RF Generation Message Board

This has been brought up more than once before.

I think it would be a good idea to set up a RFGen paypal and accept donations from members.

Those who donate would be helping to fund the site and then we could start running contests or having giveaways and taking some financial burden off those running the site.(Or they could just put money into the site as they usually do and strictly use this for other expenses...)

I am sure their are others who would be willing to put some cash into the site as it has been done before(unfortunately i was unable to be one of those people at the time).

If this were to get set up various contests or special events could start going on.

I don't under stand the questions (as it is phrased!).



So does a Yes vote say that Yes I am for it, or Yes I am against it?

I think the answers should be changed to For/Against to make it more clear.

I think it should. Mainly because there are a lot more people who use the collection tools than who post in the forums. A donation link put up for a couple of weeks could go by unnoticed to several potential donations from members who only stop by from time to time. Or even regular members on vacation or otherwise busy. That and with so many people from different backgrounds, countries etc etc we can't assume everyone can give at one particular time of year over another.

While we are at it we should discuss generating revenue from merchandise. I know it's traditionally been a small group of members fronting the cost of the server but if the site will have longevity it should be able to stand on it's own feet even if only partially. Even if the cost was once again carried by a few diehards extra revenue may even help to pay for future expansion and services as the site grows. Better to start now than be scrambling round trying to find cash when the bill comes.

Those who donate could even be eligible for a discount on merchandise. Long-term we could even start making appearances as a group at conventions or help publish homebrew games.

I agree with Tan. I think we should have a permanent donation link. Merchandise or at least t-shirts are a great idea. Also "making appearances as a group at conventions" would be awesome, but that may only work in Cincinnati.

I think donations are OK.  But I'd hate to see this site turn into a site where you have to pay to use all the features.  I like the idea someone brought up a few months ago of selling merchandise like T-shirts (A F-shirts for those with 2 arms on one side ;))  That way the site still makes money and we would be paying for an object instead of site features. 

Our site runs very well currently. We've had our ups and downs in uptime and responsiveness but we have made improvements to the scripts and our host has made improvements to the backend (mySQL server). As such, for now, we are content with our current hosting situation.

When we did donations last year, we did it so that a few certain people would not foot the entire bill for hosting costs. It isn't as though the bill is huge right now, but for college students it is something that would be nicer broken into chunks.  That is the only thing the donations were used for, and it is the only thing we intend on using it for. We're not a bunch of heartless, money grubbing bastards, and our philosophy towards donations reflects that. We only will do donations when and if we need them, and right now the only time we need it is when the server bill comes. Contests, staff positions, and everything else is funded and done because we love the site, and we love the community. For this reason, it has been decided that while we will continue to do donations for server cost offset, it will likely be the only thing we do donations for. We intend on doing donations a bit earlier this year, since a lot of people wanted to donate but there was the holiday season approaching. As such, the donation button will likely appear in September, and will disappear once we have raised enough money to cover operating costs.

I appreciate your willingness to donate year round, but right now that is not something we need, and who knows if and when we'll ever need to do that.

I agree with everything that Dave said.

I totally understand what you guys are saying but its not like we would be using the money for personal use or hoarding it as an investment it would be going right back into the community and those who donated in the forms of prizes of one form or another.

I'd just like the upper echelon to dwell on it a bit longer and maybe see what others have to say too.

If the definitive answer is no i am fine with that.
It only seems fair though to give more of our members a chance to weigh in on it.

dont care I wont donate.  I dont have the money anyway, so yeah.

I agree that from September through December should be plenty of time to raise the money needed for the server costs.  Heck last year we only had it up for three weeks before we met the goal, and that was during the holiday shopping season.

If members would like more money to be put towards contests or other items or events related to the site, we could factor them into the donations, but we would let people know that any money over the server cost is not essential for the site to keep running.  We could leave the button up over the few months we schedule, but would keep people up to date on how much we have raised and let them know immediately when we have reached our server cost goal.  Anything donated over that goal could be used for the extraneous stuff we do for the site.

As it is right now, the contests and other stuff we do for the site does not really cost that much money, so I'm completely fine with just using donations towards server costs. 

The truth comes out! :0

I really don't think people will donate if they think it'll be used to fund contests, only for the continued operation of the site.

My thing about having it year round is for pre-planning. Why not have resources available in case of an emergency? Should a site with 3 years of hard work put into it not have a contingency plan or a warchest for operating costs? If the site continues to grow as it has over the last 3 years this will become an important issue, so why wait until the last minute?

We have to think farther ahead than this year's server cost. Nothing wrong with having a rainy day fund IMO.

I don't mind donating to help pay for the server bills.

If you can't afford $5 or $10... sell some blood or something else.  :fap:

when i get my next check i can send some money in, we should have a warchest like tan said. we all know that that this site gets bigger and bigger every week.we never know when an emergency will come up?  i also would like to see rfgeneration tshirts. i would wear it quite a bit. if we are sending in donations wear should i send to? 

If you read the posts from Dave, Scott, and Eddie you will find out there is no plan (but lots of discussion from others) to have people donate now.  But stay tune for this:


The only exception should be ganon, when ever we can get money from him we should ;)

lol

yea 2scoop it was just a topic for debate right now.

Nothing set up.

Glad to see your all for it though :)

i was also thinking if we have some doubles of games we can sent them to one person who has a ebay account and we could raise money that way.

Realistically it'd be cheaper for save the money on shipping, sell them locally and donate the money. If you can't sell it locally there's a good chance no one on eBay wants it either.  :P

Personally, I think that the donation button should be displayed at all times throughout the year.  One never knows when they might have the extra $ to donate - having it up year round does not limit you to obtaining operating costs via donations in a small window of time.  I agree that it is important for all members to know that the donations are not being used to fund the monthly staff poker night.  Here is an idea...

Is there a way that we could display a 'meter' of some sort to show the total operating expenses versus the total amount donated.  You know what I am referring to - like the standard thermometer type graphs used at school donation drives - only much more high-tech to match the feel of the site.  People could then see if money was needed - and would immediately see the impact of their donation on this meter.  A weekly or monthly news snippet could be added to the front page to recognize and thank their kindness and generosity.  Actual dollars should not be listed with the name - all are important an no one should feel bad about even giving a $1 - all donations are appreciated.

I do like the merchandising idea.  This can be done with $0 up front - we just have to find the right supplier with a variety of products to apply the RF logo.  You could set it up that for every X dollars donated they could get a coupon worth X % off a store item.  This would not cost RF anything, but the supplier of the products would have to be in agreement since they would be processing payment and the like.

I would be happy to partner with someone on this if everyone agrees that we should proceed.

I think I've mentioned this before, but here is a place for promotional items. I've got nothing to do with the site... just have seen it used alot. :P

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/sell/

I've got items that were made by them, very nice quality. 6 years later I still have both the hat and the t-shirt I had gotten from a site that used them for merchandising.

i never tried to sell my doubles locally, i keep everything. i just thought if people had no money to donate they could send in games for prizes. i understand shipping would kill everything, or we could scan the games make an rfgen ebay account and we could ship are own games instead of sending them somewhere else and rfgen keeps the profits and uses them to keep the site running strong.

We've researched it, I've looked at it, and I've consistently pushed this project back for other feature-filled projects.

We'll likely be revisiting the store topic rather soon.