160 lines
8.8 KiB
Markdown
160 lines
8.8 KiB
Markdown
# Financial transparency (2020-2021)
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<small>2021-12-28 | [@andrea](/@andrea)</small>
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Hi, everyone!
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Since we ask y'all for donations and we finance our servers by using an [arc.io](https://arc.io) widget,
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it's only fair that we regularly share updates on how much we get and what do we spend it on.
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Unfortunately, the post will be a bit long and complex, because there's an important complication to our finances.
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Basically: the website started as a tiny, personal, Polish-only project
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(you can [check out how it used to look](https://web.archive.org/web/20200725174439/https://zaimki.pl/))
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created and maintained by me ([@andrea](/@andrea)) – hosted on my personal VPS, domain bought with my personal money etc.
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I never really expected the project to grow so much – both in terms of the number of users and contributors.
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So the infrastructure (together with associated costs and income) is still mixed up with my personal projects,
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and I can only estimate what percentage of “server usage” to attribute to pronouns.page and what to the rest.
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## Arc.io
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A CDN is a network of servers that host static resources, like images and scripts,
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and brings them closer to the user that requests them
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(different server serves it to different users based on their geographical location).
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Arc.io is a new approach to this technology – instead of tens of big servers, it uses thousands of tiny “servers” – user's devices;
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therefore being even closer to the web requests and making websites even faster.
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They pay webmasters for adding their widget on their websites and they charge clients for using their CDN.
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I've checked their FAQ very carefully and can't find anything shady in their business model –
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they don't track users, they make their presence clearly visible (the icon in bottom left),
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they allow an opt-out with just two clicks and without any consequences for website usability,
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they don't show ads, don't mine cryptocurrencies, they disable their widget if a user is on mobile data,
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they encrypt all the traffic, etc.
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Their dashboard says that over the year they've sent me **$488.40**
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(that's €431.74 with today's exchange rate, but I'm not gonna check what it was exactly every single week 😅).
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They don't say what percentage of that income came from pronouns.page/zaimki.pl except for the most recent week –
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and there the value is around 80%. I think it sounds representative of general traffic share
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(comparing with Matomo analytics for example).
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So I'll calculate everything else with the assumption that **80% of my server usage is pronouns.page and the remaining 20% are my personal projects**.
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(Also, I'll **multiply some values by 1.5 years**, because the website has been online since July 2020).
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That gives us **around €345 from pronouns.page traffic** sent from arc.io to my personal PayPal account.
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## Server cost
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That one is simple: I pay €185.49/year for a VPS from OVH. Let's multiply it by * 80% * 1.5 years,
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which means **I spent around €222 from my personal money on the pronouns.page server**.
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## Domains
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I own three domains related to the project: zaimki.pl (€11.90 * 2 years), another .pl to be published later (€11.90)
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and pronouns.page (€11.88 * 2 years).
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The initial year is usually way cheaper, around €2-4, but I don't wanna have to look up the exact values
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(especially since other numbers here are estimations and a few euro difference is neglectable),
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so I'm going to disregard those.
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Also for the second year of pronouns.page I paid from the Collective's PayPal, so not counting that either.
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So that's basically **€11.90 for domains**.
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## AWS
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We use the AWS cloud for multiple things:
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- hosting images (profile pics, cards) → that's ~$4 for S3, ~$13 for data transfer,
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- sending out emails → that's ~$4 for SES,
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- hosting our mailbox → that's $4 for WorkMail,
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- generating pronunciation → that's within the free tier.
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Adding 19% VAT and converting to EUR that's around €26.5 per month.
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Around, because it changes monthly depending on the usage.
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I can't compare every single month because until October I've been using it for another very heavy project
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(my overall bills were around €50-60/month) and I can't split those bills by project.
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Currently, I use AWS exclusively for pronouns.page and two personal WorkMail accounts (which is exactly 2*$4, so easy to deduct).
