obligatory preface: we're 100%-user funded and everything you donate to us specifically goes to the website, or any outside labor we pay to do something for us.
overall expenses this month: $523.79
as expected, a full month of running on last month's setup has come in pretty high. luckily, we expect downsizing to begin this month (and we have a pretty good idea of what we're going to do) so this will be our last month of costs at this scale. our initial estimation is that we can halve or better what we're paying now on a monthly basis.
$428.73 for Digital Ocean hosting, which can be further subdivided into
- $336.00 for hosting the site itself
- $67.20 for backups
- $25.53 for site snapshots
$28.87 for Hive, an internal chat platform we've set up (also being hosted on Digital Ocean)
- $24.07 for hosting Hive
- $4.80 for backups
~$39.16 for email functionality, which can be further subdivided into
- $35/mo for Mailgun (handles outbound emails, so approval/denial/notifications emails; also lets us not get marked as spam)
- ~$4.16/mo ($50/yr, already paid in full) for Fastmail (handles all inbound emails)
$22.87 for BackBlaze (redundant backup system that's standalone from Digital Ocean)
overall contributions this month: $1,310.90
support still more than covers our expenses, and particularly with our upcoming downsizing we don't believe this will be a problem. breakdown is:
- 100 monthly contributions, totaling $624.95
- 2 yearly contributions, totaling $67.10
- 36 one-time donations, totaling $618.85
between monthly and yearly contributions we are still sustainable overall—but now that the Reddit bump has ebbed most of our savings will come in the form of lowering costs and not "sheer amount of money being thrown our way."
total end of month balance: $4,347.79
expense runway, assuming no further donations
- assuming expenses like ours this month: we have about 8 months and one week of runway
That doesn't answer the question...
I think they tried. It's just a hard question to answer. How would you guarantee someone something like that?
There's legal framework for making that more sure, but that's a lot to ask I agree there's no good answer to that question. You never know, a lot of people get blinded by money even if you'd never expect it from them. Just the way the world works you don't know yourself even until the temptation is presented.
Clearly that's not the goal and I do trust that they are more committed to their vision and morals than that, but it's not something you can ever rule out entirely.
The issue when we bring in legality is the need for formal processes, oversight, validation, audit, blah blah blah and those come with (very) expensive administrative overheads. You quickly realize you need to have bookkeepers, legal counsel on retainer, a formal Board, charters, general meetings, all of which are likely to cost far (many times) more than just hosting costs.
I am not a lawyer, but I can quickly see overheads like these spiraling way out of control. Happy to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable than I am.
Incorporate, NFPO, most likely 501(c)(7).
Besides that, I don't think they tried. "Do no evil" isn't reassuring in the slightest, especially to those of us who remember Reddit before Advance and Tencent bought in. This is when Reddit was literally user powered (image relevant). We bought gold for other redditors, knowing that the funds were directly supporting the site. Go take a look at how that worked out. "It's your site", "we couldn't do this without you", meaningless. I remember when they pledged 10% of annual ad revenue to non-profits, selected by the users. They really did the most to make the users feel like they were part of something special. We see how that turned out.
Obviously, support whoever and whatever you like. All I want to do is balance out the optimism. Real money is changing hands here, and some of us have been down this road a couple of times. Those experiences have taught me that it's at least as likely that the site-runners want to be rich and successful as it is that they can resist the temptation when it comes knocking, and that's being generous.
I see what you mean, but I also believe that the value of places like Beehaw often lies in the intermediary stage before they become an institution or wither away and die.
Right now Beehaw is pretty close to the peak of what it can be. It's the equivalent of a large online block party. If it gets bigger than this it will need to institionalize or wither away. What you're asking is for it to institionalize sooner than is necessary, which is what will kill the feeling.
Beehaw has a lifespan to it, we should all recognize this now. Beehaw is great because it runs on good faith and trust. These are limited resources and they'll run out eventually, either sell out or burn out.
The best way to approach it is to put into it what you get out of it, and stop putting into it when you stop getting value out of it.
It feels as though you're confusing the corporate model of websites with Beehaw.
Nothing lasts forever, but the motivations behind enshittification are key to enshittification, with the key one explicitly rejected by Beehaw being growth for its own sake.
There's no need for Beehaw to get bigger, and thanks to the volunteer efforts of the admins and mods, it's currently sustainable through donations. Pivoting to profit isn't inherent to buying a domain and providing a service.