Testing The Wall of Honor / Donations

The DAREBEE mission has always been simple: make high-quality fitness advice and workouts available to everyone. This has never changed. Over the last ten years there have been moments in our funding when we definitely bit down to our cuticles, but thanks to the support we get from people across the world we're still here. Our difficulty in having comfortable funding has not changed. Hosting costs, equipment and everything else we use have increased so we are feeling the pinch. But this difficulty, we feel, should not be the main focus of our fundraising so we are changing our support us page.

As you all know being part of this site is more than just about exercise. It's about being more than the world around tells us we should be and doing more than we could on our own. Donations help not just those who donate but countless others who can't. This is both life-affirming and world changing. The Hive is more than just another fitness forum. What we become is more than just a little healthier and a bit stronger. We want these positive, empowering attributes to be the main focus of DAREBEE moving forward. As a result we have changed the support us graphic at the bottom of our website, we have added some extra explanations on our donations page and we have added (as an experiment) a wall of honor which shows those who have donated recently (first name only and none who use a business name).

These are experiments. We do not want to use pop-ups and our fundraising cannot be so obtrusive that it takes attention away from the reason this site has been set up. So, these experiments are the result of much internal discussion. This place is ours (collectively) so we're interested in what you think about these changes. Let us know your thoughts below. And, thank you in advance.

 

[dontmindlosing]

I'm for these experiments. I like that the wall indicates that people are donating to the site regularly, which could encourage others to donate as well. I like all the messaging around donations. It's clear. It's honest. It does not try to guilt anyone into donating, rather it instills a sense of community and, possibly, some pride. Many parts of the world, both digital and physical, could stand to be more like DAREBEE.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

I like the changes.

The support.html page is short, sweet, and to the point. I could not find on this page, however, a link to funding.html . I think it would be good to add that link as funding.html provides additional details which are pertinent to people wishing to help support the project. The funding.html page also provides a link to finances-explained.html which includes information people often don't consider or may not even be aware of in this age of a World Wide Web that is predominantly advertising-supported.

I think it would also be good to add a more prominent link to how-we-are-supported.html as that page explains the ethos behind Darebee's funding model.

I like the new Stand With Us graphic. It does a good job of reflecting the Darebee ethos and inviting prospective donors to be a part of it.

 

[Nihopaloa]

Personally, I would wish for a clear and transparent listing of the actual financial necessities. I have absolutely no idea what costs Darebee has to cover each month. Your finances-explained page gives semi-concrete answers, but nothing hard and fast. Nothing to work with. What are your actual server costs? What are your costs for rent, bills, fees, salaries, whatever? I have no idea, and the lack of those numbers rubs me the wrong way.
I have no problem supporting projects I like. I used to donate to Darebee in the past until I realised "Wait a moment, how much money do they even need? Where is this money going to? What are the monthly costs?". I know a lot of pages who are very transparent about their monthly costs and expenses, usually with a list and/or a fancy graphic. They would also state when they don't need money this month, because expenses are covered, or when someone actually dug really deep into his/her pockets and the expenses for several months were covered. In one case, a service got donated two bitcoins and declared that for the x number of months, no donations are needed or accepted.
I would already appreciate the list. Very much so.
I like what the team is doing. I think Darebee is an important place. But I feel this transparency is needed, too. Especially when taken this here into account:

As you all know being part of this site is more than just about exercise.

and

This place is ours (collectively) [...]

Edit: I have to correct myself, the site I mentioned that received bitcoins actually is set for the next 10-20 years, depending on future costs, so no future donations are accepted. I know this will probably remain a dream for Darebee, sadly, but I would still be very grateful for a financial report every year or so and a general estimate for the monthly costs. I know Darebee is not a business entity, but those sites I have in mind for comparison aren't, too, and they don't use ads, product placement, mining scripts, or whatever.

 

[Sundance]

I think the change on the front page sends a positive signal about supporting Darebee and aligns with the values behind Darebee. However, I miss the previous information about whether funding is critical. The information indicated whether funding was required and if there was a need for additional support. Now, it has become unclear whether the expenses will be covered or not. Therefore, I hope you reintroduce the old system where one can see if the costs are being covered or not. Additionally, I have always appreciated that participation in the community was independent of your donations. I feel that you are breaking that principle with the new Wall of Honor. For me, the most important thing is to know whether the site is running smoothly through donations and whether there is a need to contribute extra.

 

[Damer]

Thank you for taking the time to think about this and add your own thoughts, ideas and concerns. I will try to address them all as fully as possible.

