Info Donations Discussion thread

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Did we make the cut?

edit - oops, i didn't see the funding push at the top of the homepage anymore. now i see it's there.
 
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Donations have been disabled.

Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who donated or bought calendars (still available). <3<3<3

TheLoveBandit said:
As to Amazon money, or Google money, or other alternatives we say thank you for the suggestion. However, we've explored them and they won't work for our site. I know johboy spent days going over the options awhile back (when the donation drives first started), and I've done the same recently. We really are handcuffed on our options. If they don't work for you individually, we're sorry, and we'll try to work with you however we can, but we have what we have.
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All of the obvious suggestions: Paypal, Google, Amazon are likely to have, or already have, rejected or can potentially freeze our account/monies at any time based on their terms of conditions and our site content.

If anyone is aware of a company willing to process donations/payments for a site like Bluelight, please let myself or TLB know. If Wikileaks can take donations, surely we must be able to find someone. :\
 
You can create a personal paypal acct or biz or charity acct and accept donations or cash for anything, You can find a charity and create a basic website with a paypal link. Use a charity like drug rehab or homeless... anything dear to your heart and pay all to the charity except your expenses here and there... which will include a category for donating/volunteering to help the charity. You have a lot of traffic and can so some amazing things with the right strategy. Get creative and use incentives like name chages and charity level badges next to avatar. You can help people here and at another place too. WIN/WIN! I own websirtes and made a ton of money with a fraction of the traffic you have. If I would have used porn and/or gambling instead of bizopps... I've be in a villa in the south of france right now.... but thats a different story.

I did ok and did send a lot of money to salvation army and it was good for business and good for them. Try something like that.
 
So, I was checking out the donation page, and unless I'm completely dense it looks like the only means to donate now is by a snail-mail money order. Is that right, or am I missing something? I understand how PayPay etc.. are not an option, but I was under the impression that we were still under AlertPay's radar?

I was hoping to make a donation, but I was also hoping to get the money to the site earlier sooner than a week from now. Any thoughts?
 
TheLoveBandit said:
That is including all donations to date, but not all have 'cleared' the banking hold (I counted them, assuming they will clear). We gave a date of JAN 15 as a closing date, hoping to have any bank holds cleared within the next week or so....but we also hoped to have enough to cover the bill, and obviously we don't. At least, not on the donations of the very few generous people who gave (you have our thanks). It may take a few days before we can take down our donation page, so if you see it still available, consider that an opportunity to still give. But it should be coming down at any time with no more warning than what I'm giving you here.

Why are we shutting down the donation page when we obviously still need money? We're transitioning our banking and need to close down the current account as we activate a new one. Expect that the donation page may become available once we have the new account online and the kinks worked out.
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Quoted from a dozen posts up...stated a few times (but easily lost in a thread with this many responses).

For those sort of wondering our status, we have cut a check from the donations to our host which will cover most of our 2010 debt. We have an advance from Inflexxion for our current study which is a partial payment on our Q1'11 debt. We need about another 250 responses on the current Inflexxion study to complete our part of the deal and get the balance of their payment - please take the survey if you haven't already ().

We (the admin) are currently focused on
- securing our own longer term banking solution (to allow donations)
- securing a deal with Inflexxion to help our 2011 funding issues
- get the server situation stabilized (host may help with some better hardware now that we're paying up some, and we need to get our engineering work done on the site's s/w and db which ought to help).

We'll probably shut this thread down and start a new one for 2011 once we get our footing under us.
 
Some cities offer grants for this kind of thing (harm reduction). Has anyone looked into anything like this as a source of funding?

FYI:
http://www.harmreduction.org/article.php?id=657
This is only one of several funding sources that might be worth looking into. I don't know if the server or staff is required to be physically present.
2. Comer Foundation (http://www.comer-foundation.com/NEPfull.html)

The Comer Foundation provides support to not-for-profit organizations focused on needle exchange and other harm reduction strategies within the drug using community and seeks to facilitate the process between organizations and communities committed to creating and maintaining health.

Criteria:

The Comer Foundation gives priority to organizations providing needle exchange and other direct services addressing health related to drug use; organizations grounded in harm reduction principle and practice; and organizations actively developing community, financial and local political support. It supplies single-year grants that have an average range of $5,000 to $30,000. The funding can be used toward operating funds, program development and staff development.
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TheLoveBandit said:
Quoted from a dozen posts up...stated a few times (but easily lost in a thread with this many responses).

