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
Hey just a thought, but have you considered also measuring your labor in terms of hours worked by admin staff etc? I'm assuming it's unpaid.
I think showing the financials is great but to me it shows only one part of the picture, if that makes sense. Your work has value!
I really appreciate all the work that goes into this place, and really, thanks for all you do.
I would wager I've spent between 40-70hours a week working on Beehaw directly or on things relating to it with as high as 90hours a week at the peak - I would wake up, open Beehaw, eat, sleep. None of us get paid for this, it would likely bankrupt Beehaw in less than a week if we were paid even minimum wage. The only reason I can do this is because I don't have a job - which is putting me in a bad financial situation honestly.. I really should've gotten a job but I didn't.
Thank you for the appreciation.
I really do appreciate the work you put into Beehaw, but to echo what others have said, I don't think anyone wants this to be unsustainable for you, or anyone else working on Beehaw.
At the least I think it could be reported as part of donations/expenses? Rough numbers would be fine too (because the overhead of tracking hours is not fun). So I'm imagining something like:
400 hours unpaid work (2 full time people working, 1 part-time) (if paid, that's $6,000 at minimum wage, $8,800 at a livable wage)
Which is a lot of money, and very scary, but at least it makes the behind-the-scenes work visible.
That said, I'm going to go set up a monthly donation now 🤗
I want to add my support for the unpaid labor being reported as part of the financial report. It would add more clear transparency to the total effort involved.
The human toll is hard to quantify but should not be ignored.
It's worth mentioning that a lot of moderation work is kinda always in the back of your mind and work even when it's not directly - answering people's questions, chatting in our mod chat, talking to other admins, etc.
No illusions on my part. This is true for a lot of jobs that have 24/7 support activity and also jobs that have an emotional toll that lingers when not "working" (social workers, teachers in bad neighborhoods, nurses, content moderators). And as such, the pay scale is commensurate. It's not that it solves the problem, but that it can afford the individuals time off and rehabilitation services.