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So we gave up the March Ad Experiment Idea - What about a 7day mini fundraiser?

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40hz:
Good time of year for a fundraiser. (Hint)

The holidays are over. It's still a bit early for weddings and graduation parties. And it's tax refund season for many.

Hmm... ;)

cranioscopical:
Are you telling me to beat it?
-timns (March 23, 2012, 02:43 PM)
--- End quote ---
On a sinking ship one only has to give a rat a plan...

mouser:
40hz said it all well about why we should avoid ads and stick to fundraising.


You guys know I have a hard time pulling the trigger on things..

The last fundraiser was last year and at that time the opinions seemed split whether we should hold a small fundraiser every year, or a bigger one every 2 years.

But I think I have decided we will have a two-week fundraiser for the first two-weeks in April, and try to raise a few thousand dollars.

I think in an ideal cases, we could have a yearly fundraiser that would raise about $5000 per year, which is about our yearly hosting expenses -- but I think that's a bit ambitious for this year, so perhaps we can aim for half that much.

This is also the year I really want us to move to a CMS-based system, and maybe shortly thereafter move servers again -- perhaps moving to a less expensive server setup which is every bit as fast.

I recognize that having a fundraiser every year may be just too much to tolerate.. And it may turn out to be wiser to not have it more frequently than every two years, and keep it a rare and special thing.  On the other hand, maybe there are some benefits to making it a less ambitious yearly event.

Anyway, there you have it: Small fundraiser starting on March 31 lasting for about two weeks until April 15.

If anyone has any small ideas for ways to celebrate it -- let me know!

wraith808:
Why is a fundraiser every year too much to tolerate?  You have the fundraiser because the donations are not covering the expenses, correct?  It's not to make extra money or any such thing.  So if there is a need, then have it... I'd rather have the fundraiser yearly than to suddenly find out that you keeping the site going on your funds has become untenable. 

I run a site that a lot of other people use for free for their server for pages, wiki, ventrilo, etc.  I know that it costs money to keep it up, and a lot of that end is really obfuscated from the end user.  I'm only able to keep it up without outside help because I host a few commercial sites- enough to keep it going every year.  If not, I'd have to do the same thing- its only fair that if everyone enjoys the site that the burden is shared.

All of this is JMO, but I don't think unreasonable.

mouser:
We could actually try combing the ads and run ads during the fundraiser with text saying "this ad only shown during fundraiser month".


You have the fundraiser because the donations are not covering the expenses, correct?
--- End quote ---

I need to say that this isn't quite true.  The only fixed costs the site has are the hosting costs, everything else is done on a volunteer basis.  The hosting costs for the site are large ($420 a month); BUT we raised enough from the fundraiser last year to pay for over 2 years of hosting, and we get get a little in donations every day.  So it would not be fair to say that we need to have a fundraiser to pay for our explicit expenses.  The principle we have always followed is fundraiser or not, we will always keep running -- we can always just downgrade hosting if we ever don't raise enough to cover them.

So I think the more accurate and honest way to describe the motivation for the fundraiser is that the money raised above our hosting costs helps me and the other coders who receive donations be able to spend more time working on site stuff and site projects.  I know I would give anything to be able to work on DC stuff full time -- and if DC could raise enough money to pay my bills I would do so in a heartbeat and be the happiest person in the world.  While there's no real hope of that, the donations that I do receive through DC are what makes it possible for me to spend the time I do spend.

Hopefully that's something people still feel good about supporting.. Perhaps a better way to think of it is that the fundraisers can be devoted to raising funds each year for hosting costs, and then any extra money coming in over the course of the year can go to the other site-related projects or to offset time spent working on the site.

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