The Spoons Diagnosis Fund
I believe a diagnosis shouldn’t be a luxury.
Short version: 40% of my after-tax income from Spoons above the $48,000 sustainability floor funds autism diagnoses for adults who can't afford them.
Last Updated: June, 22nd 2026.
Current Fund status: Building phase.
Expected First Quarterly Update: September 2026
When Spoons is profitable, 40% of after-tax income (above a $48k/year survival floor) goes to the Spoons Diagnosis Fund. That money goes specifically to clinics to pay for adult assessments — never to individuals directly. You don't have to pay for or support Spoons to be eligible.
As of June 8, 2026, Spoons has not yet generated qualifying income above the sustainability floor, so the current reserve balance is $0.
Full details below ↓
I'm Omari, a 23-year-old autistic adult who built Spoons since job and work accommodations have failed me, and building this fund because too many of us can't afford answers. [More about me →]
Here's the actual math. If Spoons earns $150,000 gross revenue in a year:
- Gross: $150,000
− Platform fees (15%): → $127,500
− Operating costs (~$1,000): → ~$126,500
− Taxes (~33%): → ~$84,755
− Sustainability floor ($48,000 retained): → ~$36,755 above floor
- 40% to the fund: ~$14,702
- I keep: ~$70,053
The 40% applies to after-tax income above a $48,000/year sustainability floor ($4,000/month). Any income below that floor isn't part of the allocation — allocating it would risk money I need to survive, and I couldn't fund any diagnosis if I can't cover my own living expenses.
That threshold is fine with me: I have no plans to own a car anytime soon, I largely plan to bike around, and I keep my expenses low, so it isn't a major concern.
This commitment is written into the Spoons Terms of Service. [Read Section 6b →]
The Mission
The average cost for an adult to get a diagnosis is roughly $2,500, and a more comprehensive evaluation can go as high as $5,000+. This is for the US, and it's largely out of reach for most of us.
Formal diagnosis isn't required to be autistic. But without one, accommodations, services, and sometimes just basic answers stay locked behind a piece of paper we can't afford.
Some insurance providers cover adult autism assessments, but the vast majority don't. University clinics are mostly limited, and grants mostly fund services and usually require a diagnosis you can't even get yet. Whether we already have a diagnosis or not, it's pretty obvious to most of us that the system is severely broken, and not enough is being done to fix it.
And above all, most autism diagnosis providers focus specifically on children, not adults. This is a large gap, especially internationally — in places like Nigeria, South Africa, and Mexico. Most don't focus on adults, and assessments are still largely expensive anyway.
Most organizations that focus on autism don't do diagnosis funding themselves, but a lot of them work with clinics and with their communities to help someone get diagnosed. A lot of them focus on the communities that get missed most: women, BIPOC adults, LGBTQ+ adults, and people who were told they had something else for years before anyone considered autism.
The whole idea is to pay clinics directly so people can get assessed regardless of income.
Why this needs to happen
More autistic adults are being diagnoised more than ever, so why is this nesscarily a thing?
Paying to get diagonsied costs thousands of dollars - Without a diagnosised most jobs would simply not accomadate us without one, and even so would actively push up with the assumptions of us being "lazy" or "difficult". It essentially gives us barely a fighting chance in most jobs to work comfortable without dealing with sensory overload all the time.
International countries like Mexico, South Africa, and Kenya have extremely low to basically no support for autistic adults - When I looked up online to check the assessment prices for an adult autism evaluation in these countries, I found almost nothing & just one or two prices across the many sources that I found.
Example Mexico:
Focuses on stem therapy for autism, autism treatment and Psychotherapy. Completely unrelated for individuals getting diagosed purely "post-level" support.
Which means, not just in the U.S but many international countries are dealing with a far worse response to the massive demand for us adults in particular to get diagonssed. Most of these locations focus specfically on children.
How it Works
Who gets referred?
Partner orgs work with clinics to decide who gets referred, largely based on their community. Spoons does not determine who gets funded — and we don't ask for proof of income or trauma details. We vet the provider, not the patient. (As of right now, there are no partners signed up yet, and I don't want to assume that will happen anytime soon — but working with orgs, who work with clinics, is how this functions at all.)
Verifying. Once Spoons confirms the clinic exists, I email the clinic to verify the invoice, then pay the clinic directly. Spoons only asks for confirmation of the invoice — never medical records or history.
