As everyone knows, we do not sell personal data, we do not sell or run ads, and are supported and ran by the community. In the very beginning we tried to sell ‘premium vendor’ slots to support the forum. This went haywire quick and was nixed. Since then I have been struggling to find a way to accept money for the forum for expanding our services and usefulness, including looking into starting a non profit.
Currently this all runs through me personally. The goal is to move onto something more financially appropriate, hopefully with a group of members acting as a board.
The donations will be treated transparently, including hosting and dev costs.
If you would like to give back and support the forum I propose the following goals which will fund us 2-4 more glorious years. It will be spent something like this:
$2,500 Status Quo
$5,000 Database and server upgrade (Needed)
$10,000 Live Streaming server, git, Invest in WikiJane.com articles and design for the ultimate hash wiki.
$20,000 = We get our very own server in a colocation center with physical security. I will put up “secure” services for users such as @future4200.com email, chat(xmpp), file share, ipfs, alt-networks, etc. Paid dev time for forum development (plugins, themes, etc)
$40,000 = “Disaster proof” our setup. If the west coast falls off, a server will still exists on the east.
$70,000 = At this point we would start a hosting company and sell excess resources to other people to support ourselves. When this happens we can be self sustainable.
Individual contribution: Forum flair / sticker when I see you!
$200: Will be sent a future4200 patch
$300: pin
$500: shirt
$1000: hat
$5000: high quality swag kit
$10000: beta access to secure services, tailored solutions for your use case.
$20000: What’s your agenda here?
$50000: Will be the forum sugar daddy.
CashApp: $zhiland1
Zelle: zach@sidcostudio.com
Venmo: zhiland1 (I have had hiccups with paypal/venmo and prefer cashapp/zelle)
Other/wire/check: DM me
I’ve got some art someone can pick from, or would even do a commission for a donation to The Forum cause. I did $150 for the last fundraiser, so lets just throw it out there to see what people are thinking as far as donations and we’ll talk content. I’ll do a smaller piece for a smaller donation, and the bigger the donation the bigger the piece or whatever.
Just trying to help out however I can! I’ll take some pics of what I have currently, and upload them tomorrow. If there’s something you like it’s yours, or we can think of something
Wanted to say thanks to everyone who has contributed this week! For the sake of transparency that’s $250 so far, a solid 2 months of hosting at our current level.
