When GreatAlbatross and I agreed to become Admins our guiding principle was that this couldn't be a project run and funded by an individual and subjects to their waxing and waning interest. Instead, this had to be a social network run by and for the users. That meant that we needed as much as possible to be open and transparent with no single point of failure. This should ensure that feddit.uk would be around as long as people needed it, possibly even outlasting the both of us.
To this end, now the server move has been competed, we move on to the next step in securing the instance's future - ensuring there are enough funds coming in to cover the cost of running the site.
Fortunately, the outgoings are pretty modest (£40/month) and so it will only take a few dozen people contributing a small amount each month to pay for everything.
With the ideas of openness and transparency in mind, and after listening to suggests from you, we have signed up with Open Collective. As we are using a fiscal host it doesn't require any donated money to be held in a personal bank account, all banking and accounts are done by them (in return for a set-up fee and 5%) and the state of the finances can be viewed on the Open Collective website.
As well as a custom option (where you can pay what you like when you like), we have set a few contribution tiers:
- Regular subscription of £1 or £5 a month
- One-off donations of £5 or £10
This should meet the regular costs and, hopefully, build up enough of a surplus to increase storage as needed or upgrade the hosting if there is a sudden influx of Reddit refugees again. GA and I have also been funding things from our own pocket up to this point and, when there is enough of a war chest built up, we will repay those costs.
There will be regular updates (probably around this time every month as the invoice for the server goes out on the 4th and regular contributions are collected on the 1st) where we'll explain the costs and summarise the fundraising efforts so far.
If anyone has any questions feel free to ask below.
Excellent idea, but is this the same organisation which Beehaw.org were using as a fiscal host for their instance?
Just that their US branch is closing down later this month.
https://beehaw.org/post/12131033
Hopefully the UK branch is staying in operation.
Thanks, I will look into it but it looks like this is the Open Collective Foundation a US-based fiscal host, not the Open Collective platform.
A fiscal host provides the bank account so none of the Admins actually have the money. It has a lot of advantages, for example, if I was hit by a bus and the money was in my account it would be inaccessible. They charge a percentage of the transaction and it's surprising they can't find a way to make it work.
The Open Collective platform presumably has less overheads and relies on people chipping in a bit extra when they donate (or not, it's optional).
Our fiscal host is the Social Change Nest and is the biggest in the UK. I can ask them about it but it's a completely different group.
I think your all good as my mastodon admin just explained the same thing, he uses the same service.
Thanks. I am confident that we're good but I need to speak to them anyway so will just enquire.
Phew. Figured they were unlikely to have taken you on if they were closing, but still.
Well you never know, so organisations keep going right up to their collapse father than shutter things down gracefully. Luckily, I see no why reason Beehaw's troubles impact us despite using the same platform.