ArtOrder fundraiser | The ArtOrder

As many of you know, ArtOrder is a passion of the heart for me – not something I do to make a buck. So I hate bringing money into the mix, but the latest round of ArtOrder bills have depleted the funds I have available to spend on ArtOrder. That brings me to this place and time….

I’ve got a few options:

A) Charge for “premium” services to help the website pay for itself
B) Run a fundraiser to raise the required funds
C) Sell ad space and get sponsors
D) Eliminate everything except the blog
E) Some combination of above

“Isn’t it free to publish on the web?” I get that question all the time. Yes, you can get free blog space all over the place, and I did that for a time. As the blog got bigger – I kept having growing pains with the Blogger network and ultimately I decided to move over to a hosted site. Life has been much better (for me) over here. As the community grew, I was asked to add additional services and the community on the Ning network was born. While that network isn’t perfect, it has offered us a lot of play area. As the membership has grown, the pipeline needed has grown. When Ning went to a “For Pay” model, I started incurring monthly fees. The fees are based upon the storage and bandwidth required to house the community. We are a resource heavy community – silly pictures! Add to that costs for domain names, hosting, and legal fees, and things start adding up. Yes, I did mention legal fees. I am having to deal with all sorts of legal issues – from ‘scrappers” stealing my content to issues around protecting the ArtOrder name. A recent conversation with my pro bono business consultant turned up an annual operating budget of $5000 for ArtOrder. Wow, that floored me. I knew that I was putting a lot of time into ArtOrder, but I didn’t realize how much money was going into it as well.

So, here we are. I’ve already got the backbone in place to turn the site into a “For Pay” site for premium services, but I just hate that idea. It just goes against everything that I love about the ArtOrder community. Instead I’m opting for the Fundraiser version first. I’ve added the Fundraising thermometer to the side bar so you can track where we are with our venture. Currently I have raised $205 this calendar year, and that is showing on the thermometer already. I’ll be running the fundraising program until August 5th, 2011. At that point, if we haven’t met our goal – I’ll move to plan “B”. An added incentive to donate, if we end up going to a “for pay” model – every person that donates $5 or more will get a free year of Platinum service (a significant saving over what a Platinum program will cost).

13 thoughts on “ArtOrder fundraiser”

Just left a minor donation myself.. I get too much enjoyment out of reading the posts on this site and the various challenges not to! I do hope you find a solution… I’d certainly be willing to donate artwork towards an auction to raise funds.

I could get something together locally with a handful of artists but I don’t know if I could take on a massive community. I’m not as organized as you!! Let me put my feelers out with some folks and see what I come up with.

Jon, if you can get a Paypal donation button, that is a heck a lot easier for me to donate and I would be happy to! If not, I will find some kind of workaround.

Storn A. Cook on May 12, 2011 at 6:08 am said:

Ooops. I’m sorry, I hit the donate button and it did take me straight to paypal. Wasn’t clear from the outside. Sorry about that.

well there are more than 1200 people in this community, I think this would be the best 5 bucks most of us will spend this year! my donation is done.

dang, thats one of the most unfriendly tight spots to be in

i think it would not hurt the community if you cut down on some things that make artorder (needlessly) expensive for you.
images are a bandwidth hog – and my guess is that the ning guys want to make their buck somewhere on the line of calculating their fees as well. so since you already run a custom wordpress installation instead of a pre-made blog, why not just host a simple forum software? if users have to care for their own image hosting (either we already have some space for their websites or we can use those countless free imagehosters like photobucket, etc…), the overhead on your part should sink quite a bit. (less middle men and less imagehosting)

if you want to keep the chat we have over at ning, a channel at some big irc network might be much simpler. to keep things accessible, there could be one of those java applet chat clients here, on the artorder site.

neither of those would be skimping or stingy on your part – its not the „material“ services you provide as a built-in part of the art order site that make the art order experience. please dont think its either of those fancy things that keeps people here.

Just donated.

Jon,

Have you thought about instituting an art sale similar to Microvisions? This could offset a good portion of the cost.

Jon Schindehette on May 11, 2011 at 7:51 am said:

I haven’t. Simply due to the fact that sales mean time investments, dealing with shipping and fulfillment issues. Maybe someone would be willing to step up and donate their time and energy to help me out??
- Achara Supaphakorn on May 11, 2011 at 6:20 pm said:
  
  Jon,
  
  If you don’t plan on having gazillion transactions a month, I maybe able to help.

Jon,
What about a crowdfunding opportunity? (Kickstarter etc.)
500 people at $10 is not exactly expensive. Premium services can create elitism, something very counter to your pro-arts access theme. (That’s a guess, but it appears to be so.)

