Hi, dear Patreon friends!
So, I have a new thing I’m doing at the beginning of each month where I send a personal message to people with new Declined statuses, to thank them for their support, and to proactively share this very helpful article by @Emma on what to do about a declined payment:
… and I was wondering, would it be possible to adjust the language on that page a little bit? The part that feels problematic for our situation is that our people aren’t in our Patreon for the perks – they’re in it because they believe in what we’re doing and they want to support us. And indeed I think that this language specifically could be off-putting to some of our people:
“While your membership payment is declining, access to your creator’s patron only posts and benefits will be locked until the payment is resolved. We’re here to help you regain access to your creator’s awesome perks.”
I’d like to propose that this language get changed to something more like this:
“While your membership payment is declining, access to your creator’s patron-only posts and benefits will be locked until the payment is resolved. We’re here to help you keep supporting this creator whose work you value.”
… or something like that. Point being, this is not a transactional relationship for a lot of us – it’s something much deeper. And to frame it in transactional terms could seem fairly insulting, to someone who’s contributing a little bit of the not-very-much money that they have on a monthly basis to help us keep doing what we’re doing in the world – which describes a fair number of our supporters.
Thanks for considering this. I hope you’re all hanging in there in these wild and scary times. 