@Laura Rainbow Dragon I think your idea is excellent. As it happens we have already discussed in-house enriching this page with all the other links. This is a work-in-progress as we re-examine this critical part of our messaging so we shall try to incorporate as much as possible, what you suggest.

@Nihopaloa thank you for adding your thoughts here. Again, this is something we've discussed in-house on more than one occasion. I would be grateful if you could give us a link or two to see how those websites you mention actually do it.

DAREBEE is a registered non-profit organization with a listing at Companies House in London so we do file annual accounts. Our costs, however, vary with sometimes our bandwidth costs alone reaching in excess of $3,000 a month because of the popularity of the site across the world. To give you an idea of the scale of the challenge, a business-orientated for-profit website would make sure that all its traffic can be monetized in some way by either curtailing traffic from countries which do not add to its revenue (to reduce bandwidth costs) or by creating specific click-bait content that appeals to the particular demographic it needs to attract or it would limit the geolocations from which the website can be accessed. We don't do any of that. Two months ago we were featured, organically, in the Indian Press and TV which resulted in a massive surge in traffic from that country which has still not leveled out. That massive surge is a pure cost. Indian-based traffic cannot contribute in any way to us because of the currency restrictions imposed by the Indian monetary system. We had to massively increase our bandwidth allowance to make sure the site could function as intended for everyone and still carry out normal day-to-day operations. India is only one example like this. Because DAREBEE's mission is global we provide unfettered, equal access to everyone regardless. That approach however makes our costs, most months, hard to predict with any degree of accuracy.

Anyway, when you can provide those links it will be appreciated (you can DM me if necessary).

@Sundance valid points which echo some of our own concerns. After much debate this is how we thought of them: funding is always an issue for us because we know we do not push for conversions of traffic-to-donations (to use a more online marketing lingo). But that is by design so we specifically do not guilt people into donating or pressure them in any way which is antithetical to our principals. By the same token we saw the almost constant 'low funding' message as a sort of emotional blackmail. It comes with the implied threat of the site going away unless you donate (I know I am overstating it a little but it's how the discussion went). We want to be positive throughout. If we face a moment when our finances are stretched to breaking point we shall communicate it. But just juggling funds to meet the site's needs is something we're OK with because we've done it for some time now. It shouldn't be a source of worry for those who come to us who already have their own personal worries to deal with.

I totally understand your point about the community and equality. There is nothing in the Wall of Honor as we have implemented it now to create a two-tiered system (which we would never, ever want to see, much less play a part in). First names only, no mentions in the community. The Hive is our safe space and to be so we need to all feel equal within it. No businesses mentioned (and we do get donations from some business sites). We can't always foresee all the consequences of what we implement which is why this is an experiment. If we sense that it creates issues and divisions we shall immediately retire it. Thank you for bringing up this point. It reflects that our own in-house discussion was in pretty close alignment with your concerns which is really good to know.

 

[PETERMORRIS966]

I like the changes. @Damer I like your explanation about not creating a two tier system.
Great work @TeamDarebee

 

[Scohui]

Thank you for your replies Damer, and for being honest as always. I too have always wondered what the actual funding is needed, as I've always seen it as "low" or "very low" but even though there's an explanation on what you mean by these terms, I always wanted to know the numbers since they've been a near constant.

This wall of honor has made me realise that Darebee receives a fair amount of daily donations, something I've always wondered too. But tbh my heart immediately sank at the thought that despite there being more donations than I thought (even though it's been 5 days), knowing that whatever the amount of monthly donations is it has never been enough to cross over "low"...

A small bit hope does grow from knowing that despite all this you guys never stopped once in all the years you've been up and that I've known the website. Not once did you give in to what is "normal" elsewhere in terms of revenue. Frustratingly stubborn at times but you have a mission and you're sticking by it and that's beautiful.

All in all, I don't feel guilt tripped by the Wall, a bit reassured I suppose. I still think being able to see the costs, kind of like "donation goals" almost, would be good to understand the individual impact of donations, but also progress bars have a bit of a psychological effect on people and perhaps it is not the vision you have, I understand. I also would like to know how much I've personally donated in total because I genuinely don't know, but I think you don't keep a link between the acc and the donation so you probably can't do that either

 

[Damer]

