Currently, we have $6,500.91 in our hopper.
It just seems weird having all of those, mostly, unused funds sitting there doing nothing.
I just wanted to start the conversation about the possibility of paying-it-forward in some capacity. For example, a certain percentage of monthly contributions could go to a charity.
What are your thoughts?
I think that question is definitely a worthy cause, but entirely misplaced. As others said, they donated to Beehaw not to some other foundation or charity. Rainy day fund is better than an oh shit, we’re broke moment. I am extremely grateful to those who have and continue to donate towards Beehaw’s Cause. We need to make sure that money is used, when needed, as expected.
Let it ride.
That money should be used to keep the server(s) running, as well as expanding if/when needed. Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
Yeah, I agree. You never know when you’ll need the money for an emergency, so I think it makes sense to hold onto the funds for unexpected expenses in the future.
The funds aren’t sitting there doing nothing. They’re available in case Beehaw ever needs them. I didn’t donate to a non-descript charity. I donated to Beehaw with the understanding that those funds would be used to stabilize the organization, whether it changes from Lemmy to some other platform, or whether it experiences another sudden quadrupling of membership overnight. That’s what the money is for. If you put it in some kind of HYSA, it could be growing at 5% per month. Why shoot yourselves in the foot by giving it away?
I suggest putting bounty awards or running contest (prizes) for open source software related to Beehaw… even $50 for certain feature, make a dedicated website maybe (Beehaw Bounty .org or something)
As far as I can remember, that may be possible if/when we spool our framework, however, the Lemmy devs have said that they don’t want people doing this. Do take this with a grain of salt as I know my memory isn’t great.
I’d keep it liquid for the reasons already stated, and in a bank that behaves ethically. Money never really sits at rest in an account, the bank will invest it any way. Plenty of them don’t have ethical considerations.
For example, if my info is not incorrect, in the Netherlands one of the largest banks only gave out loans to farmers who expanded their livestock, even if they were against it. Now they have their backs against the wall with emissions. So it was shortsighted and bad for the farmers, climate change, and animal rights, and it’s been causing plenty of political issues here too.
I agree with everyone saying “donations are for running the server, use as intended”, although I like the idea of the tiny mod-team getting a small monthly stipend or something. Maybe consider adding “5% of donations are divided among the mods for coffee and therapy” to the donation info text? 🤔
A compromise, in regards to charity, could be a community-based effort of some sort — everyone votes to pick a quarterly charity, and it’s promoted as a stickied post:
“The Beehaw community has voted to support
X[insert charity] * for this quarter, please support it if you can”* Ugh, can’t believe fucking Elon ruined a whole letter, and one of the cool ones, at that 🤢
Personally I think a little fiscal conservation would be wise at this point.
Costs can, and do eventually, rise. Hardware fails, and other things can happen as a surprise; and I’d rather that Beehaw not be insolvent when those things happen.
While I get the wish to do fun things to enhance the community; I think we need to be keeping an eye on things too. A few bad months where users are squeezed and unable to contribute could also severely impact Beehaw; particularly in and around monthly costs. At no point should Beehaw admins be paying out-of-pocket for things if Beehaw itself as an organization has the funds to properly pay things.
If we do genuinely have too much funding in excess; examining how we could expand Beehaw or make it better is another way you can responsibly re-invest the funds into making Beehaw better.
Additional servers/services might be neat; things like:
- A Mastodon server, if one doesn’t already exist
- A Matrix homeserver, if one doesn’t already exist
- A lightweight Pixelfed / image hosting/posting Service, if one doesn’t already exist
- Various and miscellaneous game servers/services like Minecraft or other popular multiplayer game servers/sessions/instances.
Of course such things could also require additional staff on hand, so I understand that you might want to entice someone to help manage these extra things first.
Beehaw has enough to run without any additional donations for the next two years at the current costs so the finances of that seems well enough.
That said, I don’t feel comfortable spending money donated to Beehaw for things non-Beehaw related.
As for expanding in other services… Well, we already have enough trouble with Lemmy, I would not want to add more moderation hurdles personally.
Mastodon, for example, would have far better moderation tools than lemmy. As for your concerns with “Adding more moderation hurdles”, genuinely I feel recruiting more mods before and while you spin up a service is fine. That may mean you take time to pick them out and train them right. That’s fine. But I don’t think moderation challenges are insurmountable.
I’d hope some of it gets socked away for any possible time in the future when costs may be greater.
