2d ago

Beehaw has a huge surplus of money. Could we use it to fund another service?

Our current balance is around $6000 and the average monthly cost to keep us running is $250.

If you'd like to take a closer look at our finances, then you can do it here -> https://opencollective.com/beehaw-collective

All of that being said, is there another service that the Beehaw community could provide with the extra funds?

One example could be to establish a Nonprofit Corporation (501(c)(3)) to create a legally recognized nonprofit with a clear charitable mission: education, health services, housing, etc.

25 comments

I echo others, bank it as an emergency fund in the event income does not cover the monthly costs. Could even throw a bit of it as a bonus to those who run the servers.

I agree with most people here, bank it. It's nothing if you factor in at least 2 emergencies over next 2 years.

Setting up a non-profit seems to be a good idea. But that non-profit's mission should be to keep Beehaw running?

$6k is nothing. Bank it in case of a catastrophic server failure or something.
- This. After reading "huge surplus of money," I was expecting a 5-digit figure. At current running costs, $6k is two years of runtime, but this assumes in turn that expenses never increase and no emergencies occur, which is extremely unlikely over that time period. Better to save it, I think.
  Of course, this all depends on what causes got suggested. I can't think of anything that'd be both worthwhile and (relatively) cheap, but who knows? Maybe something matching that description will come along.
  It's also worth noting how much funding Beehaw is currently getting on a monthly/annual basis. I tried looking at the Open Collective page, but there's no easy figure or chart there to look at that I can find.
- Coming from a lemme.ee refugee - bank that money for when you need it. You never know what might happen.
  
  Lemm.ee did not shutdown due to money issues, it was admin burnout

Keep it stashed.

Agree with everyone here saying to bank it. Biggest risk to smaller communities likes this is shutting down due to running out of funds. Have experienced that with Mastodon instances before and it's a shame.
With this money set aside you can all but guarantee to keep the site up for the next 1.5 years given hosting price increases and user growth. Probably won't mean that donations stop, but at least it won't be a race against bankruptcy and shutdown every month.
Also excellent work, everyone on the team! I don't like social media but always enjoy coming to read articles and discuss with the fine people here.

Very happy for you! Seconded to just banking it. If it was 50k that would be different. Throw half in a CD and the other just plan out ongoing expenses. Make sure backups are working, maybe use a bit of the cash to try recovering from a backup just in case.
If your cost is 250 a month, then in reality you only have 2 years of runway there, if you don't grow. Good intention and I respect that, but I think keeping beehaw going long term is better than anything else you would do with the money

I agree that banking the money is probably the wisest move rn. I love the idea of Beehaw funding some kind of initiative in the future, but i don't know if the surplus is big enough to pursue something like that yet. Also - if the admins wanted to use the surplus to pay someone like PenguinCoder a little compensation for their substantial labor contribution to Beehaw, I wouldn't be opposed to that.

Save it.

Hold onto it in case it's needed.
Or take half, and have the admins/ mods choose 4-6 charities, and the community vote on which to donate it to.

It’s interesting how Beehaw has an emergency fund as most instances are living pay cheque to pay cheque. Hopefully our software and practices can improve to further reduce costs.
- the Beeple are very passionate about this particular server. I think other servers have a lot of folks that would be fine with jumping to a new server if they had to, but i cannot really speak to that.
  
  That makes sense as Beehaw is very friendly.

That’s pretty awesome news! I’d say take a tiny portion and share it with the rest of the staff as a reward bonus and save the majority of it as reserves for future expansion/replacement for current gear.

I have one word that will change everything: Lobbying
- "... aaaaaand it's gone."
  
  Right.
  A lobbyist with access to federal politicians in Canada with actual portfolios is like a quarter million per year as a minimum. Maybe a million if you want to fund a "think tank" and publish "studies" and do press releases trying to get the news to bite on some of them, so you can use the news as your excuse to bring issues up.
  If you're doing it yourself, then $5k might get you a plate at a gala where you hope to run into the appropriate politician for a minute. Would you pay $5k to hope to have a one minute conversation where 45 seconds of it is pleasantries and you might get one sentence in? And you have to use that sentence to explain who you represent... And someone is tugging their elbow leading to another table and they're gone. Well, hopefully the people at your table were interesting conversation.
  Storytime: I am small business owner. We pay a few thousand dollars a year to throw industry drinking events primarily for networking. Personal invites. Sometimes I can get the provinical Minister of Mines to attend with his handlers, but only if I promise no lobbying. I might get about five minutes of their time (as host) and try to honour my commitment to no lobbying at the event (their handlers will remove them if they feel it is a lobbying event). My payoff is a direct communication line, which I try not to abuse. Then the government changes (elections or cabinet shuffle) and I have to do it again. I've failed to get a direct line on the current minister for almost two years. But this is small potatoes Canadian provincial politics. I'd have to spend 10x that amount to attempt get face time with the federal minister.

A video hosting service?

25 comments