obligatory preface that we’re 100%-user funded and everything you donate to us specifically goes to the website, or any outside labor we pay to do something for us.
this update is only because after a long round of troubleshooting with volunteer sysadmins and sysops yesterday, we committed to significant new expenses that have helped solve any errors that people were previously getting. our hopefully-final update of where we stand is a break-even of $54 a month or $648 a year. (please once again ignore OC’s estimated yearly budget–we don’t determine it lol)
our expenses are currently:
- $48/mo toward our host, Digital Ocean. (reversible. if we need to commit to further than this it is also likely we will seek another host since DO is on the expensive side)
- $2/mo for weekly backups
- $4/mo for daily snapshots of the website, which would allow us to restore the website in between the weekly backups if need be.
for a total of at least $54/mo in expenses. this may vary from month to month though, so we’re baking in a bit of uncertainty with our estimation.
we currently have, for the month of June:
- $85/mo in recurring donations (at least for June)
- $620 this month in one-time donations
for a total of $705 this month. our total balance now stands at 726.51.
that balance means we now have about a year of reserves currently, if we received no other donations and have no unexpected expenses. i’m sure we’ll have churn in our monthly donations and such though, so please don’t hesitate to donate on our OpenCollective page if you’d like to keep the site going.
thanks folks!
I’m a Linux sysadmin by profession, and I use DO extensively for work. Not sure I have anything to contribute, but feel free to reach out if there’s ever a need
How do you plan to distribute the available balance? Will all community members get to participate and have a say in non-fundamental budget decisions?
How do you plan to distribute the available balance?
as of now we don’t pay for anything but the site, so it’s all just going to keeping the site up. the balance is our runway to keep the site up, and right now it’s sitting at around 16 months before we’d be in trouble.
Will all community members get to participate and have a say in non-fundamental budget decisions?
because of the answer to the above: no. for one thing, the only other stuff we might spend money on is paying labor out to someone for the work they do to keep the site running. this is a very simple operation, and we’re not going to overcomplicate it.
for another thing: we are not anywhere near the point where we need, really want, or can actively facilitate community input on how our budget should be spent–and i have no idea what meaningful input our community as a whole can currently give us. (and if we ever do seek community input, it’ll be when 80% of our community has been around for longer than 21 days)
Great! If there’s any way to help via code or something else please let us know, I’m sure a lot of the people here would love to help out.
I wonder if fargate etc. vs. DO would be cheaper/better. If it isn’t broken and traffic is steady no need to change providers, but would be curious to see.
Great! If there’s any way to help via code or something else please let us know, I’m sure a lot of the people here would love to help out.
The Lemmy project is always happy to see new contributors :)
There are some nice issues lying around needing more attention hehe
If you’re interested in helping out with development, you should also join the Lemmy Development Matrix room!
I suggest taking a look at Hetzner for hosting, I have found them very reliable and affordable. And perhaps reach out to admins of some of the larger Mastodon instances for hosting advice.
Seconding this. Hachyderm documented their performance scaling and financing journey quite extensively, and I’m sure many of their decisions could be applicable to Beehaw as well.
