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


Talbot

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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.

 

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 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?

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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.

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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.

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  • Talbot locked and unpinned this topic

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.

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  • Talbot unlocked this topic

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.

Screenshot_20211129-143119_Chrome~2.jpg

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