I have $600 in my bank account. When I checked the remaining available balance, my heart dropped into my feet. My rent is $475, due November 14th. I'm already half a month behind—that's $712.50 total owed. Electricity and internet are another $158. Gas and water run about $60. That's roughly $1,000 in bills I cannot cover. The math is simple and unforgiving. After those payments, there's nothing left for server hosting, cyberattack defense, food, or my dogs.
I'm out of money. I'm out of time. Unless we act in the next six days, Susan's Place goes dark on November 14th when I can't pay the electricity and internet bills.
This isn't a fundraising campaign. This is the last warning before the lights go out.
What Broke
Before COVID-19, we had something rare and precious: stable recurring revenue from monthly donors who believed in what we were building. Then the pandemic hit, and people who had supported us for years suddenly had to choose between keeping their own lights on and keeping ours on. Donations collapsed. I understood—I would have made the same choice.
We survived that. Barely.
Then in 2024, a catastrophic server failure wiped out five years of posts, conversations, and community history. To protect our members from being charged for subscriptions they might have canceled during that lost period, I manually canceled every single recurring donation. It was the right thing to do. It also destroyed what remained of our financial foundation.
The old donation system died completely when we upgraded to SMF 2.1 for security. Nothing compatible existed—not one working solution for this platform. So I did what I've always done: I rolled up my sleeves and built a new system from scratch. Line by line. Module by module. The backend is finished and working. The frontend isn't ready yet.
And now I've run out of runway.
For over 30 years, I've kept Susan's Place completely ad-free, tracking-free, and privacy-protected. No surveillance. No data harvesting. No algorithms deciding who gets help.
Because someone searching desperately for hope at 3 AM—someone wondering if they can survive one more day—should never have to be tracked, profiled, or forced to pay just to find safety.
That commitment, the thing I'm most proud of, is now what's ending us.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
When I founded Susan's Place in 1995, we were part of a very limited selection of transgender resources available anywhere. The internet was new. Information was scarce. Isolation was the norm.
Thirty years later, we're facing something I never anticipated: this site is more essential now than it was then.
We're living through an organized moral panic targeting transgender people—legislation banning healthcare, schools forcing outing of trans kids, states criminalizing parents who support their children, companies rolling back protections out of fear, and a daily drumbeat of dehumanization in the media. The attacks are coordinated, well-funded, and accelerating.
The people finding Susan's Place today aren't just questioning their identity. They're terrified.
They're the spouse who just heard "I'm transgender" from their partner of 15 years and is frantically searching at 2 AM for someone who understands—someone who can tell them their marriage might survive this, that their feelings of grief and confusion are normal, that they're not a bad person for being scared.
They're the parents who just learned their teenager is trans and are desperately looking for answers: How do we support them? How do we protect them? What if we say the wrong thing? What if school finds out? Is this really who they are, or are they confused? They need someone who won't judge them for asking the questions they're afraid to ask out loud.
They're the 50-year-old who's hidden their whole life and finally can't do it anymore—who's typed "am I transgender" into a search engine a hundred times over the years and deleted it, but this time they hit enter. They need to know that people transition later in life. That marriages sometimes survive. That it's not too late. That they're not alone.
They're the teenager reading years-old threads at midnight, looking for proof that people like them survive high school, go to college, build careers, find love, and have lives worth living. They need to see that future exists before they give up on having one.
They're the person whose family just disowned them, whose church rejected them, whose friends stopped calling—searching for a single place where honesty won't destroy them, where they can ask "what do I do now?" and someone who's been there will answer.
This is what Susan's Place does, every single day, for free, in private, without tracking who they are or selling their data or making them visible to anyone who might hurt them.
When we close, those people arrive at a dead link. The teenager finds nothing. The desperate parent gets silence. The spouse in crisis has nowhere to turn. The 50-year-old who finally found courage types the URL and gets an error message.
And they lose access to almost 2 million posts across 193 specialized boards—three decades of answered questions, shared experiences, and community wisdom. All of it goes dark. Every introduction from someone taking their first terrified step. Every success story that gave someone else hope. Every detailed guide that walked someone through their first doctor's appointment, their coming out conversation, their legal name change. Gone.
And they're all alone again.
What Saves Us
Recurring subscriptions are the only thing that creates real stability. Donations—one-time or recurring—keep us alive, but only predictable monthly support lets me budget for hosting, plan server upgrades, and build defenses against the cyberattacks that hit us every single day from state-level actors trying to take us offline.
Here's the solution, and it's simpler than you think:
If 100 or more people commit to any monthly amount—$5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $250, $500, or $1,000—we bring in roughly $2,000 per month in predictable income. That's less than one-quarter of one percent of our 42,000 registered members. It's the equivalent of a burger meal deal from McDonald's per month.
Our current expenses run about $1,600 monthly. With $2,000 coming in, we'd put $400 back every month for emergencies—server failures, cyberattack mitigation, unexpected costs. Within months, we'd have a real reserve fund. We'd stop living crisis to crisis. Susan's Place would be stable for the first time since 2020.
And right now, we need $2,500 in emergency funding to survive the next six days. If we raise that amount, I can pay all the immediate bills and have $2,100 in reserve—enough to finally breathe. Combined with monthly subscriptions, that stability keeps going. We stop the crisis cycle permanently.
- Subscriptions: https://www.susans.org/index.php?action=profile;area=subscriptions
- Donations (one-time or recurring): https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/SusanElizabethLarson 🔗
If your company or organization can underwrite us with monthly funding, we can guarantee this resource stays available indefinitely—and we will publicly recognize that partnership and support in a way that honors your commitment to our community.
If monthly giving isn't possible right now, I'm deeply grateful for whatever you can give. Every dollar keeps the lights on a little longer.
The Choice in Front of You
If you've ever found support here when you had nowhere else to turn. If you've gotten advice that helped you or someone you love. If you've read old threads late at night that answered questions you were afraid to ask out loud. If you've lurked for years, reading stories that made you feel less alone. If this place has ever mattered to you—this is when I need you to show up.
I've spent over 30 years fighting off cyberattacks from nation-states trying to take us offline. I've turned down what would likely have been millions of dollars in advertising revenue because ads mean tracking, and tracking means danger for our most vulnerable members.
I've given until there was nothing left to give.
Now I'm asking you to give back.
Not because you owe me. Not even for me.
For the teenager who's going to find this site tomorrow, searching frantically for proof that people like them survive.
For the parent who's going to arrive here next week, terrified and desperate to understand how to protect their child.
For the person who's spent 40 years hiding and finally can't do it anymore, looking for a single place where honesty won't destroy them.
They deserve for this place to be here when they need it.
42,000 members. 1.5 billion page views. Almost 2 million posts across 193 boards. Over 30 years of answered questions, offered hope, and saved lives.
It goes dark November 14th when I can't pay the electricity and internet bills.
- Subscriptions: https://www.susans.org/index.php?action=profile;area=subscriptions
- Donations (one-time or recurring): https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/SusanElizabethLarson 🔗
Six days. That's all we have left.
— Susan