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Grex > Coop8 > #64: Cyberspace Communications, Inc., finances through 4/30/96 |  |
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| 25 new of 134 responses total. |
nephi
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response 50 of 134:
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May 22 07:26 UTC 1996 |
(Heh. We could nuke the 1400 line long party noisetab and charge a month's
membership for adding noises. I bet that we could get a *lot* of people
donating money to be able to sponsor a noise. I think this is funny, but I
really bet it would be a draw -- a fun way for people to donate money to
Grex.)
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tsty
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response 51 of 134:
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May 22 09:40 UTC 1996 |
"validation" is still not a very good idea. resist it.
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rcurl
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response 52 of 134:
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May 22 15:11 UTC 1996 |
e-mail should not be a perk. In fact, *nothing* should be a perk. Members
receive the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting a good system and have legal
rights concerning the management of the system.
HOWEVER, there is no reason that Grex cannot sell outgoing e-mail, either
separately for anyone wanting it, or included in a member's dues (but
that portion not tax deductible, if Grex were tax deductible, because it
would also be marketed). For example, set the price for outgoing e-mail
at $12/yr (annually only, so as not to piddle with small sums), and included
in dues (I'd like all of Grex to go on annual-only dues, but that's another
matter). [These numbers are as examples only; it is the concept I am putting
forward.]
The sale of goods or services by non-profit charitable organizations is
well established and permitted, up to certain limits, by IRS rules. The
goal is to use this privilege to the greatest advantage to support the
system as a non-profit, charitable, organization.
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ajax
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response 53 of 134:
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May 22 16:56 UTC 1996 |
I don't think a "nag" message should be made "painful enough to be worth
joining," but I do think an occasional polite reminder would be a good idea.
It could be either displayed during login, or automatically e-mailed.
Showing the message every X logins would probably be simpler than showing
it every X minutes of on-line time.
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meg
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response 54 of 134:
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May 22 16:59 UTC 1996 |
Pay for outgoing email? Ugh. I hope it never comes to that.
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aruba
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response 55 of 134:
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May 22 19:13 UTC 1996 |
I hope not either. I would rather we were not in the business of selling
anything. I like the begging option better.
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rcurl
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response 56 of 134:
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May 22 19:32 UTC 1996 |
I do too, but I don't think you have given the "selling" option fair
consideration. What if it tripled our membership, so we could afford ISDN?
At what *price* for outgoing e-mail would that be a reasonable tradeoff? I
picked $1/mo at random. How about $0.10/m? It would reduce the "idle"
outgoing e-mail load on our system drastically (a benefit to members,
incidentally), and by picking that minor charge judiciously, increase our
membership. We are already in the "business" of selling: junk at JCC,
T-shirts, mugs, a Grex booklet, etc. I agree that selling a service and
selling a commodity can be viewed differently, but I am playing with
*highly leveraged* sales. Others agreed that the load from distant-user
outgoing e-mail is a load problem, and here is a solution that compromises
our principles only a little bit (every solution compromises them a little
- if you don't compromise, you don't solve the problem - sounds like the
rest of the world, doesn't it?).
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aruba
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response 57 of 134:
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May 22 23:20 UTC 1996 |
Point taken about us already being in the business of selling things. But
it strikes me that as soon as we begin charging for services, people have a
right to expect a certain amount of dependability from Grex. That's fine
if we can deliver said dependability, but it will be a major hassle if for
some reason we can't. Let's face it, we don't have insurance, or huge
resources, or any of the other things a real service provider would use to
get out of a jam like that.
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coyote
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response 58 of 134:
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May 23 00:30 UTC 1996 |
I think that maybe there should just be a limit to how much email non-members
who use Grex just for its email can send and receive, and that this should
be explained in the little nagging message.
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davel
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response 59 of 134:
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May 23 02:44 UTC 1996 |
Re Meg's "ugh": IMO Meg *definitely* has a right to that opinion. For a very
good part of Grex's history, before we were on the net, Meg called Grex,
picked up & delivered mail, & exchanged it with sites connected with the net
so that we *could* have outbound email. To the best of my knowledge this
often meant tying up a phone line, at her expense, for hours a day.
Not that anyone had questioned Meg's comment in #54, mind you, but look at
it this way: we definitely need more income, and the move to sell services
looks like an attractive way to accomplish this. It may be, or it may not.
One reason it may not, more or less what some others have already suggested,
is that it gets us into being just another ISP, & are we going to be able to
provide the kind of performance people expect from that kind of supplier?
Grex was started by a bunch of people who *didn't* want to be that kind of
system, has depended very heavily in the past on them & more of the same, &
is staffed to a great degree by them & more of the same today. I certainly
wonder whether turning Grex into a for-pay kind of system mightn't be the
surest way to convince a lot of Grex's volunteer base that they have better
things to do with their time, & whether (if this happened) Grex could raise
enough money through selling services to pay for the professional staff we'd
need to replace them.
Lest anyone be jumping to conclusions: I personally was not involved in
establishing Grex, & if I were setting up a system I'd very likely do it quite
differently. (*I* have no fundamental objections to doing things to make
money, & haven't for years now.) My point is that organizations have a life
of their own, & radical change can have all kinds of unforseen consequences
& is not to be undertaken lightly. The idea that we can sell something like
email access & be basically the same system except a little richer & faster
seems to me to be kind of silly, frankly.
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chelsea
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response 60 of 134:
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May 23 03:04 UTC 1996 |
It sounds like getting bigger and faster is a given. That's the
goal. And if Grex needs to beg and sell and become more business
like to get there, well, that's what will happen.