I’m sure there’s some random swag in your office you could donate or have some donations from artists who got their final nugget of confidence here before submitting to artdrop. Maybe Jarvis/Cavotta/Whitters could help out with it too?

Also, I sent a message to the Fenners. Let’s see if they have any advice.

$5000 is a small annual grant from a foundation. You do participate in arts education and arts access…but as you aren’t a 501c3, you’re an artist collective really. An initiative of sorts.

I’m going to search for more answers and we’ll be in touch.

Jon Schindehette on May 11, 2011 at 7:52 am said:

Not a bad idea. Since this isn’t a Wizards project – I can’t use office swag. I can only use personal stuff…and I like my stuff
If folks are interested in donating…maybe Christina’s idea might be a good place to start
- autumn on May 11, 2011 at 4:17 pm said:
  
  I would be willing to donate or donate a large portion of profits from prints or anything along those lines if it means continued artorder goodness.

zephyri on May 13, 2011 at 9:01 am said:

Just left a minor donation myself.. I get too much enjoyment out of reading the posts on this site and the various challenges not to! I do hope you find a solution… I’d certainly be willing to donate artwork towards an auction to raise funds.
Christina Hess on May 13, 2011 at 7:12 am said:

I could get something together locally with a handful of artists but I don’t know if I could take on a massive community. I’m not as organized as you!! Let me put my feelers out with some folks and see what I come up with.
Storn A. Cook on May 12, 2011 at 6:06 am said:

Jon, if you can get a Paypal donation button, that is a heck a lot easier for me to donate and I would be happy to! If not, I will find some kind of workaround.
- Storn A. Cook on May 12, 2011 at 6:08 am said:
  
  Ooops. I’m sorry, I hit the donate button and it did take me straight to paypal. Wasn’t clear from the outside. Sorry about that.
Mathias on May 12, 2011 at 1:15 am said:

well there are more than 1200 people in this community, I think this would be the best 5 bucks most of us will spend this year! my donation is done.
raphael on May 11, 2011 at 12:18 pm said:

dang, thats one of the most unfriendly tight spots to be in

i think it would not hurt the community if you cut down on some things that make artorder (needlessly) expensive for you.
images are a bandwidth hog – and my guess is that the ning guys want to make their buck somewhere on the line of calculating their fees as well. so since you already run a custom wordpress installation instead of a pre-made blog, why not just host a simple forum software? if users have to care for their own image hosting (either we already have some space for their websites or we can use those countless free imagehosters like photobucket, etc…), the overhead on your part should sink quite a bit. (less middle men and less imagehosting)

if you want to keep the chat we have over at ning, a channel at some big irc network might be much simpler. to keep things accessible, there could be one of those java applet chat clients here, on the artorder site.

neither of those would be skimping or stingy on your part – its not the „material“ services you provide as a built-in part of the art order site that make the art order experience. please dont think its either of those fancy things that keeps people here.
Christine evelyn on May 11, 2011 at 9:15 am said:

Just donated.
Christina Hess on May 11, 2011 at 7:00 am said:

Jon,

Have you thought about instituting an art sale similar to Microvisions? This could offset a good portion of the cost.
- Jon Schindehette on May 11, 2011 at 7:51 am said:
  
  I haven’t. Simply due to the fact that sales mean time investments, dealing with shipping and fulfillment issues. Maybe someone would be willing to step up and donate their time and energy to help me out??
  - Achara Supaphakorn on May 11, 2011 at 6:20 pm said:
    
    Jon,
    
    If you don’t plan on having gazillion transactions a month, I maybe able to help.
mjlinnemann on May 11, 2011 at 6:41 am said:

Jon,
What about a crowdfunding opportunity? (Kickstarter etc.)
500 people at $10 is not exactly expensive. Premium services can create elitism, something very counter to your pro-arts access theme. (That’s a guess, but it appears to be so.)

I’m sure there’s some random swag in your office you could donate or have some donations from artists who got their final nugget of confidence here before submitting to artdrop. Maybe Jarvis/Cavotta/Whitters could help out with it too?

Also, I sent a message to the Fenners. Let’s see if they have any advice.

$5000 is a small annual grant from a foundation. You do participate in arts education and arts access…but as you aren’t a 501c3, you’re an artist collective really. An initiative of sorts.

I’m going to search for more answers and we’ll be in touch.
- Jon Schindehette on May 11, 2011 at 7:52 am said:
  
  Not a bad idea. Since this isn’t a Wizards project – I can’t use office swag. I can only use personal stuff…and I like my stuff
  If folks are interested in donating…maybe Christina’s idea might be a good place to start
  - autumn on May 11, 2011 at 4:17 pm said:
    
    I would be willing to donate or donate a large portion of profits from prints or anything along those lines if it means continued artorder goodness.