Susan,
I'm still new here, so I barely know you and of course you don't know me, but I hope you can differentiate my intention to have an open, respectful, sincere dialogue from bitching or complaining.
First of all I want to tell you how much I appreciate your work in maintaining this community. I too managed an online community hosted on a home server (as seems to be the case here) for a few years, and I am too familiar with how demanding it is to keep everything running smoothly and having to wake up in the middle of the night to your phone beeping alerting you that something is wrong, as well as the challenges of having to make ends meet. In the case of that community, for reasons not relevant here, we didn't receive donations or any form of payment from members, so it was down to two of the staff members to cover all the costs. One of them was me. So believe me when I say I get it. I really do.
I understand the need to look for different solutions if donations are not enough. And I believe care needs to be taken to ensure this open, safe space of support is maintained alive, but is also maintained safe and open.
My situation is... unusual. I can probably afford $5 a month. I say probably, because now I'm living with a low, variable income, currently in a country where $5 is worth much more than $5. I'm carrying a semi nomadic lifestyle, but because I'm not a "digital nomad" it doesn't take well with banks and credit card companies. So even if I can afford $5 a month, I have no way of getting that money to you. That means that I if the subscription is implemented I will be left out.
I don't want to be left out.
And while my circimstances are unusual, there are other members who, for different reasons, are in a similar situation. First there's our members from countries with weaker economies, or where access to PayPal or electronic means of payment are not widespread. Then there's our young members that are still financially dependant on their unsupportive families. And there's also our married members who are still not out to their spouses and would have to explain what that monthly $5 charge is.
I don't expect you to take the financial burden of the forum. You already take a lot of the non financial burden. But I do believe that a subscription may not be the best solution.
I know ads don't provide a huge income and would be very tricky for a community like ours. I don't want to even think of the ads an ad network would show us with "transsexual" as a keyword. Direct ads, arranged directly with a business as opposed to a network, can be a more desirable alternative, both financially and in regards to quality and relevance. It takes more legwork to implement, though.
There's a website I visit often that is maintained through affiliate links. They're not obtrusive, inserted everywhere. At the bottom of each page there's a small text saying how you can help the owner maintain the site (and his family) by using those links to buy anything, and there's a link to the list of affiliate links. The site is about photography equipment, but you can buy, say, a CD on Amazon through those affiliate links and you're helping.
Another possibility could be to sell merchandise. There's websites like Zazzle, Redbubble and others that make it relatively easy to upload designs and sell t-shirts, cell phone cases, mugs and lots of other things, without having to worry about fulfilling orders. I'm sure there's some artistically inclined members that would be happy to contribute some designs. Heck, since I read your announcement this morning I'm even considering using my very limited artistic skills, even if I only have an Android tablet to do any work, and set up a trans related store to come up with some donation (not just $5, but whatever I can get, since in my situation I can't cash it out anyway).
I just hope that a combination of some of the above suggestions can work to complement the donations. And also that reading this message helps those who are in a position to donate, but aren't doing it, realise how important that contribution can be to those of us who can't donate.
