the October 2023 Beehaw Financial Update

obligatory preface: we’re 100%-user funded and everything you donate to us specifically goes to the website, or any outside labor we pay to do something for us. you can donate here.

overall expenses this month: $230.81

$134.66 for Digital Ocean hosting, which can be further subdivided into

  • $108.00 for hosting the site itself
  • $21.60 for backups
  • $5.06 for site snapshots

$27.81 for Hive, an internal chat platform we’ve set up (also being hosted on Digital Ocean)

  • $23.14 for hosting Hive
  • $4.63 for backups
  • $0.04 for snapshots

~$39.16 for email functionality, which can be further subdivided into

  • $35/mo for Mailgun (handles outbound emails, so approval/denial/notifications emails; also lets us not get marked as spam)
  • ~$4.16/mo ($50/yr, already paid in full) for Fastmail (handles all inbound emails)

$29.18 for BackBlaze (redundant backup system that’s standalone from Digital Ocean)

overall contributions this month: $691.85

support still more than covers our expenses; interestingly, our donation composition is now almost exclusively monthly donations.

  • 108 monthly contributions, totaling $668.33
  • 2 one-time donations, totaling $23.52

total end of month balance: $5,198.47

expense runway, assuming no further donations

  • assuming expenses like ours this month: we have about one year and seven months of runway.

finance history

June July August September October
Contributions $705.00 $3,870.44 $1,310.90 $1,033.82 $691.85
Expenses $54.00 $566.98 $523.79 $264.50 $230.81
Difference +$651.00 +$3,303.46 +$787.11 +$769.32 +$461.04
Balance $726.51 $3,591.33 $4,347.79 $4,701.66 $5,198.47
AsepticFuturisticFox,

Thank you for your transparency ❤️

acastcandream,

Great info as always, thank you. Any developments re: staying here vs. leaving?

alyaza,
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

we’ve ruled out a few possible options, and we’re currently live-testing a bunch of the ones we want to focus on. no big decisions, but there is some progress on what options we’d have if we ultimately decide to leave.

acastcandream,

Appreciate it! Y’all are great

alyaza,
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

whoops, somewhere along the way numbers got messed up (in two ways–the initial report of backblaze expenses was wrong and that made me realize i transposed a number wrong somewhere too). the actual expenses for this month appear to be $230.81 which means a better differential than previously reported.

GammaGames,

I appreciate the table breakdown, but I’d recommend flipping its axises for future months. It’s getting pretty wide for mobile!

And as always thanks for being so open!

ericjmorey,

Is there a level of funding that would make the admins comfortable hiring a developer to work on whatever platform that Beehaw will eventually move to?

miracleorange,

Enough that it probably wouldn’t be reached any time in the near future, if at all, I assume.

shagie,

Ballpark numbers: $10k USD / month for a developer. $5k per month if you can find someone to work at well below normal market rates. Below that it would be a token payment to someone who is able to work on it.

Practically speaking, this represents at least an eight-fold increase in current donation rates to be sustainable rather than spending the year’s worth of hosting runway in a month.

ericjmorey,

Are you assuming a developer in the US? Many great developers in South America and Europe that don’t expect $120K/year.

Auzy,

You’d probably want to ensure they’re paid above average though (with room to move), so they’re comfortable enough with life to finish the job.

Otherwise, you might end up with them leaving half way.

alyaza,
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

realistically yeah, there’s no current path to “hiring” someone to do much of anything besides pretty basic graphic design work.

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

I am certainly open to implementing specific backend features in return for payment. You can send me a private message on Matrix to discuss the details.

Hyperz, (edited )
@Hyperz@beehaw.org avatar

Wait, is Beehaw moving away from Lemmy or something? 😵‍💫

Edit: nvm just saw the big thread about it.

What_the_vent_meant,

I must be crazy but I haven’t seen a thread about that. Could you please add (or send me) a link to it?

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

beehaw.org/post/7776438

YooHooBandit,

As always, love the transparency from the Admin team as well as the devotion of our community :)

Rentlar,

Excellent work compiling this as always.

Great to see the expenses are stable and the project has more than a year’s worth of funding to spare.

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