Info Donations Discussion thread

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^I asked this last page but I think it may be secret stuff b/c I didn't get a response :)

Is the Inflexxion survey over now?
Many of us have it in our Sigs, so I need to edit that if so.........
 
a few posts down TLB said that the inflexxion study has gotten however many participants they were looking for.

a page back or so he said this about how much the site is receiving from the study:

There is the question raised of "How much money is Inflexxion giving?" They have helped out significantly in the past, and are promising a good return on this study as well. We (the admin) have held back on publicly stating "How much?" because we hope to get similar opportunities with other research groups needing access to a group like our membership, and we don't want to bias our opportunities with those entities by selling ourselves short, or setting it an amount to high and scaring them off. This really isn't a known market, so 'value' is debateable. That said, we (the admin) can tell you that for this survey alone, we would clear our remaining debt for 2010 and get a good start on 2011's first quarter payment. We can also state that SG is working on our behalf to set up a deal for next year with them to run several surveys (agreed dollar amounts, number of surveys and respondents) so we can go into this with a better financial foundation than we've operated with to this point. That said, with Inflexxion alone, we won't make it - we'll still need member donations and other fund raising events (we are looking at a premium usergroup, as well as merchandising, and of course the 'one off' donations we've accepted to this point). However, those hinge on a) getting our new banking set up and operational, and b ) the continued patience of our host....which is really unfair to ask of them.

I'll make a similar statement in the discussion thread for the survey in Drug Studies.

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Just a quick note to all - we've had to take down the snail mail donations as well for a bit. It listed sending checks made out to "Enlighten" (the legal entity owned by johnboy and handling the banking for enlighten, pillreports, and bluelight). However, in the process of separating johnboy and enlighten from bluelight, we obviously can't ask him to still be processing checks on our behalf. We expect to have our own legal entity in place in April, at which point we can re-establish both online donations as well as a name to send checks to via snail mail. We appreciate your patience with us in this regard.

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.

Any ideas are welcome, so thank you. It is a fairly special thing for our site not to have annoying or ugly adds all over the place, it lends power tot he few banners and forum header notices we put up from time to time because they are the select few. The concept of 'opt-in' advertising is a good one, in that it allows those who care to help in this manner to turn them on and subject themselves to this annoyance while helping the site financially. I'll relay this to the list of options the admin continue to evaluate. The negatives I can see at this point would be the implementation (technically should be easy, but not something we've done so it's new for us to turn on and implement; ethically this could be harder in that we get so many 'vendors' wanting to advertise here and we say no as it conflicts with our 'sourcing' rules which keep the site and members safe as well as not wanting to give the impression we support or endorse a vendor when we have no control over what they may actually sell week to week :\ ). Still, this suggestion is a fairly passive one to generate money, and being "opt-in" would not hurt the site's current presentation to n00bs and lurkers :)

One subject akin to this is that the admin have discussed changing the profile fields a bit and creating an "opt-in" for surveys with researcher's we've partnered with. Suppose Inflexxion needed a study with respondents in a certain demographic (age, region, etc). We could shuffle our profile fields a bit, create an "opt-in" for our members such that if they meet the criteria we have their permission to PM them and get them to take the survey and help out BL funding this way. Right now, we're leaning heavily on tweets, banners, DRUG STUDIES thread, and other more shotgun approach gathering of respondents for such a survey. With an "opt-in" by the members, they would only be contacted if they chose to allow us to contact them AND they fit the criteria.

We'll still rely on the banners and threads and tweets, but this "opt-in" group for surveys might allow us to get a much quicker meeting of the required number of respondents, and we wouldn't have to carry such banners for extended periods of time. It's a thought, and we'd appreciate anyone's feedback on this concept as well.
 
I realize that this question is a few steps down the way, but once the banking system gets finalized, is there a way to set up a recurring, automatically debited monthly donation? $240 is a lot today, but $20 a month is manageable. I know that I would be willing to do this as the charities that I currently give to automatically debit my account on a monthly basis.
 
