What it costs
One rate per person, for the whole year
A season is bought by the seat. One seat is one person’s place at every course in the season, plus the recordings and their attendance record. The rate improves as the consortium grows.
Per person, per season
CAD 600 to 800
For a 13 course season. At the larger end of a consortium that works out from about $50 per person per course. Smaller groups pay a little more per seat, which is the whole reason the group exists.
A 9 course season is offered where a group wants a lighter year. Figures are Canadian dollars, before tax.
Why sharing works
One course costs about the same to run for twenty people or four hundred
That single fact is the whole economic argument. A strong presenter, a planned curriculum and a season of scheduling cost what they cost, and splitting them across a group of firms is what brings the price per person down.
It works in the other direction too. A larger group can fund better presenters and a fuller season than any one firm could justify on its own, so sharing raises the quality at the same time as it lowers the price. That is the part a firm running its own programme cannot buy.
A single firm on its own
Most practices are too small to fill a season. That leaves three options, and none of them is good: pay premium per-head rates for one-off courses, buy a library of recordings nobody watches, or have a partner assemble a year from whatever is available.
A consortium is how a small firm gets a large firm’s programme.
Why the group is capped
Bigger stops being better, so we stop
If the only thing that mattered were price per person, a consortium would grow without limit. It does not, because past a point the sessions stop being worth attending: nobody can reach the presenter, nobody asks a question, and a course becomes a broadcast you could have watched later.
So a consortium is built to about 500 seats and then it is full. It is a limit rather than a target, and it is the reason the saving is not coming out of the thing you are buying.
500
Seats in a full consortium. Enough to fund a strong season, small enough that a question still gets answered.
95%+ of firms renew each year, which is the clearest evidence the balance is right. Nobody is locked in.
How it is billed
Four things worth knowing before you ask for a number
- No per-firm fee
- You pay for seats and nothing else. There is no joining fee and no annual platform charge, which is what lets a four-person practice sit in the same programme as a hundred-person firm.
- Seats can be added mid-season
- If you hire, or somebody you did not expect needs hours, a seat can be added during the season and priced for the courses that remain.
- Smaller firms are grouped
- You do not need to arrive with a group. Tell us your headcount and we bring together firms that would benefit from the same schedule, so you reach a rate you could not reach alone.
- One invoice, per firm
- The firm holds the seats and decides who fills them. Your people never deal with a payment.
Payment terms, and how seats added part way through a season are priced, are set out in the agreement for your consortium. What a season includes covers the rest.
Get a number for your firm
The rate depends on how many seats your consortium holds, so the honest answer needs your headcount. Tell us that and we will price a season for you.
Or email admin@pdconsortium.com with your firm and headcount, or call +1 (416) 306-2072.