For those sort of wondering our status, we have cut a check from the donations to our host which will cover most of our 2010 debt. We have an advance from Inflexxion for our current study which is a partial payment on our Q1'11 debt. We need about another 250 responses on the current Inflexxion study to complete our part of the deal and get the balance of their payment - please take the survey if you haven't already ().

We (the admin) are currently focused on
- securing our own longer term banking solution (to allow donations)
- securing a deal with Inflexxion to help our 2011 funding issues
- get the server situation stabilized (host may help with some better hardware now that we're paying up some, and we need to get our engineering work done on the site's s/w and db which ought to help).

We'll probably shut this thread down and start a new one for 2011 once we get our footing under us.
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How much will the "balance of their payment" give us (Inflexxion)-
Or if you can't give us a number- what issues that you listed will be handled with the balance paid?
Can you give us an update soon on where we are with the surveys left to take?
We've been trying to get the word out in TDS and elsewhere- Is there a deadline for that?

Besides Donations, what else can be done by us to help the site?
 
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Hey all.

I was just on a website that had more ads and pop-ups than you could possible imagine (no not porn you dirty minded people ;)) and I was so grateful for the utter lack of ads on Bluelight. But then, whilst browsing about this fair ad free site, I stumbled upon another reincarnation of a 'we need money please' thread and realized that I do want to give to the site. Unfortunately I can't afford to make a cash donation and I have already taken the survey and watched the videos, so what else can I do?

Enter an idea I have heard about before of opt-in advertisements. Similar to how we currently advertise taking surveys and such we can offer an option which if selected activates a banner or sidebar of ads. There is a big difference between guests coming to the site and being pelted with popups and flash html tags, and registered users choosing to give back to the site by turning ads on.

Just a thought on how we could make some money by users choosing to give up a little bit of their screen space. I don't know if there is some other reason/policy we don't have ads that would make this idea moot, but thought I would throw it out there anyways.
 
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I was directed back here by a member of BL and noticed how much is still needed to keep this amazing place alive. I'm glad you guys still take donations by money order; not many places do anymore.

Thanks for keeping BL ad free!
 
Hey, long time reader first time poster.

I really want to donate a bit of money to bluelight, this is a great forum and has been an awesome resource more than a couple times to me.

So anyways, I'm in Australia and don't have a lot of experience with money orders. The Australia post website says that to put through an international money order, the recipient needs the orders Transfer Control Number.

Am I supposed to send the number to the PO box orrrr?


So yea, I'd love to donate if I can.
 
Thank you, one and all. With the donations we have been able to pay off our 2010 debt. We are in the process of getting paid from Inflexxion for our current study (please, if you haven't taken it - please do, as we still need some survey responses to get up to the sample size they needed), which will combine with your donations to see where we stand on paying off the Q1'2011 debt and start looking at our Q2 payment.

Financially, we've reached some stability for the moment, so our wave of panic is temporarily passed, but not resolved going forward. We're still working on a better long-term banking solution for donations (we have a PO box in the US which nobody has sent anything to in the 1.5 yrs we've had it)...we hope to have that resolved within a month.

I'll update the donations bar this week to reflect a more accurate 'current state' for 2011. We'll post here and ANNOUNCEMENTS when we get our donation method back online. Thank you all for your help and patience.
 
I took the inflexxion survey. It was pretty cool. Straightforward. Everyone should take it.
 
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TLB - You should be receiving a slow mail sometime soon. It's sent out, so please don't give up on it yet. :p
 
^^Thank you.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Just a heads up on where we are as of today.

2010 debt - pretty much free and clear, given the donation drive you lot put into (Thank You) combined with some kick in from Enlighten.

2011 Q1 debt...we're working on it, but since we got word the Inflexxion study has reached the needed number of completions...their donation is in the process of being moved over and will help quite a bit getting Q1 off to a good start. We've taken down the banner and changed the DRUG STUDIES thread from 'Recruiting' to 'Writing Up'.

We are still working on getting our own banking issues sorted more permanently. Once that's in place, we'll also look to give a public statement running down what's been happening, what we arrived at, and why = all in the effort of maintaining transparency.

For now, we are alive and online for another few months, and should be able to stabilize for the long haul much better. But we wouldn't be here now if it weren't for all the members giving their donations and their time for the survey. So from all of us (staff, fellow members, and all those lurkers)...

thank-you.jpg



Now to get the next steps in place.
 
How big of a dent is the Inflexxion survey money going to put in our debt?
 
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