I realize that this question is a few steps down the way, but once the banking system gets finalized, is there a way to set up a recurring, automatically debited monthly donation? $240 is a lot today, but $20 a month is manageable. I know that I would be willing to do this as the charities that I currently give to automatically debit my account on a monthly basis.

A monthly auto-pay is in the plan. Amount(s) would be under review (some have asked for as little at 2euro/mo...and we need to justify the cost of transactions at some minimum amount level).
 
suggestion to boost donations

Could someone tell me who the admin is i would need to contact about such things ?

Ive had an idea that would help with the donation sides of things and know for a fact it works from being involved with the same kind of thing on other sites i have worked on
 
Wow....hrm....ok....

At the bottom of every page is a 'Contact us' link which allows you to contact any of the staff individually, or email the admin as a group if you choose. Additionally, we keep a link atop the ANNOUNCEMENTS forum for identifying the Admin (and which forums they oversee) as well as the current Sr. Mods (and which forums they oversee). I also keep those links in my sig, so anywhere I post....like here...you have access to this information. :D We aim to please.

Next, to the idea of fund raising ideas...did you know we've already got a thread on that in here? Donations Discussion thread You may want to give that a read to see if your idea's been proposed and shot down, or just given our usual idle promises while we don't do shit :\ Or, maybe you've got something new we could consider?

I say that last paragraph with my tongue in my cheek, because although it sounds like I'm being a smug asshole, the fact is, we (I?) have not done a very good job of updating that thread and keeping our public informed of our financial situation. And you'll find there are indeed a lot of suggestions, which we flat out have fallen short on implementing (nearly all comes down to 'let us do XYZ first' ... which we don't seem to get to). As in that thread, any and all ideas are welcome and wanted ... so please, add yours (once you've verified we haven't considered it). Beyond that, we need to (still) do some major overhaul work on the site before implementing a lot of what we'd want to do.

What we really need most, is some people to simply apply themselves a bit harder in getting these 'other things' done, so we can in fact move on to bigger and better things. And while I am loathe to say once again that we've got information coming (as it always seems to ..not..quite...happen..), it is indeed true that we've got information coming. I'm serious, stop laughing.
 
Whats the latest regarding donations , will there soon by a system in place to donate. I had gotten my bank card out and was about to donate for the first time as I can now afford to and I saw that donations are frozen at the moment.
 
Can anonymity be ensured while using your personal bank card? Of course the bank will know, but it's just a donation.
 
I keep getting these semi regular email notices [from this thread] which look like a bunch of garbled spam. Latest about 5 hrs ago. I know there was a guy here awhile back who claimed to be some kind of hosting guru and was gonna save BL tons of money. He got upset when admin called him out for his real motivation posting here... which i think was not helping BL, but helping himself. Anyway... sorry for off topic.
 
Hey SubDude do you use thread subscriptions, have you subscribed to this thread, and have you set the option to receive emails when there are new posts in this thread?

You can find out by going to your userCP and clicking "View all Subscribed Threads".

Furthermore under "Edit Options"/"Messaging & Notification" you can mess around with some other emailing options. The primary one in this case would be "Default Thread Subscription Mode" however if you manually subscribed to a thread I believe you can choose to have emails sent regardless.

As for the jumbled text I'm not really sure. Perhaps your email client blocking links and images or html code or something.
 
Yes thanks..... I'm aware of how to view subscribed threads and unsubscribe. I'll PM you the email I recd via gmail.... which I have selected the settings I want for viewing, screening...etc. I stay subscribed to this because because LoveBandit said their working on some modifications on donation options...
 
Okay. I'd still try unsubscribing and then resubscribing to this thread making sure you select "No email notification."
 
Please Support!! :)

:) So, I completely forgot my username and password so I had to manufacture a new one. But what I am saying here is; PLEASE donate to this wonderful site. This site saves lives. As a member of DanceSafe (the head chapter located in the S.F. Bay Area) I love ANYTHING that has to do with verified drud information/and/or experiences...much like erowid.org. Feel free to FB me up.; <snip> Much love to all.<3 and:)
-Taylor-

[It is highly advised that you do not reveal personal info. Keep in mind this is a public, world wide board. You never know who might be looking at that info. :) -fizzle]
 
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