October 2021 Donations & Finances

[Cipher]

Hello everyone!

 

As always with these posts, I’d like to drop 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 greatly appreciate everyone who has put their Nitro boosts towards our Discord server!

 

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September 2021 Breakdown

 

Last month we accepted $4,528.35 in donations, $49.83 over our target for the month. As always, all remaining funds will be put towards our operating expenses for the upcoming month.

 

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

• $4,290.45 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH
  • + $428.33 charged separately for the SCALE-3 server that was delivered (this will be included in October’s target)
• $121.46 for our Google G-Suite services
• $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace
• $19.83 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email
• $15.00 to pay a 1-year domain renewal
• $10.00 for our Atlassian Jira (Cloud) service
• $9.73 for security / administration software

 

 

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October 2021

We received the first of three SCALE-3 servers last month and have been happy with the performance since bringing it into our live cluster. As such, we will be moving forward with our mapserver host hardware changes this month.

 

Overall, here are the changes we’re going to be making this month:

• Two of our Advance-5 servers will be cancelled
  • This will save us $710/mo going forward
  • The remaining Advance-5 servers will be cancelled after the additional SCALE-3 servers are delivered
• Two additional SCALE-3 servers will be ordered
  • These have a setup fee of $598 each, totalling $1,196 for this month
  • The current delivery estimate for these is 30 days, but we’re anticipating it taking longer, based on the time it took to deliver the last SCALE-3
  • We will not be billed monthly for these until they are delivered and online

 

The donation target for October 2021 is $5,851.75. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated:

• $4,094.46 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH
  • + $1,196 to cover setup fees for the two additional SCALE-3 servers
  • + $386.43 to cover the pro rata billing in September for the first SCALE-3
    • This was partially covered by the $49.83 in donations over our target last month
• $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services
• $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace
• $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 $5,851.75 and will automatically close once that target is met.

 

As always, thank you for all of the support!

 

- The Homecoming Team

 

[GraspingVileTerror]

About a half hour, and at 58%.  Pretty solid.

[Suspicious Activity]

Is there a way to do a monthly subscription to donate?

[Shocktacular]

Ha! I actually got to donate this time!  

Keep up the good work, HC team! 😄 

[Glacier Peak]

55 minutes ago, Suspicious Activity said:

Is there a way to do a monthly subscription to donate?

There is not currently. 

[Jzke]

Happily donated keep up the work :)

[Anker Steadfast]

Happily donated $10

Already at 84%

 

😀

[BrandX]

This one seems to have taken longer.

[Anker Steadfast]

It is night in Europe, I dunno if that makes it slower.

[Asacledhae]

We'll get there, don't worry.

Sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it ends in 20 minutes.. 

 

I  was wrapped up with something else, and I just remembered about it...

I'm glad i managed to donate again, though! 😁

Edited September 26, 2021 by Asacledhae

[Glacier Peak]

42 minutes ago, Asacledhae said:

I was wrapped up with something else, and I just remembered about it...

I'm glad i managed to donate again, though! 😁

Ha same here!

[GraspingVileTerror]

94% around the 5 hour mark.  

[GM Crumpet]

All complete and fully funded for another month. Thank you to everyone who contributed

[Ironblade]

16 hours ago, Asacledhae said:

I  was wrapped up with something else, and I just remembered about it...

I'm glad i managed to donate again, though! 😁

Yeah, we're usually busy and miss it.  Yesterday we noticed the initial announcement so we put in $100 to make up for the missed months.

[Doc_Scorpion]

Missed out because I was on vacation and out hunting geocaches in the Cascades...  But I donated in spirit!