obligatory preface that we’re 100%-user funded and everything you donate to us specifically goes to the website, or any outside labor we pay to do something for us.
this update is only because after a long round of troubleshooting with volunteer sysadmins and sysops yesterday, we committed to significant new expenses that have helped solve any errors that people were previously getting. our hopefully-final update of where we stand is a break-even of $54 a month or $648 a year. (please once again ignore OC’s estimated yearly budget–we don’t determine it lol)
our expenses are currently:
- $48/mo toward our host, Digital Ocean. (reversible. if we need to commit to further than this it is also likely we will seek another host since DO is on the expensive side)
- $2/mo for weekly backups
- $4/mo for daily snapshots of the website, which would allow us to restore the website in between the weekly backups if need be.
for a total of at least $54/mo in expenses. this may vary from month to month though, so we’re baking in a bit of uncertainty with our estimation.
we currently have, for the month of June:
- $85/mo in recurring donations (at least for June)
- $620 this month in one-time donations
for a total of $705 this month. our total balance now stands at 726.51.
that balance means we now have about a year of reserves currently, if we received no other donations and have no unexpected expenses. i’m sure we’ll have churn in our monthly donations and such though, so please don’t hesitate to donate on our OpenCollective page if you’d like to keep the site going.
thanks folks!
Will you ever create a legal entity for beehaw? Having a legal entity with a proper organization would allow you to have a dedicated bank account with proper ownership that is less susceptible to corruption
I also think you could try to get a corprate sponsor. You could create a rentable image on the front page that companies and individuals could rent out for a month.
I personally have no interest in making this corporate in any capacity and do not want to invite the voice of capital. I suspect the other admins feel similarly but I won’t speak on their behalf.
Although I oppose corporate sponsorship, I would encourage you to strongly consider incorporating (probably as a nonprofit incorporation, options vary by state) as you scale upwards. This offers legal protection not only to the operators of the service but also to the users, since it allows for appropriate controls on governance and finances. Unincorporated community services that take donations are, unfortunately, notorious for corruption and self-dealing since there are few legal and organizational measures in place to prevent it.
Beehaw would most likely not qualify for federal tax exemption (but you could get an attorney’s opinion). In a way that’s a good thing, as the typical cost of getting an IRS letter of status runs over $1k while the typical cost of incorporating a nonprofit in most states is around $100. This is all US-centric of course, in other countries I have no idea!
Sorry to be clear I meant taking on capital in exchange for a voice, how pretty much all vc and funding works. We should, eventually, become a formal nonprofit because then all the wonderful donations can also be a tax write-off for our users 😊
Are they not? The donation page says “This Collective’s Fiscal Host is a registered 501©(3) non-profit organization. Your contribution will be tax-deductible in the US, to the extent allowed by the law.”
I presumed this was based on the umbrella you were accepted under to be on opencollective?
Okay so digging into the website a little bit more, it sounds like they do all the paperwork to make it a 501c3. I’m not sure where it’s incorporated and haven’t seen the actual document of incorporation. I will reach out to their support to better understand the situation.
I didn’t set up the open collective and I don’t fully understand how it works. This is what I remember from browsing their docs but I wasn’t involved in it’s setup nor in any legal paperwork. I’ll talk with Chris and see what this involved.