@Scohui I am really glad we're getting the Wall Of Honor right. We're monitoring it in terms of effect so your opinion here adds to the data we have. We do get, on a daily basis, dozens of requests for sponsored content, paid links, product promotion and product placement, all of which we have refused in the past and we continue to do so. DAREBEE's focus is 100% on the people who use it. Everything we do revolves around that. To do otherwise, no matter the justification, is to lose sight of who we are and what we are about so, as @neilarey has said countless times "this just ain't going to happen". We also don't keep tabs on who donates what and for how long. Again, we take the view that people's priorities and situation change, websites that do monitor this often engage in "you've donated to us before and we need your help again" type of messaging which, in our view, applies emotional pressure to people who have already expressed their good intentions in the past. We just love the fact that you're here as part of our journey and we feel privileged to become part of yours and together we also help countless others who cannot donate, have no means to get fit and yet need to in order to more fully enjoy life and better themselves. In many ways DAREBEE is a social experiment that proves that the better world we all want to see is possible.

 

[Nihopaloa]

So.
I'm a bit late with my answer, @Damer, apologies. I had to look a bit around for links or sites to share who give a bit of information about their finances and their needs, because
a) they're either closed communities, which are of no help to you if you aren't a member
or
b) might be deemed offensive or in bad taste because of the culture surrounding them and/or the language used
or
c) I'm a bit uncomfortable sharing them.
Anyway, I don't want to just spout something into the aether without backing it up at least a little, or without providing a bit of information in the hope that you'll trust that I'm not lying. In the end, as far as I understood, you're mostly interested in how other sites are handling that topic.

• The Vocaloid Database VocaDB is maintained by one guy in his free time who has a patron in which he states the recurring server costs (and which type of server he uses) and the yearly domain costs
• The largest English-speaking Visual Novel Database vndb.org is also maintained by one guy, who states the server costs in his patreon and claims that for every 400$/month he is able to dedicate one day per week to maintaining exclusively. He also has a Subscribstar for those who don't like patreon's politics. He also gets some money with affiliate links, which is understandable, considering the purpose of the site.
• A closed community I'm a member of lists every donation made, the current balance of the account, and whenever money is withdrawn and for what purpose. This usually is server costs every three months of around 850 €. This is a community with a huge database of images (nothing illegal, by the way) (this is also done a lot in various other closed communities)
• Mangadex, a huge manga site where scanlators uploaded their mangas for others to read, before they got attacked and had to start from scratch, used to list their servers and the costs for them. Members either donated, "adopted" servers or rented servers themselves and donated them. These days, they have a partnership with bilibili, so they don't need donations any more, but same as years before, they don't use ads. You can still support them by buying merchandise, but they don't list their expenses any more.
• a mail service maintained by one guy with over a million users used to make financial reports until he didn't need donations any more because of one generous donator. He used to list the donations and the expenses, as well as an estimated budget for the next year.

Example:

Expenses for the year 2020 in Bitcoin per month


Estimated Budget for 2021.

All of those pages don't give a notable benefit for donations, aside from a fancy title next to your name in a forum or a mention on the front page, if you wish.
Certainly, at the end of the day you have to trust those people with their numbers. But hey, at least they made the effort to type something out

Of course, the difference between those pages and Darebee is that they usually focus on the expenses of the tech/hosting side of things, but my original question wasn't intended to control if the donations to Darebee are going to the right places, but to get a general idea of what is needed. In my opinion, this doesn't need to be a super-detailed and super-accurate account of everything you need money for.
A general estimate for server/hosting, rent/energy, software, whatever, would be enough, and it might have the side effect that someone knows a good alternative to something, wants to donate more because now it is known what is needed (i.e. "I always thought 10 Euros would be plenty, I mean, what does Darebee even need? ---Wait, that much? Maybe I can also donate 20..." or something along those lines). Maybe someone offers to adopt something.
I just think that added level of transparency would benefit Darebee, harmonises with the spirit of the site, makes you (even more) trustworthy and with a bit of luck you might even profit from it. We all don't want ads, sponsoring or affiliate links on Darebee.
And if you don't want to plaster the hard numbers in an easily visible place (where you could fear that it would spook some possible donators), put them somewhere you have to dig for them, or offer to disclose them with an e-mail. Trust me, people like me who are interested in that stuff tend to look very hard for them. But they also value that kind of transparency a lot.

 

[Nihopaloa]

I had a look over the Wall of Honour a moment ago and because this thread was meant to ask specifically about feedback and I don't want to criticise all the time, I just wanted to tell you guys that I like the concept. I also like the little stick figures on top showing how many people have donated this day. It's a nice little extra and neat for visualisation purposes.
And while I'm not a fan of the "Stand with us" slogan on the graphic (personal preference, so free to ignore) I like it more than the little flashing piggy bank that was there beforehand and sometimes caused panic. I'm also not really sure about the "donate 1 $" part. It feels a bit like the bastard child of "we don't really need much, seriously" and "oh please, we desperate need something, no matter how small the donation". Maybe "Make a donation" "Donate" or "Support us with a donation" would sound/read better. Again, personal preference.

