Thread: Member Donations for Site Maintenance & Hosting Costs

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Naa. We have mucho "members" but most are folks who haven't set foot on this site in years and never will. We also have a ton of lurkers.

I would guess we have less than 150 really loyal members who are here on a regular basis and actually have 100 or less real loyalists who might contribute to the upkeep.

Well, That makes me feel real special. I'm here a couple times a day at least. But, of course, Im new and trying to learn everything I can. BTW, I'd donate! Dont have much spare money to give but I would. What I have of shave gear I'd part with is none! And I dought anyone would want it if I dont.

I must be "special" too[emoji12]
I would donate.

I frequent various forums that are not shaving related, and some that are, most of which have a voluntary donate button. I don't know how they allocate the funds they take in, but most, if not all, characterize the purpose of the donation as 'to help maintain' the site. SRP had a one time fund raiser, probably 8 years ago or so, to raise money for a new server because the one we had was on its way out.

We could probably use some new hardware, but the main issue is not having skilled volunteers to do the software bug fixes and updates as needed. To improve the features on the site when the owners have something they want to get going, but nobody to institute it. It ain't to get Lynn a new Cadillac. So, not having the volunteers, if we had the funds to do it, we could hire a professional to do the work. Takes money.

I have no idea how much revenue it would take to accomplish these goals, but brighter minds than mine could figure that out I'm sure. We're not talking a whole lot per member either. Whatever your little heart would desire to give. Assuming this ever gets legs and comes to fruition.

There is a president. Oops, I mean a precedent.

Years ago there was a request for funds to upgrade SRP's server, or some other type of device I don't understand, and we ponied up the money pretty quickly through PayPal. It was done then, in my absolute ignorance, I don't see any reason why the same cannot be done to pay for more time than our glorious system admin is willing/able to donate.

I am very grateful for all the behind the scenes work done here. I wish I could volunteer some time to help with my expertise, but I'm fairly sure SRP has little use for stem cells. For that reason, I certainly would be willing to make another monetary donation. I suspect many of us would be happy to do so.

Originally Posted by tcrideshd

you might want to check your numbers hand, we at this time of the day on a holiday weekend have 1345 members signed in plus and actual member count at over 45,000 strong I think that qualifies us as larger than the large forum Tc

That was 2500 yearly donating members.
Right now there are 1046 at 6am on Christmas morning and over 95,000 members there. I'm not here to argue. But the site owner is the one who collects the donations

Merry Christmas everyone

Easy There GrassHopper Your Getting Yourself All Worked UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ha!!!!!!!!!!!! No You Dont Have To Email Me Back & Say I,m Not Getting All Worked Up !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Merry ChristMas From Another MichiGander

OMG I Just Checked My Email SRP Sent Me A BirthDay WiSh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How AwSome Is That!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!You Guys Rock!!!!!!!!!! I Think SomeWere In That Message It Said You Can Go Back To Bed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Buy NoW!!!!!!!No Really Ya,ll Have A Great Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Ty

I think Donation is a greqt idea... Not for any other reason than I know I waste money in a number of ways and if I knew it were possible to throw some dough here all it would take is less waste on my part to get her done.

Wonder if there is a workaround... There may be issues and difficulty in putting SRP as the primary recipient but what about the people or institutions SRP must pay? They certainly wouldn't care from who/where the money came from. Would it be possible to just link whatever account directly to them with a cap?

Say, for instance that there is $1400 that need to be paid to Awesome Website Maintenance (.com) yearly... Link said account directly to them and cap the amount at $1400... Once that amount is reached it cycles off until the next Due Date. No in-between handling of funds and thus no oversight and I doubt any ,com gives a rip from who or where they get paid. I use Namecheap for my site/domain and know I can put in any valid CC# to pay whenever the bill is due. Same idea may be able to be employed to fund a Gift Card and, once full, that card is used to pay the bill... Though that would require some oversight but, obviously, someone is paying the bills currently so may not be much of a change. ??

Seems like every webste I've really enjoyed (Bladeforums back in the 90's, iirc, went through very similar stuff...) has gone through something like this. The willingness to support here at SRP is great and every time I see this topic come up there are overwhelmingly positively supporting posts... I remember a LOT more conflict and heated debate at other places so we have a huge leg up on that already.

Quite obviously we have some very proud, driven and honorable folks driving the bus here at SRP and that is an incredibly positive thing.

Well, there is a lot of stuff involved in this. Just sending money seems to be the easy part. Tracking the funds, tracking it all, dicieding in the use of it, etc. Sounds like a headache to me. To make it a little simpler, maybe, a donate button, a contributor badge for donating and the funds go to the give-away items. But then the funds need tracked and spent right and checked by more than one person. Now were back to PITA again! Wow, this sounds like a lot of work for somebody or somebodys. If it happens id be more than happy the contribute but if it dont, i surely inderstand why!
Merry Christmas all.

I actually don't like the idea of a "contributor badge." I would hope that we wouldn't need to rely on peer pressure to get this to work.