Fundraising Time!
Greetings Mizahar!
At the end of March every year Mizahar renews both their domain names and the server fees paying a head a whole year. We are an absolutely free website, but that doesn't mean we don't have expenses. We do! And while this is definitely not any sort of 'we'll close down if you don't donate' type thing, the reality is we do need to pay the bills. The site owners will always pony up the funds if we can't get donations, so there is zero threat of closure. However, because we stay free and absolutely maintain that promise to remain free, we do need to solicit funds from time to time. Why? The running of Mizahar is expensive. Its hundreds of dollars!
What do we use the donations for? We absolutely JUST use them for the renewal of our domain names and paying our server fees. I'm very comfortable if we have around $700 in the kitty for that. Unfortunately we don't. And I know a lot of you have asked me about donations in the past and what I've always said is ... 'wait until spring... we need it in spring' because that's the whole truth. We don't pay month to month. We wouldn't get the discounts we do.
We carefully wait until our service provider sends us out a discount coupon just before our server fees are due and then we usually sit down and talk about it. Unfortunately those coupons are becoming more and more rare. Full price hurts. And both Tarot and I hate hate hate paying full price. We are frugal to the core.
Tarot also combs through the 'performance' part of the game and decides if we are running fast enough and if there's enough storage. Then he will try to make an educated guess if we are fine for another year or not and make adjustments. We've been holding steady for a few years now, but in the beginning I remember some hair raising moments where we suddenly and almost immediately needed new space.
The Domain Fees area about a hundred a year which we could cut back on but we'd have to drop the .org and .net
But what we can't cut down on is Server Fees and then a healthy emergency fund in case we need something else throughout the year. Server fees run $500+ and we need a little cushion in the fund for those 'in case' scenarios of upgrades etc.No one uses this money among the staff. Tarot handles it exclusively and doles it out as needed. If we get more than we actually need, we save it for the next year which is why we didn't need a fund raising post for last year. 2014 was a big giving year and had it covered.
So... that time is here.
Please donate if you can spare some funds. If you donate at least $5 (which helps a great deal if a lot of pc do this) then you get the donor medal! I know some of you collect the medals. This is an automatic thing meaning you don't have to wait for anyone to approve and add it onto your account.
I mentioned this in chat earlier today and was exceedingly grateful to find that we raised about $415 in about ten minutes. Thank you thank you thank you!
But we are still shy of that $700 and everything paid for + padding fundage goal. So please take a moment, give a look at how much the site means to you, and if you can please donate some funds. You can always check the donate funds page to see how many donations we've had and what the amounts are. And until we get to our goal, I'm leaving this up for people to see. Someone who's watching please post in here when we've met our goals. I promise you won't hear from me again until next year.
Here's the donate page.
Thank you so much!
Gossamer
