2024 Update on our Fees

Thanks for visiting this page to learn more about how we set our fee structure for families we work with. Our goal is for our fees to be fair, equitable, consistent and accessible; this post helps to explain how we try our best to achieve that. 

LDS is a nonprofit charity that provides high-quality, individualized, comprehensive learning support to children, youth and adults across BC to help them build the skills and confidence they need to succeed. We take that mission seriously, so we are always looking at ways to ensure our services are inclusive and accessible for everyone across BC and Canada, including financially.

In 2024-25, we are adjusting our fees and household income scale.

• We have made a small increase to our rates to keep pace with financial pressures, costs of goods, and to offer our team living wages. 
• We have added another threshold to our household income scale to recognize the escalating living costs in BC. 
• We’ve returned to hourly fees, which are billed monthly. We tried a monthly billing option in 2023-24, where fees were averaged across the school year. Based on family feedback, we’re returning to billing monthly for that month’s sessions. 
• We remain committed to considering exceptional family and student circumstances warranting an individualized fee and payment approach.

Sliding Scale for RISE One-to-One Learning Support

Why an hourly fee?

Learners attend sessions that are billed by the hour for simplicity.

However, every 50-minute session has another 15-30 minutes of skilled work and care behind it. This ranges from our individualized intakes, personalized instructor-matching process and scheduling, case management, resource and curricula development, professional development on specific skills and strategies for working with our diverse learners, session preparation, session snapshots, RISE Learning Plan development, progress monitoring and reporting, and regular family communications.

See more of what’s included in your hourly fee in this infographic and this blog post:

Our commitment to accessibility is why we offer all our services on a sliding scale based on net household income. The ‘full fee’ amount we charge is still a subsidized rate that does not fully cover our costs as an organization and is well below the market rate for any roughly comparable services. We work hard to fundraise through hundreds of grants, sponsors, and donors yearly to ensure our fees are accessible. At the same time, we need to ensure we bring in enough revenue via donations, grants and fees that we can afford to pay our team of experienced, caring, specialized, and dedicated instructors and support team that deliver our programs and services.

So, even when we offer a family a low sliding scale fee, we at LDS are working to subsidize the balance of that fee. This potentially includes requesting you work with us to obtain third-party funding via CKNW Kids Fund, Variety Children’s Charity, or others, as these are also critical components of our budget.

In addition, we are always seeking funding opportunities to make some of our programs further accessible, and sometimes free of charge, to equity-deserving students and families.

We constantly scrutinize our processes and practices to ensure that we operate as efficiently as possible and keep our costs down.  

Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns about our fee structure, grant-funded programs, and initiatives or if you want more information. 

Thanks kindly for your time reading this and continuing to be a valued part of our community. It is our honour to work with you and your family. Please always feel free to let us know how we can better serve you. 

– Rachel S. Forbes, Executive Director

LDS is a community of dedicated professionals who write collaboratively. We recognize the contribution of unnamed team members for their wisdom and input.