Support NZFF through donations

[toprob]

If you are a regular here at NZFF, then you will probably know that once a year NZFF calls for donations to cover the cost of hosting the site. Donations are normally accepted in the run-up to the annual account, which is in June, so you can donate from now through to June 2012.

There's a post in the Community Discussion subforum with further details, and links to donate.

Please give some thought to making a donation, all it takes is a few dollars -- from $5 if you use Paypal, but you can make a donation via the Godzone Store if you are already a customer, or even arrange to make a bank deposit or internet banking transfer. We aim to make it easy, so if you can't find a way to donate which suits you, just send me a message.

Although we've managed to keep the forum running solely on donations, both via the forum and from some commercial sponsoring, this year will be a bit of a test, as the number of donations has been decreasing steadily over the last few years. To give an idea of how many donations we get here's the last three years:

2009 -- 50 donations
2010 -- 27 donations
2011 -- 14 donations

So we've pretty much halved the number of total donations each year. At this rate, we'll be down to 7 or 8 donations this year! Ok, we won't, because already we've had 9 donations, but you get the general idea -- it is easy to overlook this, as we've always managed to cover the cost of hosting etc, but if this gets difficult then something will have to change.

I will admit that donations were closed early last year because we had a reserve from the previous year, but I'd certainly like to see a good number of members making a small donation over the next two months.

-Robin Corn

[Adamski]

FOURTEEN donations last year??? I never counted the "I've duly coughed up" posts, but always imagined many people donated, but silently.

Remind us ... how many users are there registered on NZFF? Of those, how many do you think might be currently active?

I loathe the idea of creeping commercialisation & advertising - it's invading every aspect of our lives. I'd really hate to see NZFF covered wall-to-wall with adverts, nasty scrolling thingies, or cheesey videos.

Other than the banner (yay .. hello, mum!) we have *nothing* to distract us from our forum posts. *Please* let's keep it this way!

[Splitpin]

Its on the way (in the morning)

[toprob]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Mar 28 2012,7:22 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

FOURTEEN donations last year??? I never counted the "I've duly coughed up" posts, but always imagined many people donated, but silently.

Remind us ... how many users are there registered on NZFF? Of those, how many do you think might be currently active?

I loathe the idea of creeping commercialisation & advertising - it's invading every aspect of our lives. I'd really hate to see NZFF covered wall-to-wall with adverts, nasty scrolling thingies, or cheesey videos.

Other than the banner (yay .. hello, mum!) we have *nothing* to distract us from our forum posts. *Please* let's keep it this way!

Well,as I said, we did open the Store for donations for a shorter period last year, as we had some left over from 2010, so it isn't as bad as it sounds.

But although we do have a huge number of members, there does seem to be less and less 'hard-core' members who contribute to the forums regularly, so it's hard to reach the majority of potential donors.
This is a bit of a disconcerting trend, which we'll need to look over the winter.

We have 1882 registered members, but this doesn't really mean much -- a lot of those have zero posts, so it is tricky to know how many 'active' members we have. Statistics give some clue as to what is happening -- post quantities has risen steadily, new 'sign-up' has dropped by 50%. This might just be a sign up a 'mature' forum, or it could be due to the lack of promotion of the forum. However the total member count is not a major concern, some forums tend to use this as a measure of success, but it doesn't really mean much in any real way.

One worry is that those who just read posts for regular information, and don't ever post or even sign-in, don't consider themselves part of the membership so they don't think about donating. There are plenty of 'guests' at any one time, and a lot of these are actually members who don't bother logging in, which makes it difficult to gauge interest in the forum overall. A lot of forums are shifting to members-only to overcome this -- even Avsim is looking at this! -- but I'd rather not go this way with NZFF.

One thing which regular visitors can do is to login voluntarily -- and use the 'stay logged in' cookie to automatically login each time they visit. This requires setting up just once (I know that not everyone can benefit from this) but it does make it easier to contribute, in the same way that Facebook makes it easy to 'post'.

[Ian Warren]

Its so easy and for the price of one hamburger and some chips , you get feed all year with with informative builds and going on's and from the latest freeware to the latest payware and in many case you see more about a product before most other internationally well known sites.

So come peoples , pull into the NZFF drive thru and buy that burger and chips that will feed you all year !

[NZ255]

QUOTE (Ian Warren @ Mar 29 2012,9:20 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Its so easy and for the price of one hamburger and some chips , you get feed all year with with informative builds and going on's and from the latest freeware to the latest payware and in many case you see more about a product before most other internationally well known sites.

So come peoples , pull into the NZFF drive thru and buy that burger and chips that will feed you all year !