Who gets paid?
Clinics are the only ones who receive the money. Spoons pays them directly — it never goes to the individual getting assessed. Payment goes out in two parts: 50% as a deposit once the clinic confirms the booking, and the remaining 50% once the assessment is complete.
That way you never have to front any money — the clinic already has the deposit before you walk in. It's paid regardless of outcome (whether or not the clinic concludes the person is autistic). For no-shows, the deposit usually moves to a new date, but two missed appointments without a reschedule closes it, and the person would reapply via their partner org.
What does the fund covers?
In simple terms, the full cost of the professional autism assessment. What it does not cover: driving to the clinic, time off work, past or already-paid assessments, non-diagnostic services, and co-occurring conditions that may appear in the report (such as ADHD). Separate evaluations for those are out of scope — Spoons is focused on adult autism assessment, not co-occurring conditions.
If the person is diagnosed as autistic, they get a lifetime code for the Spoons app. It doesn't expire and can be used anytime. If the assessment concludes the person is not autistic, the assessment is still paid for, free of charge — and if they're not satisfied, the fund covers one second opinion at a different clinic, using the original report plus a brief written explanation (which Spoons can help with, since going through an evaluation once, let alone twice, is exhausting).
What do I need to apply?
When applications open, you'll apply through a partner organization in your region — the autism organization where you currently live. You'd include:
- Your legal name (for the clinic payment)
- Country of residence
- Email address
- Proof of the assessment (a clinic quote/invoice showing letterhead, your name, service, and total cost)
=The clinic's contact info, and your consent for us to contact the clinic to verify the invoice
If you — or someone helping you — can't complete the partner form due to burnout or a shutdown, you can email me at fund@getspoons.app in any format, and an alternative can be arranged to better help with this.
Current Status
Current status: building phase.
Right now, the Diagnosis Fund is still in the building phase. The planning, the process for emailing lifetime codes, the allocation, and the process of working with autism organizations and clinics are all still being reviewed and updated over time. It also involves a legal and payment structure, since I'm sending money to clinics — payment processing, tracking, fraud prevention, partner materials, and so on.
The 40% (see the math above) rests in a dedicated sub-account in my bank called "Spoons: Diagnosis Fund."
The fund opens when two things are true: Spoons reaches $10K MRR for 3 consecutive months (so there's enough to fund responsibly), and my $48k/year survival floor stays protected (so money I can't safely give away is kept for survival).I'd rather open it late but funded safely than rush it with barely anything to allocate — that would just be stressful with virtually no upside.
If you need help finding resources in the meantime, I found a few you can consider — including one I came across recently that does virtual diagnostic testing for a bit over a thousand US dollars rather than a few thousand. I'm not fully sure how legitimate it is since I haven't used it, so please be careful — but in case you have the funds and/or energy for it, I'll leave it here.
- Prosper Health
- Sachs Center
- AANE Adult Diagnosis Directory
- Link to Open Path Collective
- GRASP - Virtual Autism Assessments
Transparency
A system like this lives or dies by how transparent it is.
Each quarter, whether Spoons makes income or essentially nothing, the amount allocated to the fund account will be posted here with screenshots. If it's $40, it'll say $40. If it's $0, it'll say that too.
Once the fund launches (if it launches — I want to stay conservative), the annual report will show: gross revenue, platform fees, operating costs, taxes, after-tax income, floor applied, 40% allocation, pre-launch reserve (first report), partner orgs funded, diagnoses by region, cost-per-diagnosis, and any hardship-provision use.
Right now it's mostly me reporting on these things independently and updating this page over time as more info and data come in (such as assessment costs in different regions, if expansion becomes likely). But once the foundation is set and the system is more stable and proven, I expect it to migrate to a 501(c)(3) foundation with a board. That's well into the future and too soon to detail now, and it largely depends on how well the fund performs. A CPA review will also happen once scale warrants it, for the obvious legal reasons.
Allocation toward autism organizations is planned too, but won't be active immediately and needs a lot more planning first. That allocation will NOT come out of the 40% — it's treated strictly as an operating cost, no different from paying for the LLC or the getspoons.app domain each year.
Continuity
Current Status: FUND BUILDING PHASE
What if I vanish — what if I can't run this program anymore because something out of my control happens?
First, the money. Allocated funds would be transferred to a qualified org, or distributed to existing partners. The diagnosis-funding mission wouldn't disappear overnight; the responsibility would just pass to someone else instead of me.
