Keep Weekly Davespeak Alive - Donate to the 2007 Annual Fundraiser

[Rob]

What's Going On?
Weekly Davespeak is holding its annual fundraiser to pay for the services associated with the website.

Donate Now

Main Costs
Weekly Davespeak has the following costs:
Dedicated Server: $130 / Month + $35 / Month for managed hosting and $9.99 / Month for cPanel an important administration utility license.
vBulletin: $30 annually for license renewal
Email Newsletter Service: $42.50 / Month

Secondary Costs
Contests: Weekly Davespeak holds contests on a semi-regular basis with prizes that are often paid for out of pocket by the site administrator (rob). It would be wonderful to have these costs picked up by the community. We've budgeted $94.64 to hold a quarterly contest for a ~$24 prize. (This is the cost a single Live Trax CD.)

Paypal Finances: Paypal takes ~5% off the top of donations. In order to take contributions securely via credit card we need to be include this service charge in our fund raising target.

Total Donation Target: $2,874.65

How Much Should I Give?
WDS has 2364 active board members. These are people who have posted 10 times or more since the beginning of 2006. The WDS Newsletter has over 4100 verified subscribers.

With those kinds of numbers, individual donations donations of $5-$10 should be enough. During last year's fundraiser, the average donation was $13.00. Donating more than the suggested amount is greatly appreciated but should not be necessary.

Donate Now

Donation Options:
Donations are linked to your email address. Paypal reports directly to Weekly Davespeak several details about the transaction, (though none of them include your CC or anything of that matter).

As we did last year, we will give you "donor status" on the boards for donating. This entitles you to the donors-only Red Rocks video from last year, along with the Donor forum. Donor status to people's accounts at least once a week for the duration of the drive.

If you would like your donation linked to your username, either:

1. Your Paypal account must be under the same email address as the WDS forum.
2. You need to tell us "Notes" of the payment what your WDS forums username is.
3. Pay by CC and put your WDS registered email address in the e-mail.

This is all automated for you if you are logged into the forums and use the Donate with Paypal button on our donate page. However, you do not need a Paypal account to donate, as Paypal accepts all major credit cards. :D

Notes: this is what the donate button looks like:

WDS Donors
Donations to Weekly Davespeak are mostly anonymous. The Donate page lists the last three donors, but otherwise we do not wish to compel users into donating by publicly highlighting who has and has not donated. Instead we ask you to consider how you have used and plan to continue to use WDS in the future and make a donation based on your personal connection to the site.

The Future of WDS
The future of WDS depends on the success of this fund raising campaign. Weekly Davespeak is in its third year of operation it receives well over 65,000 unique visitors a month, (double that of this time last year!). WDS is run by a staff of volunteers.

Last year we promised to to take steps to change the technology behind the main site so it can be easily updated and maintained by a group of people rather than a one individual. We followed through with this promise by completing the laborious process of changing our Content Management System to Drupal.

We also said that advertising would virtually disappear from the website for all registered users. We not only removed it for registered users, but unregistered as well. You do not see the annoying Google Advertisements you see on other websites on the forums or any articles created since the fund raiser last year.

Goals for this year include distributing the workload of updating the content on the main page and in the newsletter over a larger group of people. It is difficult to keep a high level of quality and allow many people access to key areas of WDS. This is a task we will approach in 2007.

Donate!
The donation link is http://www.weeklydavespeak.com/forums/donate.php. The page shows you how much has been donated, and how much we have left to raise.

Finally, just over 180 people donated to get this site on to a dedicated server last year. I'd like to personally thank you for your contribution. With that, we have a decent sized target this year and hope to increase that number, so please, please. Donate to the site.

rob

Donate Now

[Rob]

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

Why do we pay for a newsletter service?

The WDS newsletter has a subscriber list of over 4100 people. In order to send emails out to a group this size you really need a service who can manage spam concerns. We take spam very seriously and thus require a double-opt-in system in order to subscribe. Even still, people have hit "report spam" on before which is taken very seriously website hosts. Using a professional service protects Weekly Davespeak from accidental spam reports.