At least at this drive thru you don't have to stand in queues...segway.... the entire Cheetahs rugby team just snuck into Burger King before me, 20 minutes later....

[connor]

QUOTE (NZ255 @ Mar 29 2012,5:12 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

At least at this drive thru you don't have to stand in queues...segway.... the entire Cheetahs rugby team just snuck into Burger King before me, 20 minutes later....

All these people saying "Oh, I flew next to Kevin Mealamu the other day," or "I saw the Whitelock boys in the supermarket the other day," And the only on-the-street rugby encounter I've ever had is meeting the Tasman Mako's at Chch airport a couple of years back. Really quite depressing.

[SeanTK]

This remains as one of the friendliest sim forums on the net, so I'll chip in something once I get my job transition stuff worked out over the next few weeks. This website (and membership, and staff, etc) is too good not to help out!

[Lapun]

Cheque is in the mail - how the hell do you spell 'cheque' - there's a red squiggly line under it - has spell check spat the dummy, or is it just an Enzed thing??

[Ian Warren]

QUOTE (Lapun @ Mar 29 2012,9:13 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

how the hell do you spell 'cheque' - there's a red squiggly line under it

Best drive thru in the world .... that little red squiggly thingy more commonly know as a hu-hu grub , good kiwi tucker , comes free in ya Burger

[toprob]

QUOTE (Lapun @ Mar 29 2012,9:13 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Cheque is in the mail - how the hell do you spell 'cheque' - there's a red squiggly line under it - has spell check spat the dummy, or is it just an Enzed thing??

Do you use Firefox? I did notice that something -- probably an update -- had changed the Firefox spell-checker to US recently. You can change it back easily enough.

[Lapun]

hi toprob, yep firefox had changed it to the US version, so I have just changed it back to English English, but would you believe 'cheque' still gets the hu-hu grub, so I guess I'll just have to develop the taste - one consolation though - 'firefox ' gets the hu-hu grub as well!! Edit: and I changed it to Australian English with the same result - who cares anyhow - sour grapes.

Hope the donations keep rolling in - how about publishing the top ten donators or at least a tally of the number of donations?

[Adamski]

QUOTE (Lapun @ Mar 29 2012,11:16 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hope the donations keep rolling in - how about publishing the top ten donators or at least a tally of the number of donations?

I'm sure this is Rob's call ... but I suspect publishing the tally while we're still in the throes of "begging mode" isn't too good. A low tally makes us look apathetic/miserly and a high tally might deter prospective donors! I'd rather wait till we're done ... unless there's been a rotten turnout

By the same token, I don't think many people want to appear to be "showing off" about how much they've given. Who'd have thought giving money away could be so complicated .

[toprob]

Yes, like other organisations in our position, donations are kept anonymous. Generally, those who can, do, so anonymity helps protect those who can't as well. I do think that there have been a lot of reasons why money is a lot tighter everywhere in the world at the moment, and our membership isn't immune to this. I would suspect that there are no members in Christchurch for instance who don't find it difficult financially to some extent at the moment. The last thing we want is people making assumptions about who should and shouldn't donate.

However donations have been nice and steady, it looks like we will reach our target. Keep it coming!

[Ian Warren]

YIP The price off a Hu Hu Grub hamburger ..... Yummy

[dbcunnz]

Thinking of buying a new aircraft for your hanger easy to put that off for a little while and donate to a worthy cause you might even find that the aircraft is on a special in a couple of month time.

[Adamski]

QUOTE (dbcunnz @ Mar 30 2012,12:23 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thinking of buying a new aircraft for your hanger easy to put that off for a little while and donate to a worthy cause you might even find that the aircraft is on a special in a couple of month time.

All too true ... www.flightsimdealoftheday.com ... has hit my wallet a fair few times! You could argue that some of those savings could go to NZFF!

[spongebob206]

Well worth the donation, one of the only places you can find fine people like us
All with the same interest

[Snowman]

QUOTE (toprob @ Mar 29 2012,11:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I do think that there have been a lot of reasons why money is a lot tighter everywhere in the world at the moment, and our membership isn't immune to this.

NZFF is a very worthwhile investment for a donation. I will have to admit, i havnt donated this year, much as i want to.
Im one of those NZFF members that times are hard for this year, and i cant afford the next lot of hosting for my own website.
Ive also asked for anonymous donations on the home page of my website, but the reality is, that if the shortfall isnt made up, my website will close soon.
I'd be sad to see it go, but at least i know i can still spend time NZs best Flightsim site,............................. NZFF !

Lawrie.

[Sinz]

Post an Account Number Admin!! I'll give a little.