I've had another look over the "Stand With Us" page and this small line here got me thinking:

DAREBEE is a vision of how the web should be.

You know how I envision the web as it should be, too, (in addition to all your other valid points I fully support), and which is in acute danger at the moment? A place were knowledge and information doesn't get purged. And while we currently witness a lot of purging web-wide, I would love to see Darebee doing something different. I'm hinting at the whole nutrition/recipe section. Yes, I know why it was retired. But I also feel like an archive section, possibly with a big disclaimer that these are old information without support, merely kept up for archivation purposes, would be awesome. Many people loved the recipes and mealplans. I miss a lot of them and I hate plowing through Pinterest (*shudder*) or hoping that the waybackmachine (also threatened) has an old snapshot.
I know and understand your reasons for taking them down, but for the sake of freely available information, I'd like to ask you to reconsider, or at least consider an archive with a disclaimer. I feel like this is important.
Thanks for reading.

Edit: I just realised, I immediately ate my words and started to criticise again. Apologies. I hope they were at least constructive.

 

[Damer]

@Nihopaloa thank you for coming back to this thread and also for providing the information you felt you could provide. You raise a couple of points which I will take the time to address but before I do I will also take the opportunity to stress the uniqueness of DAREBEE's central philosophy: open access to everyone, everywhere. No strings attached. We really see fitness as a right, not a privilege. The subtext of that is that "everyone matters or no one does" - hence the equal treatment we give to everyone and the openness, approachability and sensitivity with which we do it. All of these are the result of careful thought and we consider as much as we can, the impact our actions have. As I mentioned we have rolling costs from month to month just on bandwidth that are hard to predict. Our figures are clear at the end of the financial year but not before and since you mentioned trustworthiness (and those who openly publish their costs do so in an attempt to gain that trustworthiness) consider how it would look if in one month we have a bandwidth cost of say $2000 and the next month three times that (which happened very recently). Just the conversations around trying to explain it would be a distraction from the work we need to do and also add to the worry of people who use the site who already have their plate full of other things - we should not be adding to them (which is why we are making all these current changes). At the same time those who publish their figures with a specific intent to recoup that cost do so because they know the subtle psychological pressure this applies to respond. This is where the sensitivity element of it comes in. We don't want someone to be forced to give $20, for instance, when $10 is the donation they had in mind. That approach uses 'trustworthiness and transparency' as hooks to manipulate people's behavior (and there are extensive studies on that). It would be more honest to have ads or sponsored content.

We are low key by design because we take all those sensitivities into account despite the fact that we know it makes our task way harder. Which brings me to the point you raised on the $1 donation which, on the face of it is valid particularly as after transaction costs we get just 65 cents. But, as I mentioned to @Scohui already, we understand people's circumstances change and not everyone is in a position to donate to us, even as seemingly little as $1. The world is undergoing so much challenging change that there have been instances where we have refunded that $1 upon request, because those who contributed through a subscription or gave it as a one-off now really need it and they're asking for it back. DAREBEE is global, not local. Not everyone is as privileged as affluent western society and even within our affluent western society there are sectors where fitness and the knowledge required for better health and a better life reside behind barriers that require money to remove. This is why DAREBEE is not just for those who donate and those who do donate do not just do it for themselves or us.

Cost and our focus on quality were the main reasons we had to retire our section on recipes and cooking. This was detailed here. Cost is also the factor we cannot maintain archives indefinitely (the old Hive, for instance, had to go so we could save money on disk space in the server). Everything archived also requires maintenance and maintenance means manhours which is more cost. When it comes to recipes and cooking, as unique as we may have been in our approach, we're not irreplaceable because we simply did not have the resources to adequately deliver the sustainable quality required. We felt that there are other places on the web which are dedicated to healthy cooking on a budget and these more than adequately fill the gap left by our absence in this space. By focusing on what we are really good at we hope to be able to deliver more without raising costs. So far our approach has worked. This year started with more programs, more workouts and more collections than ever before despite the fact that recession and the global energy crisis increased the cost of everything by at least 25% and also led to a drop in donations as a result of people's changing circumstances.

We do have some recipes archived still in one handy PDF you can download here. Thank you for taking the time to respond.