Dear comrades editors,
Our first ever formal fundraiser was a huge success. Not in the sense that we achieved more than our stated goal, but in the sense that we achieved our goal in just 5 days thanks to an outpouring of support from our editors, Lemmygrad, and Hexbear.
We asked for 528 dollars to cover 2 years of a new hosting plan, as we are going to need more disk space soon (this will double it, as well as essentially double all of our VPS resources).
We received 518 dollars after fees, just short of 10$ which we can easily cover with Forte or, since the contract is renewed later this year, might receive in the meantime.
We also made 8 patrons on Patreon and receive more than enough there to cover our yearly hosting costs, provided however that they remain patrons for a full 12 months.
Finally, we also sold our crypto which had been sitting for a while (and actually gained in value). Our strategy regarding crypto, now that we've been able to sell it, is to accept it but convert it to fiat as soon as we see it, so that it doesn't depreciate and one's donation in XMR or BTC remains as close as possible to their intent.
This brings our account to a total of ~815 USD, which is enough for 3 years of hosting!
I would first like to formally thank everyone who has donated to our wiki. This success, achieved in under a week, shows our work -- your work -- is appreciated, valued, and useful. It is not thankless.
And finally, we urge every editor who is not on our Discord to join it as soon as possible, as this is where we will discuss what to do with the excess, if anything. The excess in this case is defined as anything above the money needed for 2 years of hosting, currently 528 USD. Essentially, every editor is invited to propose and vote on what to do with this extra money. I think for now the administration will audit every proposal (for cost, deployability, usefulness, etc) but we are excited to try out this model as we have been rapidly opening up our internal democracy since January.
The goal is not to spend this money, but with an excess we can start thinking about some expenses that might make sense for the goals of ProleWiki.