Autostraddle’s 12th Birthday Member Drive, Membership Giveaway, and A+ AMA!

We’ve been fundraising for less than a month now and we are BLOWN AWAY by how amazing our community is. THANK YOU to the nearly 500 new A+ members who’ve signed up, to the thousands of people who straight (gay) up gave, to the people getting perks, to the A+ members who gave on top of your memberships, upgraded, and bought gift memberships for others!

Your dollars will remain 100% gay and in support of The Gay Agenda! Thank you!

So, we are doing SEVERAL things in celebration of this amazing community and what will be Autostraddle’s 12th Birthday on March 9 of this very year!

One of those things is running a second A+ Discord Server which Heather’s graciously spilled the details on.

And two more of those things are right here:

A+ Cobalt Membership Giveaway!

Speaking of gift memberships, we’ve gotten feedback from a lot of you all that you’d love a way to be able to gift A+ memberships to people who for reasons financial or otherwise can’t purchase an A+ membership right now. It’s a bit logistically difficult to run this long-term, but we sure are trying it in the short-term! So, from today March 2 – Monday March 8, you can contribute to the pool of memberships we’ll be giving away. Cobalt members get access to everything digital about A+, including all A+ content! We’re starting off with 3 Cobalt Memberships on us and ONE Platinum Membership thanks to a generous secret friend! We’d love to be able to give away as many Cobalt level memberships as possible and share the gift of A+. Will you help us out?

It’s extra work logistically to run something like this long-term, but for this short time, we’re trying it! (That’s the unofficial motto of this current fundraiser, if we’re being honest.)

Want to enter to win a gift membership? Fill out this form right here. No purchase necessary to enter or to win.

We will announce the number of winners we have on March 9 and will notify the winners via email with a code to redeem their membership also on that day. We won’t be announcing the names of winners. Winners will be selected via random number generator.

We love you and best of luck!

A+ Ask-Us-Anything / Advice-a-Thon March 9

The Birthday AMA has become an Autostraddle tradition! Log on, and ask the AS team anything (preferably about our areas of expertise) and get answers! This year, on March 9, from 9am PST – 8pm PST join members of the team including Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Ro White, Himani Gupta, Carolyn Yates, Meg Jones Wall, Shelli Nicole, Drew Gregory, Vanessa Friedman, Natalie, Bailey, Valerie and senior staff on autostraddle.com for four shifts of question-answering. The AMA is for A+ members as thanks for their support. You can join A+ right here! Have a question about A+? You can email [email protected].

The post will go live from 8am – 8pm in case you want to get questions in early!

9-11am PST: Meg Jones Wall, Carolyn Yates, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

12pm-2pm PST: Vanessa Friedman, Drew Gregory, Ro White

3pm-5pm PST: Drew Gregory, Shelli Nicole, Himani, Ro White, Natalie

6pm-8pm PST:  Vanessa Friedman, Valerie, Bailey

Autostraddle senior team members Carmen, Heather, Laneia, Nicole, Rachel, Riese and Sarah will be stopping in and out all day long, too!

See you there?

Interested in signing up for A+ and being one of the amazing folks who keep Autostraddle working? A+ starts at just $4 / month!

divider - green star

Support Independent Queer Media

We’re raising funds to make it through the end of July. 99% of the people who read this site don’t support. Will you be one of the ones who do? Joining A+ is one of the best ways to support Autostraddle — plus you get access to bonus content while keeping the site 99% free for everyone. Will you join today?

Support Autostraddle

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Nico Hall

Nico Hall is Autostraddle's A+ and Fundraising Director, and has been fundraising and working in the arts and nonprofit sector for over a decade. They write nonfiction and personal essays and are currently at work on a queer fiction novel and podcasts. They live in Pittsburgh. Nico is also haunted. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram as @nknhall.

Nico has written 217 articles for us.

9 Comments

      • Thanks for the q! It should be multiples of $30. There are two options, which are “Give a Whole Cobalt Membership” which comes in multiples of $30 and “Contribute to the giveaway” which comes in multiples of ten. Let me know if you can’t find the option, and thank you for supporting the giveaway! <3

  1. When I first came across AS, I had never experienced feeling part of a queer community. Years later, I’ve made the most amazing friends, learnt so much, cackled at Insider posts, and received so much love and support all through this site.

    Nothing gives me greater joy than being part of a gay mafia – here’s to sharing that feeling!

    Glad to be able to add a few – thanks for this @nicole <3

  2. YES! I gave early in the fundraiser and then have been waiting for this giveaway to drop to give even more. DONE. I love that you are making it happen, even as a one-time experiment.

  3. Thank you for trying this out! Out of curiosity, are the long-term logistical challenges related to membership renewal? I have a thought/idea about that if that’s the case.

    • Hi! Wow it took me a while to get back to you. Sorry! So, we’re good in terms of renewal, but the problem is there is no connective tissue between people signing up for giveaway memberships and the actual contributions toward the memberships, no automation there. So, right now, it’s a manual-ish process, which is fine for a one-off like this, but is not ideal for something run longer-term right now with the technology and time that we have.

Contribute to the conversation...

Yay! You've decided to leave a comment. That's fantastic. Please keep in mind that comments are moderated by the guidelines laid out in our comment policy. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation and thanks for stopping by!