steve_b Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 Gents, Its been a while that this place has been running (big thanks to those that have made it this great) and thinks its time we had a way for me to donate something to help with the running costs. Is there a way we can do it as a donation, most will know I do not like forced subscriptions but that does not mean I do not want to pay my way. Sorry I find it easier to give money instead of time but that's always limited in my life. Regards Steve PS would be happy to fund the make up of the Z sticker to give away at meets or at the 350 post count if the other bills are paid for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chesterfield Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 Steve, thanks for your comments. At present there is no way for members to donate to the running of the club. As you can appreciate, our whole ethos has been to remain 100% free for the members of the site. We have chosen that path in order for there to be no barriers to full interaction with every other owner on the site, and every event taking place on the site. Putting in place any kind of "voluntary contribution" option seems almost to be going against that primary objective above. Of course though, there will always be those (like yourself) that very generously want to give something to the club, and the idea has been discussed several times between all the team, though no clear way has ever come out of the discussions. There are other methods of funding the club being discussed - but I must stress that these are NOT taking place because we cant afford to keep it going in its current state. It is to improve what we already offer. We are not going anywhere, and we are NOT going to charge members - ever. What we can say is that any items we sell through the club (currently only stickers) we do make a small profit on (or very small in the case of small items), which all goes back into either the costs for the server alongside the money donated by the team, or purchasing more stickers. We will never, ever make a profit from members. If as we hope to in the near future we offer other items for sale, the same will apply. So perhaps the best way for members to contribute would be to purchase any items they like from the range we hope to offer, at least that way you get something tangible for your kind donations as well as supporting the community. Again, thanks for the comments Steve, its great to know that we are doing well enough to warrant such generosity. Another thing that we have discussed is that if we ever did accept donations, then the "accounts" would be publicly available to members, so they could see exactly where the money was going. Its a discussion we have been having for some time amongst the team, and please feel free to PM any of us with any input you feel could help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rickya Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 I fully agree with the ethos of the club being free for all but IMO if voluntary donations can improve the club for the benefit of all then its an idea that may warrant consideration. I myself wouldn't mind making a small contribution considering the time & effort that people put in behind the scenes to make this site what it is today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sl114 Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lomoto Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 well said Ricky , I for one would certainly want to contribute a little monetary something towards the site if possible Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zedrush Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 Id like to make a donation too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyC Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 As I've said before, I'm in Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarnie Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 I said this a few weeks ago when M13KYF moanED about my sig taking up bandwidth. I said then that I'd be happy to make a voluntary contribution. That still stands. There is a difference between charging people for info and people making voluntary contributions. I'm sure the people that have been around here for a while would not mind contributing. Nobody need know how much each member has contributed. Even £5 is better than nothing. I'd happily contribute £1.50 to Val's hourly rate of £2 per hour Seriously though, we should be able to contribute to the site. Maybe an annual AGM could be held for those that want to attend to discuss where the funds have gone and what the future holds? If it helps the site then thats a good thing yeah? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkfish Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 I too would certainly donate money if the club needed it for beneficial reasons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digsy Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 I would like to contribute if possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathan73 Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 Chesterfield knows my thoughts on this too - and I'm in. If financial donations are tricky to handle accounting wise, would it be better if members were to source and purchase a bunch of "Saleable Items" such as logo'd caps, T-Shirts, Z Keyrings (I've got samples coming of these to show you Chris) and then donate these to the club to then sell. Of course, the design of said items ought to be agreed upon by the Admins.... A more tricky solution could be to add a 'store' or 'auction site' to the forum where members place their gear for sale and the club takes a %age of the sales price and perhaps an item insertion fee; much like Ebay..? That way everyone's a winner. I think thought that the overiding message is that 350z-uk.com has such goodwill among its members that they want to contribute unconditionally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nixy Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 funny, just pm'd Val about this and now I've seen this thread! On another site I go on we have a paypal button which you can just click to donate - it