Guys and Gals, It's time to get to work, time to donate!!

[Ken Shoemaker]

John,

Notice that this is my 42nd post. I'm also "a newbie". I've found everyone here so much help I cringe at the thought of losing everyone's support and freindship. While I've never met even one creeker, I count you all as "friends". It's the lest I can do for all of us.

I hope to meet some "creekers" at the Chicago show this Friday....

[Karl Laustrup]

I'm in. May be the best $25.00 I'll ever spend.

And we need one of the MODS' to make this a "STICKY POST". Please.

Karl

[John Buzzurro]

I've only been using this forum for a short time, but I'd hate to see it go away. I kicked in $25 to help out.

[John Bailey]

Tim,

I've sent PayPal to an address in the past. It's easier if the "Creek" had a PayPal account, but that would take time and I'm not sure if it can be done. In the meantime, we should try to send something quickly. I'm looking for an address now, possibly someone knows the Sawmill address so those who would like can send snail-mail or PayPal.

John,

I know, and of course I was only kidding. But, at least you corrected my spelling of "Cheapskate."

Steve,

I'm looking for an address as I type. Hopefully someone knows and will post quicker than it will take me to find it.

Thanks again to all,

John

[John Bailey]

Karl and John,

Good show guys!!

$150 down, $2,350 to go.

We Need to Send Some Money!!

John

[John Hart]

Can we set up a Paypal option? Quick and easy...

When I paid for the Handykraft Forum a while back, Keith gave me this paypal email -- sales@hroads.net. I'm sure it is applicable.

[John Bailey]

Good info John,

sales@hroads.net
For PayPal donations
Hope a moderator, or whoever knows, tells us if this is not right.



We Need to Send Some Money!!

John

[John Bailey]

Address for Snail-Mail donation:

Hampton Roads Online
1213H George Washington Memorial Highway
Yorktown, VA 23693

Anyone, please correct if this is wrong.

John

[Sparky Paessler]

John, I'm in for $20.

[Randy Meijer]

"Guys and Gals, It's time to get to work!!"


Well maybe and maybe not?? I don't want to throw a wet blanket on this party; but it seems to me that we may be getting the cart before the horse if you get my drift. I think it might be prudent to wait for a request from Keith for donations before we all go firing off checks in the mail. Certainly it is a wonderful sentiment and surely appreciated; but we may be potentially causing Keith more trouble than help. Supposing there are considerations that the general membership are not aware of and Keith has already decided that it is in the best interests of all involved to change the ownership at SMC. Under that scenario, conceivably, he would feel obligated to return all unsolicited donations and we, with the best of intent, would be doing nothing more than saddling him with the distasteful task of returning all of those donations. It does not appear to me the situation is that critical that we can't wait a day or two with our donations to confirm with Keith that he wishes to attempt a volunteer effort to raise the funds necessary to keep SMC operational under the current structure?

Having said that, I did a few calculations which may or may not be of any consequence. There are 176 pages in the membership directory with 30 members on each page which works out to 5280 ft per mile....no no...total members. In an earlier post, Keith stated that it would take $5 from each member(?) to resolve the financial problem. I have no idea whether he was talking about total members or active members or the top 1,000 members?? Let's take a worst-case figure and say he needs 5 bucks from everyone on the list. That would project to the neighborhood of $26,400 per year or $2200 per month(a hair less than what John figured)!!!! WOW !!!
Big bucks, folks.......

OK, we all know that everyone of those 5,280 "members" is not going to send money. A big chunk of that number...probably more than half....are folks who signed up, gave SMC a look for a week, posted once or twice and then never came back again. Just to get a number to work with, I arbitrarily picked folks with 10 or most posts as active members who might be likely to send some money and it turned out to be a nice round number....1500 members. Now, of that group, some are no longer with SMC and some will not be able to donate. Again in a totally arbitrary fashion(but with an eye to making the math easy) I assumed that 66% would contribute(probably a high estimate) which works out to 1000 members. From there it is easy to see that we would need $26 from each of those members....or maybe more.....to keep SMC alive and kicking for a year. That is a pretty daunting task in the current economic environment and may not be realistically attainable?? I don't know??

I want to reiterate that it is not my desire to cast a cloud over this effort. It is a commendable one in intent and spirit!! My only suggestion is that we hold off for a short time until we get directions from Keith on how he would like to proceed.

[Steve Ash]

Thanks John,
$25.00 coming via snail mail from here, if it's found to be needed. (After reading Randy's post)

[Gail O'Rourke]

I am happy to contribute now...I just hit "donate"

[Bernie Weishapl]

Check is in the mail for $25. I have gained more knowledge here than most subscriptions I get and I spend at least $25 on them. So in my books with all the wonderful people on here and what I have learned here it is well worth it.

[John Bailey]

Randy,

I agree with your analysis entirely. However, I've come to the conclusion that we need to move now. I will gladly pay $26 a year for this site. I also understand that I may loose my just donated $25 if the site goes under. And, I will just as gladly tell Keith to keep it because there will probably be shut down expenses that I don't know about. There is a phrase "paralysis of analysis." That's why I wanted to keep it simple. So, repeat, repeat, We Need to Send Some Money. It's time to get the job done. We may have to make some adjustments, but we need to move now to find out if we have the interest to keep this going. I appreciate your thoughts. I've had similar thoughts. It's the civil discourse of this type that make this site special.

We Need to Send Some Money!

John

[Dan Larson]

Like the other posters to this thread, I'm more than happy to financially support SMC. But I think Randy makes a very good point about holding off until a formal appeal is made for donations.

Keith, I want to thank you for generously shouldering the costs of running SMC so far. If you feel that member donations would be helpful at this time, please let us know...

Dan