As for the rest of it, I’d like to see it used to grow the platform - marketing to increase user base, more developers, etc. Whatever makes sense.
With £6k you’re not gonna afford one developer, honestly, but I agree with you
I’m not sure. If we were too, I think we should have at least $10k saved up. But even then I’m not sure if we really should be. I wonder if it will reduce the number of donations. I’m not sure if everyone donating would be OK with their donations being redirected somewhere else, especially if the charity is seen as controversial by the donor.
I think a possible work around would be to donate to the maintainers of the software we use. That shouldn’t be controversial. (but someone will probably find a way to be offended by that…)
If we do, well defined rules are a must. Like how we determine how much to donate every month, and to who.
Side note: The money is invested and earning interest, right? It’s not hard to get 5% right now and that’s a few hundred bucks a year.
Does the lemmy project have a foundation like blender or godot? Might not be big enough
Some charity donations would be cool, maybe each month a different community could vote for a charity
Yeah but doesn’t beehaw want to move away from Lemmy? Doesn’t seem like it’s in their best interest.
…behave want too nice away from Lemmy?
^^^ Brand new sentence!
We are discussing moving Beehaw off of the Lemmy platform, yes.
Hah, I use swipe, and my vision is dying. I get so many typos these days.
I’d rather Beehaw didn’t leave Lemmy outright; but I can hardly fault anyone for looking into other alternatives and spinning them up alongside the current Lemmy instance, getting that new thing up and thriving and then slowly migrating away from giving Lemmy so much attention.
Hmm, maybe some forum platform would be a good alternative? I feel like the Reddit format of Lemmy focuses more on news, rather than the forum format which is more about deeper discussions… Just an idea.
Well yeah, but I don’t really want that
Yeah, I like the idea of a rotation of charities.
If anything, I would say a percentage should go back to ActivityPub development.
ETA: I say this as a (small) monthly contributor, but I can only speak for myself.
If you gamble it then you could 13,000 in the coffer.
As we all know, 90% of gamblers go home before making it big
If you win its basically free money 💰
Is there not a way to put this money toward making the fediverse/beehaw situation work? I know you can’t just throw money at problems to make them go away, but I can’t help but feel as though there must be some way to use the money on making fedi work for beehaw long term.
As an aside, I’ve been absolutely dying to donate to the beehaw project because it provides me a lot of value but have been holding off because the continued existence on the fediverse has been up in the air
I’m not sure if the Admins are paid, but it would be good to have paid admins, who also help post unique content too.
Basically, the lack of paid admins is what killed Reddit over time (everyone was doing the work for free).
But I also agree bounties could also be good.
Or a meetup event to meet other Beehaw users (here in australia of course)
They are not paid, AFAIK.Confirmed.I’ve been thinking about how a secondary revenue stream could make sense as a Mod Appreciation Donation source.
I think I read some Mod thoughts on merch a while back, but can’t remember exactly why it wasn’t in the mix at current time (difficult to source ethical merch or something?).
I, for one, would be happy to donate some time to create graphics for merch if it went towards Mod bonuses (or server upkeep, if nothing else).
@mods feel free to reach out if you have any thoughts on the matter, or any concrete ideas that a graphic designer might be able to help with ❤️👍
And thats the thing. I don’t need merch in return personally…
There’s plenty of community funded radio stations out there, and all you get is a sticker sometimes (you don’t neccessarily do it for merch, but a sticker would be cool actually).
I’m just tired of toxic Social networks and news sites. I’m tired of news sites too which focus 100% on celeb gossip than normal people.
So, I think it would be a cool way to improve the network, improve morale amongst the mods and allow the system to scale well without mods feeling unappreciated
I’m not sure if the Admins are paid, but it would be good to have paid admins, who also help post unique content too.
None of the admins have profited financially from donations meant for Beehaw. You can see this per the expenses on OpenCollective.
While I think it could be nice, we don’t have nearly enough to provide anyone a salary.
Or a meetup event to meet other Beehaw users (here in australia of course)
But the emus will get our lunch :(
Maybe not a salary… But, maybe a small contribution to each admin on a rotating cycle each month as thanks? As in general, I find volunteers of things never get the thanks they deserve, and long term, eventually, it takes a few small things and it becomes a slog.
I don’t know if money would really help with things not feeling like a slog to be honest. I mean, put in another context, do you feel that your workplace is more rewarding because they pay you? For me personally, it doesn’t really. I think it’d be nice to do more community-oriented events though.
Save it up
