Spare Parts / Mail Machine / 501(c)3 Fund Raiser!

Mar 26 05:38 UTC 1998

In the last year, with the introduction of the ISDN line, Grex's monthly
expenses have risen significantly.  We are still covering our expenses nicely,
but we are finding ourselves a bit tight for upgrade money.  The following
three projects are planned:

   - Sun 4/670 spare parts.  Our new computer, which was largely paid for by
     a big fund-raiser about a year ago, seems to be doing great.  But this
     is the first time that we've been running on a machine that we didn't
     have a complete set of spare parts for, and it is making the staff
     rather nervous.  Good deals on second-hand Sun parts are hard to find,
     and we wouldn't want to have to shop in a hurry or fall back to the
     old machine if the new machine breaks.  So we plan to buy a spare CPU
     card and motherboard.  This will ensure that we can bring Grex back
     up quickly if something goes wrong.  We expect this to cost about
     $600.

   - Mail machine disk.  Through donations from several people, we have
     almost all the parts we need to set up a 486-based system to become
     Grex's mail machine.  All mail sent to Grex will be delivered to this
     machine and then passed on to Grex itself.  Processing mail is one of
     the heaviest loads on Grex, and this should reduce that significantly.
     Grex won't have to deal with retries and failed delivery attempts,
     so there will be less processing.  Currently mail tends to arrive in
     big bursts, which can really slow down Grex.  If we have a mail
     forwarder, it will deal with the big bursts and continue to feed mail
     at a steady rate.  Since mail to Grex will arrive over our fast local
     ethernet instead of over our relatively slow ISDN line, Grex's mail
     processes won't hang around so long.  In the future, this machine may
     evolve into a more sophisticated mail server that actually saves users
     mail there, giving additional improvements.  The machine currently lacks
     only a disk.  We could either buy a 2 Gig EIDA drive, or buy a SCSI
     controller and use the 1.2 Gig SCSI disk that djf donated.  (We prefer
     the former option, which would leave us with djf's disk to use for
     Additional space on Grex.)  Either way, this would cost about $200.

   - 501(c)3 Tax Exempt Status.  Grex's bylaws have always required it to
     function as a 501(c)3 corporation, but we've never actually done the
     paperwork to apply for such status.  If we get it, all donations to
     Grex would become tax-deductable.  We've been working on the paper-
     work, and think we are close.  There is, however, a $150 application
     fee.

So to complete these three projects, we need $600 + $200 +$150 = $950.  We
expect to have $2100 in the bank at the end of the month, so if we spent all
this we'd have about $1150 left.  Since Grex's operating expenses are about
$600 a month, we feel this would be far too low a cash cushion (we like to
keep three months operating expenses in the bank).

So the board is calling for users to donate money to support these projects.
We'd like to raise $950 in pledges.  You can ear-mark your donation for a
specific project, or just add it to the pool for all three.

Thanks for your support.

response 2 of 126:

Mar 26 05:57 UTC 1998

I promised grex that I would donate $100 if it got the 501(C)(3) status. 
I will move that gift up to let it apply to the application fee. So this 
means $100 from me, earmarked for the 501(C)(3), but then I am off the 
hook once we get it.

response 4 of 126:

Mar 26 07:08 UTC 1998

I'll donate $40.

response 6 of 126:

Mar 26 16:45 UTC 1998

So no one else should worry about looking like a cheapskate for a
small donation, here's $1.00.

response 8 of 126:

Mar 26 18:14 UTC 1998

I'll donate $40.  I was meaning to send something along anyway, to celebrate
the 4/670 installation.

response 10 of 126:

Mar 26 23:42 UTC 1998

Yes, I do send reminders out when memberships are about to expire.  I suppose
I could add a line about the pledge drive to the normal reminder.  (Your
membership is paid through 5/15, Cynthia.)

response 12 of 126:

Mar 27 05:06 UTC 1998

501(c)3 is dangerous.  Please do not go that way.  Look what it has done to
M-net.

Stop before it is to late.

response 14 of 126:

Mar 27 06:00 UTC 1998

What srw says. There are thousands of very happy 501(c)3 organizations,
though mostly wishing people would donate more money to them. I cannot
think of a single drawback for an organization that is designed to work
within that context (non-profit, charitable).

response 16 of 126:

Mar 27 14:42 UTC 1998

Thanks to srw and rcurl, the 501(c)3 application fee of $150 is covered.

Other donations so far are:
  $75  janc
  $40  aruba
  $25  tao
   $1  nestene  (sure, anything you can afford is appreciated)
  $10  bruin
  $50  keesan
  $40  krj
-----
 $251  donations for 670 spares and mail machine
 $150  donations for 501(c)3
 ----
 $401

That means we are still $549 short of our total goal of $950.

The staff hasn't really worked this out in detail, but my expectation is
that the highest priority is the 670 spares.  Though the mail machine is
cheap and would help a lot, it can wait if it must.  We really need to
have spare parts.  Once we have those, we can also pull the disks off of
the old Grex and that gains us about 1.7 Gig addition disk space on
Grex.

If anyone can donate a decent SCSI controller or a reasonably
trustworthy IDE disk of at least a 1 Gig size (or several smaller ones)
then we won't need the $200 for the mail machine.

response 18 of 126:

Mar 27 18:13 UTC 1998

Would it help if those people who are considering donating after a change in
tax status lent grex some money now, which could be converted later to a
donation?  Or simply paid back when there were enough other donations?
I would be happy to offer a loan of half the missing amount, or
$549/2 = $274.50.  Eleven loans of $50 would also cover the amount.  If
someone wants to set a deadline for collecting the total amount, I will lend
up to $274.50 by that date, if nobody else has donated or lent it.

response 20 of 126:

Mar 27 23:40 UTC 1998

Also, it's supposed to take something like a year and a half for the 501(c)3
process to finish, so you would have to wait a while.

response 22 of 126:

Mar 28 03:43 UTC 1998

I'd prefer not to mess around with loans unless we're really strapped.

Being the caretaker of Grex's money, I feel I should say something about why
we decided to hold this fundraiser.

When we had our "plan the budget" meeting in February, I estimated that we
will have about $1300 in gross income which is not already allocated to our
"occupancy" costs - rent, phone, electric, and internet connection.  We talked
about what we wanted to spend it on, and decided the spare parts are most
important, followed by the mail machine and some publicity.  That small number
of improvements was enough to use up our expected surplus.

I had to make a number of assumptions in order to come up with that $1300
number.  I assumed that we'd hold two auctions this year, and that they'd be
as profitable as last year.  And I assumed that there wouldn't be any other
forced costs this year.  That's already been proven wrong since we spent $160
on taxes last month.

So having that $1300 is far from certain.  Furthermore, the staff would like
to get the spare parts ASAP, which means not waiting until the surplus
accumulates to buy them.  Therefore we decided to hold a fundraiser.  We
realize the benefits of this one are not as flashy as have been those of past
fundraisers, but the things we'll buy are no less important to the running
of Grex, so please consider donating something.

response 24 of 126:

Mar 28 05:44 UTC 1998

I thought I donated $10 back there, but I don't see it.  So, I donate $10.
If the previous response mysteriously reappears, I still only donate $10. :)