What Is Patreon and Why Do We Use It?

For years, our community has relied on the widely used event-ticketing service Eventbrite to manage ticket sales for our events, like Karam Forum. For a small fee, Eventbrite handles all the money – and all the messy, difficult logistical details that go with it, like handling payment glitches and providing refunds – so we can focus on putting on a great event without having to create and administrate a bunch of financial systems to make it possible.

That makes a ton of sense for a small community like ours.

You think a bunch of academics want to figure out how to maintain a website that takes credit cards?

Well, Patreon is just like that, only it’s designed for creators of written and audio-visual content rather than for running events. A lot of podcasters, YouTubers, musicians and independent journalists use it. It’s a service that allows creators to serve their audiences directly rather than having to go through intermediaries like publishing companies, and without having to create and administrate their own business systems. For a small fee, Patreon handles all the financial stuff, allowing us to focus on what we love and do best, like editing our peer-reviewed journal and writing you weekly emails that inspire and equip.

You may have heard of Substack, which is currently transforming the world of journalism. Well, Patreon is a lot like Substack, except where Substack is optimized for email newsletters and doesn’t really support other kinds of content, Patreon has a wider variety of features supporting images, video, audience polls, etc. Also, Patreon lets us integrate the paywall system into our own websites. 

As of early 2022, Patreon is the home of over 200,000 creators, supported by over 6 million “patrons” – the customers who buy what the creators create.

You can check out Patreon’s history and corporate values here.

Now, be honest. Haven’t you always wanted to be a patron of great creative work?

Please become a patron of our community today by joining the Fellowship! We’re grateful for your support.