How Subsidies Work at Lichen
Our Community & Care Subsidy Policy
Some members can afford everything they need on the platform. Many can't — or wouldn't think to try the good, service, technology or experience that might change everything for the better. Subsidies are how the community closes that gap: donors fill the well, and Lichen identifies who is most in need of a drink. This page explains exactly how that works, in plain language, because how money moves through a community should never be a mystery.
If you're a member who needs support
When you join the platform and identify the need for a subsidy — whether it's care through Concierge, or a good, service, membership, event, or course in Community — you complete a Web of Wellbeing (WOW) assessment: a picture of your mental, physical, spiritual, social, environmental, and economic health. That's it. No means-testing interrogation, no proving you're poor enough or sick enough. Just an honest picture, proportionate to the size of the support.
Your WOW stays inside Lichen. It is never sold and never shared outside the network. It exists for one purpose: to map the gap between what our current economy values and the genuine value exchanged — so support flows to where the imbalance is most profound and remedies it.
There are two doors in:
- "I can't afford it." The need and the remedy both exist, and money is the only barrier.
- "I never would have tried it." You didn't know it existed, didn't believe it was for you, or come from a community that's never had access. A Lichen clinician or care coordinator sees a genuine fit — a first responder who's never tried somatic work, a caregiver who's never met a horse as a healer — and the community funds your introductory experience. This door matters to us as much as the first one: exposure is a resource too.
Every request gets a real look from a human steward, using written criteria, and every decision — yes or no — is recorded with its reasons. Not every request is approved; that's what makes an approval mean something. Subsidized care is identical to paid care, your practitioners aren't told who's subsidized unless it's operationally necessary, and nothing about your subsidy is ever visible to anyone who doesn't need to know — including the donors who funded it. What donors do receive is the aggregate story of their impact — this many organic garden beds planted, this much care subsidized, this many introductory experiences funded — real numbers, never names.
That said, if how the subsidies you've received have positively impacted your life becomes a story you want the people who made it possible to hear, you can choose to share it — anonymously or by name, in your own words, on your own timeline. These full-circle moments are some of the most powerful medicine in the community, for teller and giver alike. But sharing is always an offering, never a repayment. No one will ever ask, expect, or hint — the gift was already complete.
If you're a donor
You choose the well — Lichen chooses who drinks. By default, your gift joins the general subsidy fund, pooled with every other gift and allocated by Lichen alone against the criteria on this page. If a particular corner of the work moves you, you may instead restrict your gift to a named program or charitable class — clean food for first responders, a practitioner fund that buys care through that practitioner for members — and we account for it as its own fund and honor it as given. If an intended purpose becomes obsolete or is fully funded, we come back to you before a dollar moves elsewhere. What a restriction can never do is name a person: a purpose describes an open class of people, never an individual, and Lichen may decline a restriction that doesn't fit our mission and policy before accepting. One more choice that is yours: a minimum of 5% of each donation funds the operation of the platform, but you may direct a larger share to operations — or leave the whole gift general, at Lichen's discretion.
You never choose who drinks. Donors do not select who receives subsidized support. Until the algorithm matures, human stewards approve each allocation against our written criteria. Over time, we're teaching the mycelium's algorithm to see imbalance across the whole network to help automate and optimize our rebalancing efforts.
And a few bright lines that protect you as much as us:
- If you want to pay for a specific person's care or goods, we love that impulse — and it's a personal gift, not a charitable donation. No tax receipt, no deduction, and we'll help you structure it cleanly (often the simplest path is paying the practitioner directly).
- Gifts from donor-advised funds, private foundations, and IRA distributions can never carry personal benefits back to you — IRS rules, and we guard your tax position as carefully as our own.
- A fund named for a practitioner buys care through them for members, at their standard rates — it's never a gift to them, and Lichen selects who receives that care like any other subsidy.
The boring-but-important part
Subsidies fund services that can be lawfully offered — by licensed professionals practicing within their scope, and by unlicensed providers offering the goods and services the law allows anyone to offer. Much of the world's best goods and services have never needed a license or a governing body, and they belong here. That said, where a good or service is provided through a regulated body, we work within the rules. Decision records are kept long enough to stand behind every decision we've made — our accountant sets the exact retention schedule.
Donor Neutrality and Fund Allocation
Gifts are pooled within their funds. By default, all gifts to Lichen enter a general subsidy fund. A donor may restrict a gift to a named program or charitable class; a restricted gift is accounted as its own fund and honored as given. Within every fund, general or restricted, subsidies are allocated at Lichen's sole discretion against the criteria published above — no donation is reserved for, tracked to, or drawn down against any particular recipient, and no donor's contribution can be traced to the care any individual member receives.
Donors do not select recipients. A donor may support Lichen generally, restrict a gift to a program or charitable class, and express interest in the work of particular practitioners. A donor may not choose, name, or approve the people who receive subsidized goods or services — a restriction names a purpose or an open class of people, never a person. However a fund is named, the people it serves are chosen by Lichen alone, and Lichen may decline any applicant or any restriction.
Referral is an intake channel, not a qualification. A person may be referred to Lichen by a member, a practitioner, or a donor, or may find us independently and ask to join. How someone arrives has no bearing on whether they qualify. The published criteria are applied identically in every case.
No donor's gift pays for their own care, or for the care of their family or household members. Lichen will not apply a donor's contributions to goods or services received by that donor, a member of the donor's household, or the donor's immediate family. Because gifts are pooled within their funds, honoring that takes real accounting rather than good intentions: when an applicant is a member of a donor's household or immediate family, their subsidy is funded from a tranche accounted separately from that donor's gifts — dollars given by unrelated donors. Need is judged by the published criteria alone; nobody is ineligible because of who loves them, and no donor's tax position is ever touched by their own family's care.
What we ask at onboarding. Members and donors disclose household members and immediate family who also participate on the platform. We collect only what this policy requires in order to administer it, and we do not ask members to catalogue their broader relationships.
Operating allocation. Lichen retains a minimum of 5% of each donation to fund the operation and coordination of the platform; a donor may direct a larger share of their gift to operations, or make their donation general and at Lichen's discretion. The remainder funds subsidies.
The principle underneath
The shadow of generosity is control — and this policy is how we keep that shadow named. Donors make healing possible; Lichen identifies where it's needed; members receive it freely, owing nothing to anyone but their own becoming.