Fundraiser Closed - mission accomplished!

[+ JEC]

To the M4M Community:

You stepped up and helped navigate a thorny transition, and secure the future of the M4M Site and Community.

Almost $11,000 was raised!

• Team Washington, led by @Orin, used some of the money for travel to/from Las Vegas to secure the computers in Daddy's apartment
• Some money was also used to move the site to new hosting servers etc. and secure a new Domain name

Team Washington has now transferred the remaining money to @RadioRob and all remaining funds will be used to support costs associated with the ongoing operation of the site.

There is another phase still to be worked out - which is the long term plan for supporting the site.  I'm going to leave that plan to others....but with confidence that this community can and will figure that out.  We now have plenty of runway to sort that out.

Thanks again to all for your support at a critical time.   This community really pulled together in an incredible way!

Jack

[RadioRob]

Just to add my two cents as well… THANK YOU to everyone in the community that contributed to helping with Daddy’s funeral and closing of his estate. It’s situations like this that shows “it takes a village”. 

I also want to take a moment to thank @Orin, Deb and the rest of “Team Washington” for all of their help. Without them we would literally not be here today.  Your efforts are sincerely appreciated by us all and we will forever be indebted to you. While we can never PROPERLY show our gratitude, the least we can do is pick up the tab for a nice dinner. I’ll be making arrangements with Orin to make this happen once things settle down for Team Washington. 

As noted by Jack, Team Washington is in the process of sending unused funds to support additional ongoing costs for the site. This will take care of our immediate future and take off urgent pressure financially. To support our long term needs, we’re buttoning up some plans to make it easier to support the site going forward. We will continue to provide a way for people to send cash/checks/money orders via snail mail. In addition, we will be introducing the ability to contribute online via credit card or ACH. Part of the reason for the amount of time it’s taken to roll this out is to make sure it’s done in a SECURE fashion. Some of you might know my day job involves helping with managing cyber security for several east coast banks, so protection of data is of paramount importance and being designed in a way to minimize what info we actually collect/process. For example, part of my testing now actually involves processing card payments without collecting a physical address. This has slightly more risk, but I’m mitigating that by limiting those transactions to existing members only that have had an account active for XX time.  I’m also looking at supporting recurring subscriptions for those that would like an easy way to kick in a couple of bucks on a recurring basis.  More details to come on all of this most likely at the end of this week or early next.

The loss of Daddy was heart breaking and very difficult for all of us. However at the end of the day, this community has come away stronger than it started.  I’m optimistic we can continue to foster the sense of good will and support that has been shown and continue writing another twenty plus years of history together. 

[+ Orin]

16 minutes ago, RadioRob said:

I also want to take a moment to thank @Orin, Deb and the rest of “Team Washington” for all of their help. Without them we would literally not be here today.  Your efforts are sincerely appreciated by us all and we will forever be indebted to you. While we can never PROPERLY show our gratitude, the least we can do is pick up the tab for a nice dinner. I’ll be making arrangements with Orin to make this happen once things settle down for Team Washington.

You are all most welcome. Doing this was our way to honor our friend (and 'water-brother' for any Heinlein fans out there) Bill. Deb is currently in upstate NY, caring for her mother, and will return in another month or two. When we are back together, we'd be honored to have a fine dinner out, and to raise a glass to Bill and the community here.