Second, the app and the people who depend on it. If health, death, or anything unforeseen happens to me, any founder who picks up Spoons HAS to honor the 40% allocation, the Fair-Price Promise (no raising prices on anyone, for any reason), and the privacy commitment. If they won't, the app's code is released open-source — which protects against a company taking it, locking everything behind a paywall, and trying to squeeze every last penny out of it the way so many companies (especially public ones) seem to these days. And the Spoons lifetime codes? If Spoons ever shuts down, you keep your access — a final update removes the paywall, and the app becomes a free open-source download.
I'll be honest: I'm doing this while in autistic burnout (and dealing with C-PTSD), and I'm sure that once I'm in a better position and have addressed it through sensory-overload reduction and therapy, I'll be able to execute on this far better. So while I work on it, I'm making a serious effort to keep this system from overwhelming me — while staying very aware that the impact, if it succeeds, could be enormous.
I'm building the legal, financial, and operational infrastructure required to launch this responsibly. That includes: attorney consultation on payment structure, payment processing setup (Bill.com for US, Wise for international), tracking systems, fraud prevention protocols, and partner onboarding materials.
Privacy & Independence
The app collects no data — that stays the same whether or not the fund is running. The fund is a separate web process.
Spoons asks for a legal name for the clinic payment only. This is to work with clinics so the cost of the assessment being funded is covered for you. I'm not going to deadname you in an email, or bury you in a lengthy form full of filler or info that isn't necessary to operate this.
Any identifiable application data, such as your name, is deleted within 3 years of completion — or within 90 days if Spoons shuts down.
Hardship Provision
So, is the 40% real, or an escape hatch? 40% is a lot of income, and I set it that way on purpose: Spoons costs very little to run since it has no servers, and it's likely where this fund can have the most impact, given that an assessment in the US or UK easily costs thousands of dollars.
If there's a medical emergency, a major revenue decline, or another unforeseen crisis, the 40% allocation would be temporarily reduced until it's resolved. If that happens, I'll disclose publicly that the reduction happened, why, and when I expect to resume the normal 40%.
I take this seriously, because it's always a risk — especially if this runs for several years — and pretending it couldn't happen would be dishonest and careless.
General FAQ
No accounts required
Do I need to be diagnosed to use Spoons? Absolutely not. The app is for autistic adults tracking energy and noticing patterns in it. The fund is the separate thing, for adults seeking a formal diagnosis.
Do I need to buy Spoons to apply for the fund? No — this will never be required.
Diagnosis Fund & Lifetime Access
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This lifetime code system was made with a fair expectation: if you've gone through the exhausting process of getting a diagnosis — the small talk, the uncertainty, the sensory overload — the stress shouldn't carry over into having to pay to use Spoons too.
The lifetime code is offered to people whose assessment was funded by the fund AND who received a confirmed diagnosis.
I'm still figuring out the exact delivery and will have it set once the fund itself is ready, but typically the partner org that arranged the diagnosis will issue the code after the assessment completes. The alternative I'm considering is emailing the code directly and working with clinics to keep that process reliable.
The code works on unlimited devices, doesn't need an internet connection to activate, and never expires.
To activate it: on the main interface, tap the settings icon (top right) → tap "Paste code" → confirm. Your access is granted immediately.
What if you lose the code? First, contact the organization that issued it to you. If they've closed, contact Spoons at recovery@getspoons.app — backups are kept, and the same code will be resent to you.
These codes are only for people who were diagnosed through this fund. Please don't share them — codes can be revoked in future app updates if they're found being shared on public platforms.
Why does this exist?
Lifetime Access Codes: If the Spoons Diagnosis Fund paid for your diagnosis, Spoons will always be free for you. The code ensures permanent access.
The fund mission itself:
- Affording to get a diagnosis is very expensive.
- The gap regarding those of us who question if we are autistic is still very large and not enough work to reduce this gap is being done, at least not yet.
- Since Spoons as a business doesn't run on any servers or pays for ad's, the income that spoons could potentially generate to help this gap motivated me to help create this. Even if spoons did have to spend a lot more money each month on servers, I still would do this anyway.
Questions
If you have any questions about the fund and how it works, email me at fund@getspoons.app.
If you're an organization that works with the autistic adult community and is interested in the fund or has questions, reach out at partnerships@getspoons.app.