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Thinking about a DonationCoder.com fundraising thing and a celebration..
mouser:
So i've been thinking about the possibility of having a kind of fundraising event thing on DonationCoder.com and I want to get some feedback from you guys.
We've ended up spending so much of our time working on DonationCoder.com and it's rapidly become our our favorite way to spend our time, but having so little time for other work means that the donations are more and more important to us just to help us pay bills and buy food.
Anyway, the idea would be that for like 2 weeks we would just have some kind of special banner on the site to say that it's our "fundraising time of the year" or something, and just in general try to draw attention for 2 weeks to the fact that we depend on donations for all of our funding, etc. you know, like other public broadcasting services do. basically just try to encourage people if they haven't donated yet to consider donating, and if they have donated a long time ago to consider if they might want to donate again..
I was thinking sometime in october.
I don't know if it would have any effect, but it might be worth trying if people here are not hostile to the idea of it.. I think we would also make a special effort to update the programs and just in general demonstrate that the donations really do help us keep this site going strong.
One other idea that I thought would be nice to add to the site during the fundraising event would be excerpts from some of the wonderful emails that I've gotten since we started the site, just of real people saying how they appreciate what we are doing. This was actually an idea that someone on the forum suggested to me and it seems like a really fun idea.
And i'd be open to other ideas that people think would be nice to do at fundraising time - i looked into some of those online tshirt places and stuff with the idea that maybe we could have like a donationcoder.com tshirt or something but the markups are much too high for the kinds of donations we get. but maybe we could make some iron-on tshirt logos or something ourselves and send them to donators or something.
I'm open to ideas :)
Do you guys think this would be an ok idea?
Carol Haynes:
How about one or two utilities that are only availble to people who promote DonationCoder.com in some way (website logo/link or wrting a review on one of the well known mirroring services etc.). Or possibly one of the giveaways based on some sort of user promotional effort.
As for user comments - you could have general 'Wow this is a great site' - type quotes on your home page, and a few user repsonses to individual progams on their own homepage ??
mouser:
regarding people who "promote" or give positive reviews to donationcoder.com or link to it - such things definitely help spread the word about Donationcoder.com but our position has been that we don't really want to get into a situation where it might feel like we are rewarding people for doing such things - just because i think it would take away from the acts, and make people think that such mentions of our site were done for alternative reasons.
At least the way it is now, when someone sees a link to donationcoder.com or a positive review of one of our programs on cnet, betanews, snapfiles, softpedia, etc. then they know it was posted by someone without alternative motives, who took the time to post it because they really cared for the program.
It really is hard to over state though how important such posts about our site and programs are are on blogs, newsletters, and software announcement/review sites. They are the way people discover us, and they are the way that people learn that we have an active community here and that we care about what we are doing and are trying to do something good and different.
(I can't thank enough people like you Carol who have taken the time to post a nice review of one of our programs on these software sites; it really is a nice gesture and very much appreciated.)
--
Yeah, i was thinking trying to do something nice with the excerpt type quotes, like little boxes here and there with a short excerpt and then visitor could click to read more. We really do get some nice emails, and we love getting them, and i think in this age of fly-by-night sites and scams i think it would help new visitors to be able to see what other people think about the site.
We will of course contact anyone whose email we would like to quote beforehand to get permission to excerpt the email.
brotherS:
I'm open to ideas :)
--- End quote ---
Great! :)
So i've been thinking about the possibility of having a kind of fundraising event thing on DonationCoder.com and I want to get some feedback from you guys.
We've ended up spending so much of our time working on DonationCoder.com and it's rapidly become our our favorite way to spend our time, but having so little time for other work means that the donations are more and more important to us just to help us pay bills and buy food.
Anyway, the idea would be that for like 2 weeks we would just have some kind of special banner on the site to say that it's our "fundraising time of the year" or something, and just in general try to draw attention for 2 weeks to the fact that we depend on donations for all of our funding, etc. you know, like other public broadcasting services do. basically just try to encourage people if they haven't donated yet to consider donating, and if they have donated a long time ago to consider if they might want to donate again..
-mouser (September 30, 2005, 06:08 AM)
--- End quote ---
I like the idea... a lot!
One other idea that I thought would be nice to add to the site during the fundraising event would be excerpts from some of the wonderful emails that I've gotten since we started the site, just of real people saying how they appreciate what we are doing. This was actually an idea that someone on the forum suggested to me and it seems like a really fun idea.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I second that.
And i'd be open to other ideas that people think would be nice to do at fundraising time - i looked into some of those online tshirt places and stuff with the idea that maybe we could have like a donationcoder.com tshirt or something but the markups are much too high for the kinds of donations we get. but maybe we could make some iron-on tshirt logos or something ourselves and send them to donators or something.
--- End quote ---
Ok, I gave it some thought, here are a few ideas:
* update the DonationCoder.com logo: I don't know how old it is but to me it looks a bit like from 2001 or 2002, especially because of the font. If you aren't a Photoshop (or whatever) expert just start a contest in the forum, I'm sure a few gfx artists will help :)
* during the period the fundraiser is running put a label/sticker in a very visible red color (a bit diagonally) across the right part of the DonationCoder.com logo, saying "fundraiser from Oct-15 to Oct-30 - please donate to help us grow - click here" - clicking it would bring you to a) the donation page or b) a new donation page, containing some additional info
* if you change a few other (small) things besides the logo (for example different background for sticky topics) you could combine the fundraiser with a site relaunch - write a short, nice article about your site and send that to a dozen of software news sites (I'm willing to help there a bit)
* offer something really cool to everyone who donates more than 100 USD
* every donation in those fundraiser weeks will enter some kind of raffle, choose a more or less cool first price and less cool prices for second to ninth winner
* open a new forum especially for the time the fundraiser is running where people should post ideas (about the site, your programs, new programs, whatever...). The best idea (use a poll to find out?) will receive a cool gift too or a tiny donation from you :)
That's all for the moment :)
mouser:
great ideas brotherS!
I like the idea of treating the kickoff of the fundraising with some site improvements - and a new logo might be a nice thing to do. I'm definitely not an artist so a logo contest might be a nice thing to do. and i like the idea of emphasizing that the donations will help us grow, which it really will. And i think you have a great idea that the fundraiser + site improvements should be accompanied by a little article about the site, where we started, where we are now, and where we hope to go, that people can read and that we can send out to other sites. Great idea!!
the idea of a raffle to reward donators during that period is a fun idea - but would people who donated on their own prior to the fundraiser feel like that was unfair? seems like they might. but we could do a raffle or two as part of the fundraiser and make it open to anyone who has donated at any time.. a special forum section of the forum for the fundraiser and ideas seems like a nice way to welcome new members :)
regarding special things for people who donate more than a certain amount..
the current policy of donationcoder.com is not to think about amounts donated. different people have different amounts of money, and a $100 gift from a millionaire means much less to us than a $5 gift from someone who has to watch their budget carefully and doesn't have much spare money. and taking the time out to help people on the forum, or posting mini reviews etc. is as valuable as any donation :)
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