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.
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 is important because 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. 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 aspect of the platform moves you, you may restrict your gift to a named program or open charitable class — clean food, or care through a practitioner's fund, for example — and we account for it as its own fund and honor it as given. If a purpose is fulfilled or becomes obsolete, we come back to you before a dollar moves elsewhere.
You never choose who drinks. Donors do not select who receives subsidized support. However a fund is named, the people it serves are chosen by Lichen alone, against written criteria codified into our algorithm over time. How someone arrives — referred by a member, a practitioner, or a donor, or finding us on their own — has no bearing on whether they qualify.
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.
- 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 goods and services that can be lawfully offered — by licensed professionals practicing within their scope, and by the many providers offering what the law lets anyone offer. Where a service is regulated, we work within the rules, and we keep decision records long enough to stand behind every decision we've made.
Donor Neutrality and Fund Allocation
No donation is traced to a recipient. Within every fund, general or restricted, gifts are pooled. No donation is reserved for, tracked to, or drawn down against any particular member, and no donor's contribution can be traced to the care any individual receives.
No donor's gift pays for their own care, or their family's. Members and donors tell us at onboarding about household members and immediate family who also participate on the platform — that's all we ask, and all this policy needs. When an applicant is related to a donor, their subsidy is funded from 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.
Operating allocation. Gifts designated for care and community subsidies carry an allocation to Lichen's operating costs: a minimum of 5%, and never more than 15%. Within that range the rate is set annually to match our actual operating costs for the trailing twelve months. Where real costs exceed 15% of designated gifts — as they do while the platform is young — the difference is covered by earned revenue, unrestricted gifts, and the founder's unpaid time and personal funds.
Unrestricted gifts carry no such cap. They are used wherever Lichen needs them most, which may include operations in full.
What operating costs cover. As of September 2026: the software the platform runs on (Vercel, Supabase, Figma, and Claude); legal consultation to build Lichen's business and governance infrastructure; accounting and tax preparation; and periodic engineering consultation to strengthen the platform's security and quality. Lichen's founder draws no salary and currently covers some of these costs from personal funds.
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.