Why is the fund raiser target higher than last year?

Last year we successfully raised our target of $2277.45.This price did not include the cost of either cPanel or managed hosting. We did this to try and keep the price of the drive as low as possible. After a month of trying to make it without these two items it became clear that life keeping Weekly Davespeak running would be so much better with them. They were paid out of pocket by the site administrator. (rob again!)

Wait a second, I see links up for Bonnaroo and Vegoose sometimes, isn't that advertising?

We reserve the right under certain situations to show ads for strategic partners. I.E. WBCN's Cali asked for a promotion once, The company behind Bonnaroo (Superfly) has been good to us, etc.

I want to donate, but I don't like using my credit card on the web

We have chosen PayPal to process all donations to Weekly Davespeak because it is a secure and popular method for sending money using the web. We strongly recommend using PayPal to donate to Weekly Davespeak because it allows us to easily upgrade your account status to donor levels, and it is safe. If you really don't want to send money using PayPal, we will take checks mailed. Please use the Contact Us link to ask for our postal address and info.

What If the Band Breaks Up or the World Ends?

Dave Matthews Band has been touring consistently without a break longer than the Grateful Dead. It is reasonable to expect that a hiatus could be declared at any time. If this happens, WDS will continue to cover Dave Matthews' solo efforts and those of the other band members. If the world ends you go on to your next place happily knowing that you did the right thing donating to Weekly Davespeak.

Got another question that is keeping you from supporting WDS? Please either send me a private message or post in this thread.

Donate Now

[ioread]

I recently just discovered WDS.com and I am in touch with the band more then ever before. I will be giving some and I encourage others to give as well.

[theponderousman]

OH OH OH, and if you donate more than $20, Rob will personally come to your place and clean it for you, which is REALLY cool because I don't know of any other admin at a site this cool that'd do that for you.

Seriously though, as a long time addict (user, whatever you wanna call it), to WDS, I was really glad to see last year's appear to be as successful as it was. I've gained some great friends and 'people in the know' since joining and would hate to see this place have to bow down to the tyranny of evil (the man). Great job to Rob and the rest of the crew for doing a great job! I'll donate here shortly!

Christian

[Charles]

Originally Posted by theponderousman

Seriously though, as a long time addict (user, whatever you wanna call it), to WDS, I was really glad to see last year's appear to be as successful as it was. I've gained some great friends and 'people in the know' since joining and would hate to see this place have to bow down to the tyranny of evil (the man). Great job to Rob and the rest of the crew for doing a great job! I'll donate here shortly!

Christian

Couldnt say it better myself. I have made soo many friends on this site and I have shared and gained alot. I have only meet 4 people from wds, Bryan, Nicole, Jenn and her fiance, that I hope in upcomming tours to meet other dmb wds fans.

[Rob]

I'm not doing house calls.

We had a good first day, many thanks to the people who have donated so far!

[dixeechicken]

I would like to donate but my paypal address is different from my addy that I use here. What other options do I have?

[Jeff]

Well in the notes just state the email address from this site or your username.... Another thing you can do is just use your debit or credit card and not sign in with your paypal account. Then list your address as the one you use here.

A third idea I just came up with is that you could temporarily change your weeklydavespeak email address to the one you use for your paypal and then change it back after you donate. I am not sure if this idea will work but it sounds like it would...

[theponderousman]

Originally Posted by dixeechicken

I would like to donate but my paypal address is different from my addy that I use here. What other options do I have?

If ROb's account is only accepting paypal payments with a confirmed address, just use that. It really shouldn't matter as to the addresses. You can send money from anywhere really. Check with Rob, or post the 'error' message that you get here, I'll help out.

And yes, I used to work at PayPal, both of my brothers still do

[dixeechicken]

Nevermind, I'm an idiot. I just reread the original thread and I see now that I had misread it the first time. Thanks for the help.