Financial Aid

Investing In Your Career as a Doula

As a birth or postpartum doula, you hold a responsibility to birthing parents and their children to provide the emotional, mental, and physical support needed to help ensure healthier, safer births. The skills you will learn through our Doulaing The Doula Training and Certification program are invaluable in ensuring you provide the very best service to your clients. Our courses and workshops are built around evidence-based, trauma-informed, and culturally attuned curriculum that you cannot find anywhere else. Remember, this is an educational program designed to provide you with a legitimate certificate to start practicing doula services on your own. It requires not only a financial investment, but your commitment, time, and dedication.

Financial Aid and Support Opportunities

We do recognize that not everyone has the means to pay for these courses, which is why we have developed a payment option, Person of Color scholarships, and providing in-kind class hosting opportunities to offset the cost of our courses.

Over 99% of DTD training participants feel confident and prepared to begin doulaing by the completion of the course.
Aspiring doulas are going over training materials together

Pay for Your Course or Certification in Equal Installments with a Payment Plan

We’ve selected a payment platform that allows our course and certification applicants to pay for their tuition in equal installments. Simply select the PayPal PayLater option during check out to set up your account and create your payment plan. All your financial transactions will be conducted through either of those platforms moving forward.

Person of Color Scholarships

Partial and full scholarships are reserved for people of color who could not otherwise afford to attend a doula training and who expect to attend births of people in their own communities. We offer three kinds of scholarships. Hopefully one of them will help you to fulfill your doula dreams! We offer the Milwaukee Matriarch, the Every Training Half Price and the High Impact.

“Person of color” means that you identify with a racial or ethnic group that has a heightened risk of pregnant people, unborn babies and infants dying during pregnancy and the first year of life. In colonized parts of the world, that is Black and/or African American people. However, Indigenous and Latinx people also live with these same circumstances.  Doula support can make a difference in outcomes, and lead to more involved and passionate parenting.

Are you already going to births? Do people in your neighborhood, church, or community ask you for pregnancy advice? You’re already doing the work of a doula. We want to get you trained so you can help your people the most.” This scholarship is for BIPOC people who already go to births and live in Milwaukee, Kenosha or Racine counties in Wisconsin. It covers the Certification package and one or two spots are available in all trainings taught by Amy Gilliland and DeAnna Tharpe. (Value $1500 each)

“We’ve had over twenty people take advantage of the “matriarch” opportunity in the last few years. Often they knew what to do. Now they know why it worked and have a lot more confidence.”

Any BIPOC person qualifies for a half price scholarship for the Basic or Complete Success Package. We have one half price space available in every training. (Value: $1000-1250 each)

Twice a year, once in the spring and the fall, we have two complete scholarships for the Essential Success Package. (Value $2000 each)

We do not offer scholarships for a single course or course series.

We want the process to be approachable and friendly. Write Amy or LeKecia an email with a few paragraphs about how the doula training helps you to complete your goals and fulfill your dreams. If it’s easier, you can send us a short video.

Scholarship recipients are expected to complete the online class assignments, pretest, and readings in a timely manner. Often, people who are attracted by the discounted price don’t end up doing the prep work and fade away. The people who really want to be doulas are thrilled to get a scholarship and aren’t any different than anyone else in a training. THOSE are the people we want to support. Contact us through the chat or email if that’s you.

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Claudia Booker, recognized for her accomplishments as an attorney, doula and midwife by the international organization Human Rights In Childbirth, has said she would not be where she is today if she had not received her doula training for free.  That started the whole cascade of making a HUGE difference in perinatal care for Black women. Her story inspired me. Read more:  Tribute to the Life of Claudia Booker

People attending the doula training who do not need a scholarship are welcome to donate to the scholarship fund. Your dollars will be matched one on one, increasing the number of doulas of color in the world and spreading the power of personalized caring labor support.

“The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity.”

- Viola Davis, 2015 Emmy acceptance speech

“FAIR is what is needed to get to the best possible outcome.”

- Natalie Burke, DONA International Summit Speaker, 2019
An empty room with training materials set up

Hosting Work Scholarships – In Person

We offer a single Hosting Work Scholarship for each of our in-person workshops. This scholarship is available to the first person who asks for it. We negotiate a tuition discount in exchange for your help to set up the DTD Childbirth Class and Doula Training the nights before they begin; stay a half hour each evening to set up the next day; stay an hour or so the last day to pack up; and maintain the snack table during the training. Depending on your availability we can usually negotiate a discount of $200-$300.  This is a firm commitment – we’ll be counting on you! But it’s usually enjoyable because you have your DTD Trainer all to yourself for a while each day.  Arrangements for Hosting Scholarships are made with each individual trainer, so send them an email if you’re interested!

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