Bummer.
I don't particularly want Grex to have an ISDN link, with hundreds of
people on at once, a huge internet profile, paying users who are here for
service, lots of problem users, a volunteer staff that can no longer keep
up and free and easy policies that no longer work with such an operation.
We'll always have a bottleneck, somewhere. Now it's speed and bandwidth.
If we fixed those problems there would be other problems resulting from
the volume.
I'm reminded of the saying that goes something like this: Be
careful what you wish for - you may just get it.
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srw
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response 61 of 134:
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May 23 04:12 UTC 1996 |
Well, we are just kicking ideas around here. I don't like selling e-mail at
all myself. I do think that we can take some piece of the system that we
currently make available for free and say it is for members only as a way to
raise funds. And I think that this could be done without becoming more
like a real profit-making business, and without any expectations of better
service than we give now.
I don't see this as a way to turn Grex into a "for-pay" system, as Davel
suggests. As a staffer who volunteers time to work on this system, I can
assure you that I would not lose interest if we made a few features
"members-only".
So far there have been a bunch of party-related suggestions as candidates for
such a change. What about the right to have a web site? I haven't figured out
how I would enforce this, but I haven't given it much thought, either.
I think there would be howls of protest, just as I'd expect the same from
certain partiers, but these would be coming from people who are currently
getting free access to our web server, which is consuming about 4MB/day of
our bandwidth. Should we be giving such a valuable resource away for free?
I am sure we would lose a bunch of web sites from this, perhaps most of them
-- I just don't know. It's a very popular feature of Grex. I am not even sure
myself that this is a good idea at all. What do others think?
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adbarr
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response 62 of 134:
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May 23 04:34 UTC 1996 |
This is a fun debate. How about charging $.02 for each post in a conference.
Have to have wired funds in advance for party, etc. from people outside the
Ann Arbor local banking area. Cybercash and micro-billling might add
up, in time. As far as charging for web-site space -- hmm - how about those
pictures of Grexwalk on HVCN - Isthmus? You owe us, oh -- say $1,00 per
year? (That is one dollar).
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scg
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response 63 of 134:
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May 23 05:30 UTC 1996 |
I don't like the idea of selling things here, and I don't think we need to.
I still get the feeling that a lot of our users just don't understand how
we are funded, and many of them would probably be perfectly willing to donate
if they knew. Before we decide that running on voluntary contributions has
failed, let's be a lot more aggressive about letting people know that we
really do need money.
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adbarr
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response 64 of 134:
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May 23 05:34 UTC 1996 |
A friendly shake-down is certainly in order. Like Robin Hood?
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aruba
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response 65 of 134:
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May 23 06:25 UTC 1996 |
I for one agree with Mary, and I don't take for granted that we want to get
bigger just for the sake of getting bigger.
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nephi
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response 66 of 134:
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May 23 09:02 UTC 1996 |
(At some point we're going to have to deal with this whole question of
"growth" and how to maintain/curb it. I'm really hoping that having "waiting
room" sofware will allow us to fairly limit the number of people per system
resources, but eventually even that will fall flat . . . fodder for another
item, probably . . . . )
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danr
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response 67 of 134:
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May 23 11:28 UTC 1996 |
The only way to *not* get bigger is to turn off incoming telnet--an idea
seriously worth considering.
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blh
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response 68 of 134:
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May 23 13:37 UTC 1996 |
Has there been any discussion as to just what an adequate of money would
be? Or in other words, has there ever been a proposed budget for different
sizes, options, etc. Also, has there been any kind of mission statement
developed re. ideal size, features, and various etc.s? I can deal
better with the money issue if I have a sense of how much is needed, and
what I want it to provide.
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robh
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response 69 of 134:
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May 23 15:12 UTC 1996 |
Check out item 35 in this conference for the results of our
last "long term plans for Grex and how much they would cost"
meeting.
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robh
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response 70 of 134:
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May 23 15:13 UTC 1996 |
Oh, and item 43 as well.
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rcurl
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response 71 of 134:
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May 23 15:31 UTC 1996 |
Neither item 35 nor item 43 consider anything about "mission statement",
"ideal size", etc. Both are only concerned with as much growth as
finances will permit. The answer Ben, so far, to "how much is needed",
is, its entirely open-ended. Questions about Grex's "mission", the
physical plant that will be needed to accomplish that mission, and how
to go about reaching that goal, have been addressed in past coops, but
not for quite a while.
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kerouac
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response 72 of 134:
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May 23 20:05 UTC 1996 |
At some point, grex may have to do what numerous web sites do to
subsidize offering their services for free. Basically sell sponsorships.
For a fee, grex could have a different title sponsor each month on the
login screen. Could be the local pbs station, the A2 news or something
similarly acceptable (not McDonald's or something commercial) Its just
an obvious way to raise money and there are enough places out there who
might be willing to sponsor without interfering editorially or operationally.
Many web sites and freenets have had to accept that these sorts of arrangements
are simply necessary to function economically.
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wolfmage
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response 73 of 134:
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May 24 02:55 UTC 1996 |
re; #72 - Why not 'something commercial?' It is not uncommon at all to see
businesses sponsoring NPOs. ( ever been to a little league game or community
festival?)
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adbarr
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response 74 of 134:
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May 26 00:31 UTC 1996 |
Oh, heck. You let the secret out. Now everyone will get the idea! Dangit!
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