June 2021 Donations & Finances

[Cipher]

Hello everyone!

 

Our donation target will be a bit higher for the next few months as we work on updating our infrastructure around new hosting plans available from OVH. For more information, please check out this great post by Telephone which covers all of the details in great depth. TL;DR - we’re hoping to reduce our overall monthly operating costs by nearly $600.00 in the near future!

 

Now, as usual, a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread.

 

We’re always in need of more people to help test upcoming updates on our public beta server; the bug reports and feedback that we receive from testers helps us immensely. For more information on how to get started on the beta server, check out our Read This to Get Started thread and the rest of the Beta Forums.

 

Additionally, if you have Discord Nitro then please consider using a Nitro server boost on our public Discord server. Maintaining over 30 Nitro boosts gives all of our members new and enhanced features on the server including additional emojis, a higher upload limit, better voice chat quality, and our vanity URL. Click here to read more about Server Boosting. We’re currently at 37 boosts and will lose our Level 3 perks if we drop below 30 for more than a few days. We greatly appreciate everyone who has put their Nitro boosts towards our Discord server!

 

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May 2021 Breakdown

Last month we accepted $4,968.76 in donations, $136.52 over our target for the month. The remainder was put towards additional expenses for the month, detailed below.

 

Note that as the costs for May exceeded the donation target for the month, we will be including the remaining balance for the month in the June donation window. These payments were made from our contingency fund.

 

Here is the breakdown of what May’s funds went towards:

• $4,645.44 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH
  • + $1,111.99 to purchase and set up a new SCALE-2. For more information about this, please read this thread.
• $300.00 to pay our annual Delaware LLC franchise tax
• $240.00 to renew our UPS mailing address / box for 12 months
• $125.00 to renew our 12-month agreement with our Registered Agent
• $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services
• $70.17 for domain renewals
• $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace
• $10.00 for our Atlassian Jira (Cloud) service
• $10.00 for an Invision marketplace extension
• $9.73 for security / administration software
• $8.56 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email

 

 

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June 2021

We have a few additional charges this month:

• An invoice from our primary law firm for their work done up to March 31st totalling $1,823.00 which we will be paying in early June
• $75 to renew our forum software for 6 months
• $20 to recharge our Twilio balance (we use this for programmable SMS for centralized 2fa)

 

Overall, the donation target for June 2021 is $8,060.45. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated:

• $4,290.45 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH
• $1,823.00 for the latest legal invoice
• $1,677.14 to cover the additional charges from may
• $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services
• $75.00 to renew our forum software
• $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace
• $20.00 to recharge our Twilio balance for programmable SMS
• $10.00 for our Atlassian Jira (Cloud) service
• $9.73 for security / administration software
• $8.56 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email

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Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $8,060.45 and will automatically close once that target is met.

 

As always, thank you for all of the support!

 

- The Homecoming Team

 

Edited May 29, 2021 by Cipher
Edited for clarity on June's expenses

[Marine X]

Managed to get in there, and glad to help,

[Abraxus]

Happy to have helped out for another month!

[Shadowmere]

Done!  ...and thank you all for everything you do! 🙂

[starro]

thank you Homecoming team

[McCavity]

Done, and glad to have been able to make it in time to donate this month !

Many thanks to all those who keep us going in the City that we love.

 

 

Edited May 29, 2021 by McCavity

[Asacledhae]

And done from me too.

See you again next month, and keep up the good work!

[Peerless Girl]

Finally caught the window,

 

Paid my March, April, and May monthly donation and am all caught up!

[Glacier Peak]

Whoo hoo finally got in as well. Made up for previous months. 

[Ariamaki]

Squeezed in this time, been a little bit. Excited to see the potential improvements from the new architecture!

[krafti]

First time I've been around during donation window. Glad I could contribute to such a friendly bunch

[EmperorSteele]

Done!

 

Given how much we need this month, it shouldn't be too hard for more people to donate if they wanted!

 

...unless someone plans on being a "Whale" >_>

[Darmian]

Donated. Keep up the good work!

 

 

[Kendalls]

So happy to help keep our world alive.

[Grinner]

d( *_* )b

[Kinestron]

Just happened to look and made it this time. Thanks HC team! 👍❤🎉

[Tacheyon]

Done!

[PezD]

Donated ! Try to do my small part. Keep up the good work!

[Anker Steadfast]

10 usd send your way .... TAKE IT !!  😆

[Ennoia]

Donated.

 

Thank You for all of your hard work and dedication.

[Anker Steadfast]

Dang, donations already at 92% ... it's moving fast. 😀

[Yoru-hime]

I also managed to sneak a donation in for a change.

[ZekeStenzland]

Woot! Closed it out a 2nd time!

[Anker Steadfast]

Nice, they put up a bigger donation goal than usual, and we still hit it within 3 hours. 😁