I think this would be a great help not only to me but others.
Feature, one patron account can gift for another patron account. This way no sharing of passwords or banking information is required. This would allow, say… a parent to gift their child a certain amount for a set time. Maybe a friend gift another friend.
Thoughts?
This is something I’ve been low-key wanting for a while too. It’d be nice to give to people like my beta readers and others who help me with my project.
This is something that is a hot request! It’s been discussed in some various threads, but I’m going to leave this here, because it’d be great to know how many of you would like this feature.
I hadn’t thought about this particularly, but if it were available I would certainly want to use it.
Yes, please. 
What if I (the creator) want to give someone a year of patronage – because I did a charity raffle or contest for a year of benefits or whatever. Is that the same as what’s being requested here? The key element is that I wouldn’t want to be charged transaction fees to “pay myself” for the gift – and I’m not sure whether or how Patreon would claim their percentage.
Yes. Please, asap!
Yep! There are people who have followed me for ages, and been helpful and supportive members of my community, who simply cannot afford to be patrons. I would love to gift them patronage.
And honestly, as a creator, shouldn’t I have the option to give people access without paying? It just seems like a no-brainer.
Yes please!
— Jack
This is how I work it at the moment…it’s a bit clunky, so I’d love to see this feature:
— Jack
Totally agree with this. Either a “gift patronage” or a “peer pass” thing. We’re supposed to be a community of artists and creators but we have no way to share our stuff with our peers.
I want to gift access as well AND the ability to tag certain account as ‘team members’ or even give them some ability to make posts. I run a podcast with multiple cast members and being the bottleneck between patrons and cast is detrimental to community building.
This is an excellent additional point. We should have the option to give free subscriptions to select people. Since we have the ability to make the entire site free anyway.
I would desperately want that. I have implemented something like this on my website, using a weird workaround to give anyone who purchases one of my books a “demo month” of Patreon backer access. But I am an odd case, since all my Patreon rewards are stored on my own site, not on Patreon – but Patreon backers can login to my website to access them.
You can see how I have it set up here:
http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/bookquiz1
And here’s a “sample entry” that shows the reader what they could get with Patreon access:
http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/manuela-saenz?a=wip-gallery
If there was a cleaner way of doing this, I’d be game. I’d want the ability to automatically contact the user after the demo period, though, and say, “hey, I hope you enjoyed it, here’s the link to support ongoing, if you’d like.”
How does the person who’s patronage is gifted to them get access to your private posts though?
Hi Emily,
The person gifting the patronage would enter the email address of the recipient, so that they receive all the comms.
That’s how I see it working, anyway. It’s only been up there for a short while, so no takers as yet but a gift option from Patreon would be much better!
— Jack
Ahh I see, that makes sense and is a great idea!
I personally think this would be a great addition to Patreon and could see many creators benefiting. I don’t think it would affect my own Patreon page too much but there is no harm in having the option.
I would absolutely love to be able to gift memberships to my Patreon page!
This would make it so much easier to collaborate with other creators if we could give them access.
Plus, I have people who do things for me and support me in ways outside of Patreon and it would be great to be able to give back to them with what I create.
AND it would make it so much easier to give all lower rewards to patrons on my nsfw Patreon which I am using as the nsfw reward tier. As it is, they are supporting me at a higher level, but they’re blocked from early access posts on the primary Patreon and I don’t want to spam their inbox by double posting. Luckily, I have patrons right now who understand, but it would be a terrific incentive to say if you sign up here you will also get the all access gold ticket to another Patreon.
It could also be used to give trial subscriptions or reward a patron who has been with you since the beginning with a higher level reward tier.
I can see this being used in so many ways, all of which would either increase collaboration between creators (my patrons and your patrons could potentially become our patrons), increase the flow into Patreon for new people (there are a lot of folks out there who are still not sure about this whole patron thing and a free trial here and there will get this more mainstream accepted), incentivize lower level reward tiers to pledge at a higher level, and/or increase certainty of current patrons staying with you (people are less likely to leave if they’re getting a little bonus above their reward tier occasionally. This month I needed examples for the limited commission tier in May and so I gave a commission to my two highest and longest pledging patrons. Both of them were thrilled and I’m pretty sure neither of them will be going anywhere anytime soon.) So much potential with this. I hope this is near the top of the pile. 