Donations to Forum Costs and other money stuff.

[Noisy]

Hi everyone,

A few of the forum's bills are coming in at once so for the first time, I'm asking for donations towards for our website expenses. It's not a huge amount of money but any contributions, however small, are welcomed. This year's payable website expenses, including hosting and domain names comes to ?59.23. (It's very likely that next year's expenses will be reduced to around ?35.)

A breakdown of 2010's total website expenses are as follows:

Item                          Duration    Cost          Notes
Web Hosting              1 year      ?24            -
Domain Name .co.uk    2 years    ?23.49     Expensive but will get this price reduced before next renewal
Domain Name .com      1 year     ?11.74    -

 

There is absolutely no-obligation to donate at all so don't worry, the forum will continue anyway. The donation system setup below should help to streamline the whole process. Please let me know of any problems that you may experience. Don't worry! There is no danger of your money going missing into cyberspace and every donation will be accounted for on this page, either automatically or manually. Please not that a small amount of each donation is taken by Paypal (beyond our control) for their fees.

For anyone who chooses to donate anonymously, only the amount and date will appear in the donations list. Your name will only be visible to you and me (the site administrator).

Thanks for reading,

Martin. brightonanxiety@aol.co.uk

Click here for the donations page: http://brightonanxietyforum.com/baf/index.php?action=treasury

[Noisy]

Separate to the website costs, I was also thinking of having a forum (mobile) phone line to be switched on at certain, published times for answering general enquiries and also around our meeting times. I know from past enquiries that some people still prefer to talk rather than email and I'm sure it would be help for new members to find us at the meets.
I have a usable phone already so the cost will be ?10 which I'll pay myself as my own contribution. This cost is not included in the ?59 target mentioned above.

[Alexandra]

Phone line sounds like a really good idea!

btw I just clicked on the donation link and got an error message.

[stresspuppy]

Hi Noisy,

Clicking on the donate gives me the message 'An error has occurred! -  can not view treasury'

Thanks for keeping us in the picture about the forum costs and think the phone is a good practical solution for people who prefer to talk and need directions to meets.

Sounds like you're making some really positive moves forward with the forum  keep up the good work and let us know if you need any help with anything else 

[Noisy]

Cheers guys, I'll do some testing and hopefully get it sorted. :-)

[Noisy]

Sorry, should all be working now! 

Also, I realise (or rather someone has suggested   ) that some people may rather donate cash in person. This is fine too and everything will be documented (anonymously if preferred) here just to keep everything transparent. Uh oh! Expenses!? Transparency!? I'm beginning to sound like a politician!  

Martin.

[stresspuppy]

well just wait for that call Noisy - sounds like we might be heading towards a hung parliament! 

[Noisy]

Thanks everyone for your response so far. I'm also very relieved to see that the system is working and that the donations are listed on the Donations/Treasury page. Individual donations are listed toward the bottom right of the page and there is an option to donate anonymously if preferred.

Thanks again,
Martin.

[Noisy]

Thanks to everyone who's donated, I'm very happy to say that last year's website costs have been covered by your generosity.

As stated earlier, this year's website costs should be significantly lower and I'll update the details of that in due course.

Usually, up until December the 31st, the individual donations have been listed on the donations page but the software has unfortunately removed this and started again for 2011! So I've listed the donations below for transparency.

Here's a list of the donations received for last year's website running costs. One person indicated that they'd prefer to remain anonymous. The figures below appear slightly over our target but do not take into account the small charge taken by Paypal for each donation:
                                
AlexTheAnxious   GBP   27.95   
Stresspuppy   GBP   8.00   
ghost of mr bob   GBP   5.00
Anonymous    GBP   20.00   

Summary of All Donations
                Total GBP      Gross     Fees   Net
Amount   4   58.08           60.95     2.87    58.08

Thanks again to everyone that donated. You didn't have to and apart from sharing the cost, it provides a bit of a boost to have your support.