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We haven't always had such heavy usage of the cloud as we have now,
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so I won't multiply the cost by 1.5 years, of course – let's assume a half of that time (9 months).
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So that's **around €238.5 for the cloud**.
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## PhpStorm
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The IDE I use to work on the project is great, but unfortunately not free.
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I use PhpStorm (technically there's just JavaScript in this project, no PHP, so WebStorm would do too, but PhpStorm supports both and they cost the same),
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and it costs €53 + VAT / year.
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I think that being the main developer of the project and using the IDE mostly for this project
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(again, i think the 80% figure vs. 20% for personal projects sounds quite accurate),
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we could count part of the IDE cost as the Collective expense.
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So (€53 + VAT) * 80% * 1.5 years = **€75 for the development tools**.
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## Summing up the Andrea–Collective relationship
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**I've received €345 of income generated by pronouns.page to my personal account and spent €222 + €12 + €238 + €75 = €547 to keep it running,
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which means I've given around €200 to the project.**
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Which I'm fine with, that's my contribution to the cause 😉
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And since all of the calculations above are just estimations, I wouldn't dare asking the Collective about any specific amount back anyway.
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## The Collective PayPal
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We have a PayPal account, and we collect donations both directly and via ko-fi.com.
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Over the time **we've received €426.83 in donations**.
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We've spent €11.89 on domain renewal and €16 on a restream.io license for [our first anniversary live stream](https://zaimki.pl/blog/pierwsze-urodziny).
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So overall **the Collective has €398.94 in assets** at the moment.
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## Decisions
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There's two big decisions we're about to make as a group now:
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### Do we want to split my personal finances from the collective finances?
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The project has grown far beyond the initial state of being my personal pet project,
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so it would make sense to have the infrastructure split, both in terms of the cost and income.
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It would make it more clear, what's mine and what's shared.
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On the other hand that would require work to set up a new machine, new arc.io account, new AWS account etc.
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We'd pay for two servers even though the current load is being handled well by just one.
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And the ~€200 I'm giving to the project by paying for the infrastructure would now be a cost for the Collective.
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### What do we want to spend our assets on?
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We have around €400 to spend and no real plans yet to do so.
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It was hard to plan any bigger spending not knowing how much in donations we can expect,
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but after 1.5 year of collecting them, we can have a better overview of the options.
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A few ideas have come up over the time.
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If we decide to split my infrastructure from the project's infrastructure,
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there will be that €100–€200 or so gap to cover each year.
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Our main focus has always been the Polish version where it's more about
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establishing and promoting nonbinary and gender-inclusive in the first place,
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rather than just hosting cards. This is where spending might be most needed.
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We're preparing [a Polish-language zine about nonbinary experience](https://zaimki.pl/zin) –
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it will be published for free in an electronic form,
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but we might also spend our assets to print it, send it to school libraries, etc.
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We might want to invest our money in something like a merchandise shop that would both
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promote nonbinary language, queer culture and general awareness (eg. selling pronoun pins, mugs, prints of the [Queer Calendar](/calendar))
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and also raise money for future initiatives.
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And if we don't have better ideas or the processing capacity to actually implement them,
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we might just keep collecting donations until such opportunities arise
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(eg. until we have enough for some huge project,
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or until new members join who have fresh ideas and the time and skill to implement them, etc.).
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Side note: the support section technically says “If you want to chip in for the server, domains, stickers etc.,
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_or simply buy the authors a beer_, you can use the links below” –
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so I don't think people would be mad, if we spent it on some team party to celebrate a job well done 😉
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But to be clear: no alcohol has been bought with that money, we don't have plans to do so,
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and even if we wanted to, the team is so spread out geographically, that it's probably not a real possibility anyway 😅
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Whichever way we go, rest assured that we intend to spend our funds in ways that we hope will
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help us achieve our mission best, to the benefit of the Queer Community.
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We promise to keep it transparent and public.
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We're also open to suggestions, ideas and cooperation.
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