is totally voluntary. I would happily do this. I think how much you get out of the site depends on how much/if you would pay. On the other hand I paid a £10 annual charge on another site I use and never got the 'membership pack' and no matter how many other people mentioned they hadn't got theirs it was still not forthcoming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 I'd be up for donating something too if it was the case that we'd make this place better. As the others said, I just dont like to be forced into paying. What kind of hosting deal do you get at present? I ask as a friend from Uni runs his own hosting, BB, telecoms type business and I'm sure he'd be interested in offering a comparative deal if he could. Could potentially mean lower hosting costs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarnie Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 I could do a mortgage for everyone on the site and 'donate' £50 to the site for every one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zedrush Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 I could fight for more money and donate to here. Could be a sponsored 350z cage fighter lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zzzz... Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 I agree , in a way giving a contribution in some sort of way would generate a closer bond to the club, and i would be up for this. But I think it would have to be anonymous, otherwise it could generate a feeling amongst those who do not contribute, of potentially "not being in the club"... and this can generate a less relaxed feel to the club. An anonymous contribution via a pay pal button would be a great idea, and it could be targeted against a set of "projects" which ADMIN and MODS, and users could propose or suggest, vote for the most popular and then save the contributions until we reached the magical figure, for example: -Increasing Forum bandwidth capacity = X amount of GBP, -Merchandise = x amount of GBP -Purchase of specialist tools (OBDII toolset..) which could be kept by Admins and Mods in different parts of the country and loaned/hired for small fees. -FanZines... ( I haven't heard that word in a while...) -Exclusive booking of small tracks for 350z-uk.com meets... -Marquee facilities for meets, -ebay shop management... etc etc... it could add an awful lot of work to people , but could also enhance the club appeal and visibility Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GC350z Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 Donations are a great idea. It would have to be anonymous. I'm a paid member of another site but don't log on that often. I dropped in the other day for a look see and while reading whatever thread I saw an icon below some peoples names saying "Donator". Don't get me wrong it is good to see that people are prepaired to donate to a club. It just seemed to give off the impression of a "class" system. 350z-uk.com does have bills to pay. Bandwidth, server space and so on. With what 1600 members in a great club I'm sure we'd all like to contribute something. Guy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M13KYF Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 good point on the 'class' system. Any donations I think should stay anonymous Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris`I Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 Ditto, otherwise you may as well make it a pay for membership like the other sites! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
holtehero Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 I can check with a mate of mine also if you want to compare prices, as he does webhosting etc. Infact he is the admin for another forum that deals in AV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chesterfield Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 Currently on the hosting side everything is ok. Although we have had issues in the past (frantically looking for wood to touch) we seem to be past those. The issue that we may come across, is that due to the site being hosted in the US, if we do require assistance, the time difference often hinders progress on an faults, also scheduled mainainance of the server is planned around US time zones, so while they schedule work for 1-am to 3am, that often hits us early to mid morning. Though as I say, things appear to be fine at the moment. Because of how busy the site is becoming, we do require a LOT of active conections to an SQL database in order for the site to function correctly. If Google spiders the site, these connections can rise dramatically, resulting in what appears to be an outage if the server is not configured to allow the number of connections the site requires. (this was a problem with the first host). Weare good for just under another year as far as hosting goes, as it has just been recently paid again, once we need to revisit this, or we outgrow the usage e are paying for, then we may need to consider other options, or pay for an extension/increase. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
holtehero Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 Let me know if you want me to ask for hosting prices, i think he hosts only in the UK. Happy to put you in touch if need be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GC350z Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 You should include a robots.txt file to prevent them scanning high bandwidth directorys for example the gallery. This should reduce some of the wasted bandwidth used up by bots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chesterfield Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 Yeah the meta tags on the gallery pages instruct no following by robots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_b Posted May 24, 2007 Author Share Posted May 24, 2007 Would like to add to the anonymous bit. Do not like the clique effect elsewhere. Come on chris, looks like we all would like too. I do not want anything to complicate your life such as wishing to see the books. If I contribute then I do it without asking for anything back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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