Foum funding. Cabinet re-shuffle and visibility of funding moving forwards.

[Talbot]

As many of you will be aware, Stanky has now stepped down as forum treasurer.  I ummed-and-ahhed for a fair while before putting myself up for the position, but AS has done a lot for me over the years, so I felt it only fair to put something back in, something I can actually do:   Numbers.

There are two major running costs for the forum:  Hosting and Software.  These are fairly independent of each other, but work like this:

• Hosting.  This is the major cost, and usually works out at somewhere around £50 a month, depending on the amount of traffic to the site.
• Forum Software.  This is a lesser cost, and is billed every 6 months, at a cost of about £30 for 6 months.

This works out at give-or-take £55/month, although all the above figures will vary, as the hosting is billed in Euros and the Forum Software is billed in Dollars. 

The main issue I have is that the previous method that Stanky used to accept funds in was PayPal moneypool.  This is now a discontinued service, so that's a no-go.  The major benefit of it, however, was that it was fee-free, so everything donated went to the forum.  Alternatives like gofundme and fundraizr are cost-options, meaning we lose a fairly significant % of the money donated to their fees (under 10%, but still more than I'd like.  I'm also looking at a service called Collectiv, as apparently it's fee-free, but I know very little about it.

The alternative is that people just send money direct by paypal or by bank transfer.  I'm less comfortable with this as an option, as I want to maintain the same (excellent!) level of transparency that Stanky had.  I'd welcome people's opinions on this.  Also, if anyone is aware of any fee-free (or indeed very low-fee) moneypool-type services, I'd welcome any recommendations.

Once a service has been selected, I'll be doing essentially exactly the same as before.. opening the floor to donations, then reporting back with a statement of account.

 

[chadders]

 I think that there may be an issue if people are sending money via PayPal Friends and Family to avoid fees unless Paypal believe that you have a big family and lots of friends. 

I seem to remember that it was an issue a while ago but it might not be so any longer.

Can't you just set up a separate bank account, for both payments and receipts, and post screenshots of the statements once a month or am I missing something?

[DeanH]

If you did go down the bank account route it seems that Revolut allow a moneypool style feature.

[busmansholiday]

Have a look at the possibility of an AS "bank account" via the range of high st / online providers.  You'd need two or three people to be on the account but then people could pay direct to it. Publish the accounts every six months or so via PMs to those interested. 

 

[Talbot]

Having a Bank Account would be complexity that simply isn't needed.  All I'm looking for is a level of transparency as to the donations made and the costs paid for, which is easiest using a moneypool-type service.  I'm just looking for one that doesn't decide they want 8% of what's donated.  Paypal Moneypool was good for being fee-free, there must be another one somewhere.

I'll look at Revolut  Not heard of them before.

[Talbot]

Right.  Having had a look around and looked at several options, it appears that fee-free collections are not a thing any more.  So:

www.collectionpot.com   Their fees are 1.9% and 20p per transaction, which appears to be the lowest of anyone I can find (and quite significantly less than fundrazr and others)  Which is what I'll use for this month's contributions.  I'll open this thread up again when it's time.

[Talbot]

Typical.  I locked this topic too soon, but thanks to a very helpful PM, I'm now looking at ko-fi.com  They appear to be set up as one of these "buy me a coffee" type fundraiser sites, but the major benefit is that they offer donations fee-free.  Over the course of a year that might save something like £30, so seems very worthwhile to me.

[Noel Tidybeard]

👍😎

[lesapandre]

Happy to contribute. Easiest wd be to make a bank transfer?

Ideas:

At the next big meet we have:

An auto jumble for members etc. We off-load stuff and - 20% proceeds made from sales goes to fund here?

We also have a jam and chutney competition* - there is even a thread on it - with jars sold off and 50% of proceeds goes to fund here?

*one way of thinning membership or disposing of someone who insulted your car.