June 2023 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.

 

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Last Month: May 2023

 

Last month we accepted $4,692.52 in donations, $2.36 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month.

 

Here is the breakdown of our expenses in May:

• $4,372.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH
• $125.00 for our annual Registered Agent fee
• $121.26 for Google Workspace
• $27.00 for domain renewals earlier this year
  • This is showing up now due to a billing delay on IONOS’ side but was included in an earlier donation window
• $25.00 for a Paperspace Air instance
• $19.25 for an AWS EC2 instance and SES
• $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted)

 

 

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This Month: June 2023

 

The donation target for June 2023 is $4,672.10. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated:

• $4,372.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH
• $121.57 for Google Workspace
• $105.00 to renew support for our forum software
• $25.00 for a Paperspace Air instance
• $19.25 for an AWS EC2 instance and SES
• $9.73 for security / administration software

 

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Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,672.10 and will automatically close once that target is met.

 

- The Homecoming Team

[biostem]

Managed to get in this time.  Thank you HC staff for all you do!

[Bionic_Flea]

Sneaky!  Getting in early to maybe catch some new blood.  I like it!

[Logoriel]

Happy to support Homecoming; some of my college friends were in town and I was able to give them a blast from the past! 😊

[Abraxus]

Put a little something into the piggy bank.  As always, my pleasure to give to something that gives back so much more.

[Velvet Mystique]

Thank you, Homecoming team! 

[Abraxus]

Might want to go ahead and put a ping on the Discord announcement.  Seems like things are moving noticeably slower than usual.  I know lots of folks are traveling this weekend, or enjoying other things.  But, come on!  It's CoH people! 🤓

 

Edited May 27, 2023 by Abraxus

[TorontoSunshine]

Once more I have donated to make robbing banks, kidnapping rich people, and black market trading great again.

Edited May 27, 2023 by TorontoSunshine

[lazilcho]

A big THANK YOU!, for all that you do. 🙂

[Asacledhae]

Got in again this time.

I didn't see a red pin on Discord, so I thought donations weren't open, until I checked the forum...

 

Edit: Usually things get settled overnight (in EU times), so hopefully people will notice!

Edited May 27, 2023 by Asacledhae
Added a final thought.

[FFFF]

Yay, saw the link in time. Donated for the first time!

[starro]

Oh!! This is the weekend! Donated! I was playing in the yard and missed the notification.

[Asacledhae]

25 minutes ago, starro said:

Oh!! This is the weekend! Donated! I was playing in the yard and missed the notification.

Hehe, it seems that many people have, as there was no "ping" in the announcement this time!

Hopefully we'll get things sorted soon!

 

[SupaFreak]

Unfortunately only the 2nd time since founded that I've been online during donation time, but... DONATED!  Massive thanx again to the HC team for all you do!

[Anker Steadfast]

Floated $10 your way - Keep up the good work. 👍

[YourOlPalVoodoo]

Finally in a position to donate again! ^_^

[Marine X]

Been trying to get the word out that Donations are still open but chat is so busy that it's buried in no time.

 

[Ringo]

Been awhile, so I threw in fifty bucks.  I'm glad this place continues to exist!

[BrandX]

Donated a day or two ago, thought it'd be filled by now.

[TorontoSunshine]

2 hours ago, BrandX said:

Donated a day or two ago, thought it'd be filled by now.

 

I understand Memorial Day is a big holiday in the US (I'm Canadian so I don't know too much about it), so people go away for a bit. It will pick up around Tuesday once everyone has returned.

[candidate]

c´mon ppl. Lets finish this !

[Psi-bolt]

Managed to get in under the wire.

[Bionic_Flea]

Hey @Cipher, if you aren't too busy and don't mind sharing, why do you think it took longer to hit the donation target this time?

 

From my earlier post, it seemed that you started it at an odd time (4am on Saturday!) and someone else reported that it was not advertised on Discord as usual.  Where those intentional moves to try and get different folks to contribute?  Can you tell if it's the same 200 or so players that fund it every month?

[Bopper]

I doubt there were ulterior motives. Folks had holiday plans, so the post was made 1am PST on Saturday, and a ping wasn't made. I think on Monday or Tuesday a ping went out on Discord, I don't know about in game, though, I was BBQing.

[Cipher]

On 5/31/2023 at 5:24 PM, Bionic_Flea said:

Hey @Cipher, if you aren't too busy and don't mind sharing, why do you think it took longer to hit the donation target this time?

 

From my earlier post, it seemed that you started it at an odd time (4am on Saturday!) and someone else reported that it was not advertised on Discord as usual.  Where those intentional moves to try and get different folks to contribute?  Can you tell if it's the same 200 or so players that fund it every month?

The donation window opened so early because I had to head out of town early Saturday morning and needed to get it taken care of before then.

 

Usually when we open the donation window each month we do an announcement and ping in-game and on Discord. Because of the time of day that this one went up, I decided it was best not to ping at the time. I probably (clearly?) should have done the ping later in the day, but I don't like excessively pinging people or posting in the announcement channels unless it seems warranted to do so. I was also a little curious to see what would happen if we didn't, to be honest, as this was the first time we opened donations outside of our normal hours.

 

To be clear - we do keep some money in the accounts between donation windows specifically to cover any unforseen expenses that may arise or help smooth out potential issues with a funding round. It's not a huge amount, $1,000 - $2,250, but it does mean that  based on past months, we're likely able to cover our expenses early in the month if the donation target isn't met by the time we are billed. This donation window has shown that we may need to increase the size of this fund, though, as the bulk of our expenses are billed at the start of the month, and the contingency fund isn't enough to fully cover us if it was ever necessary to do so. In a worst-case scenario, it's important to know that Homecoming is financially backed by myself, and if at any point we didn't have funds to cover our frontloaded expenses, I would be providing whatever is necessary to get us past the hurdle until donations have finished for the month. It's not ideal, but I hope this offers some peace of mind.