost or Pay It Forward tuition rates with overdue or unpaid tuition fees will not have access to future courses until all prior fees have been paid.
★ Due to the extensive preparation work we do in advance for each of our courses and the limited financial and energy resources of our course facilitators, no course tuition refunds will be provided after a student has been granted access to a course in our LMS, even if the student withdraws before the first live session.
★ Our course cancellation policy is designed to balance course facilitators’ limited financial resources, time, and energy, and the Centre’s limited administrative and financial resources, with the needs of students who might withdraw due to personal hardship, illness, unsafe conditions, natural disasters, or similar reasons beyond their control.
Our Default Course Cancellation Policy:
★ Cancellation 30 calendar days prior to the LMS opening date = Full refund or credit for deferral to a future cohort of the same course if available
★ Cancellation 14 calendar days prior to the LMS opening date = 50% refund or credit for deferral to a future cohort of the same course if available
★ Cancellation in fewer than 14 calendar days prior to the LMS opening date = No refund, full fees apply, options for credit for deferral considered on a case-by-case basis at course facilitator discretion
Workshops and events:
Our workshops and events are usually one-off offerings to meet specific community needs and are typically not recorded due to privacy needs. For this reason, it is usually not possible to apply your payment to a future cohort of the same workshop or event.
The Centre’s default workshop and event cancellation policy applies to all workshops and events we host, unless otherwise specified on the booking page of your specific workshop or event.
Our Default Workshop and Event Cancellation Policy:
★ Cancellation 7 calendar days to the hour (168 hours) prior to the listed start time = Full refund
★ Cancellation 3 calendar days to the hour (72 hours) prior to the listed start time = 50% refund
★ Cancellation in fewer than 72 hours prior to the listed start time = No refund, full fees apply
