šŸŗ Make a small donation to help keep DiS online

I havenā€™t heard of ko-fi before. Iā€™ll look into it.

Iā€™ll also do a Facebook fundraiser again soon.

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@sean Is there any advantage to DiS if we use this new system instead of PayPal? (Iā€™ve got a repeating PP donation atm.) Or does DiS get the money in the end so weā€™re all good?

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PayPal donations come to DiS and will help the other half of our monthly running costs that arenā€™t the forums and also pay off some debts.

Discourse donations go to them direct for now. Depending how well the funding goes, that might change a little.

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Same question-ish. Iā€™ve contribution thatā€™s going via Patreon. Would it be more beneficial overall if I switch to the Discourse donation thing?

Patreon donations will come to DiS to cover our shortfall in advertising revenue.

Discourse supporter donations will go direct to our forum hosts Discourse (they may revise this) to cover the server costs. During this pilot, if we donā€™t reach the $600 a month, they will swallow the shortfall.

The forums are about half our monthly outgoings and due to the volume of traffic were about to move to their $1500 a month tier. This would have meant over Ā£2k a month running costs for the site and most months we get about Ā£200 in advertising (often if can be a lot less!).

Hope that makes sense.

And to be clear neither me nor anyone else is taking a salary or expenses from the site or forums . All monies go into the costs of servers and running of the business like filing annual accounts. Iā€™ve been personally covering some of the shortfall recently so this new fundraiser is a life saver for the site.

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Thanks for the detail. As long as wherever my money is heading is of benefit, all good!

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Hi @sean - was wondering if thereā€™s some DiS Merch I can buy to help with costs? Gig-wear ER20s earplugs/t-shirts that sort of thing?

Sadly not. We lost a fair bit of money making t-shirts in the past.

The investment required means we need to be sure people will buy things.

Ah - fair doos. Would buy a ā€œBarry says Iā€™m Drowned in Semenā€ t-shirt in a heartbeat!

does anyone know what happens when the totalizer goes over the 600 quid target? does the surplus roll on to next month or something?

No idea! @justindirose, any insight/gifs to share?

Itā€™s worth noting that the cost of hosting the forums was about to move up to their $1500 a month tier.

Also the forums are not the only running costs that Drowned in Sound has.

In all seriousness, the plan is to ā€œclose downā€ support by removing the campaign bar once the goal has been met for 7 days. I have a feature in the pipeline now!

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Noticed the total has dipped from Ā£603 to Ā£593 so presumably we have ticked into the new month?

Does this mean there is Ā£593 of monthly recurring donations because if so that would be amazing.

I logged in on desktop the other day. A rare occurrence. And I saw the running total banner/box. For the first time. Donā€™t recall ever seeing it on mobile (Android Firefox).

Should a monthly donation be showing up as ā€˜discourse.orgā€™ on my bank statement?

Yep, thatā€™s what mine is.

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Out of interest, whatā€™s going on with this? Itā€™s clear that some people havenā€™t been able to keep up their contributions as thereā€™s not much money on the little progress bar at the top of the page as there used to be. Is the rising cost of living going to adversely impact on keeping the lights on?

Edit: Sorry, not meant to be a direct reply to ttf. Unless you do know?

At the moment, we havenā€™t heard anything from Discourse to say thereā€™s an issue

Be curious of any feedback on this before taking the plunge