The September 2023 Beehaw Financial Update (opencollective.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Gaywallet@beehaw.org to c/support@beehaw.org

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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.

overall expenses this month: $264.50

We downsized this month which has significantly brought down our costs, but it involved quite a few steps so it's a bit complicated to roll everything up. For simplicity purposes I rolled all the snapshots, backups, and hosting together for old/new droplets by service.

$177.46 for Digital Ocean hosting, which can be further subdivided into

$157.50 for hosting the site itself
$2.28 for backups
$17.68 for site snapshots

$29.60 for Hive, an internal chat platform we’ve set up (also being hosted on Digital Ocean)

$24.00 for hosting Hive
$4.80 for backups
$0.80 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)

$18.28 for BackBlaze (redundant backup system that’s standalone from Digital Ocean)

overall contributions this month: $1,033.82

support still more than covers our expenses, thank you everyone! breakdown is:

114 monthly contributions, totaling $793.82
12 one-time donations, totaling $240.00 It seems like the majority of our flow has shifted to monthly contributions and we are still sustainable overall

total end of month balance: $4,701.66

expense runway, assuming no further donations

assuming expenses like ours this month: we have about 17 months and three weeks of runway

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[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 56 points 10 months ago

past four months of data, for anyone wondering. a wiki page for this should be forthcoming in the days to come

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

[-] Rentlar@beehaw.org 27 points 10 months ago

Hey alyaza, I'm glad to see you back and hopefully doing well. Wishing you and the rest of the admin team all the best running this community.

[-] Penguincoder@beehaw.org 14 points 10 months ago

Nicely laid out thanks Alyaza!

[-] ericjmorey@beehaw.org 10 points 10 months ago

Why is the balance not going up by an amount equal to the Difference between Contributions and Expenses?

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 16 points 10 months ago

almost certainly because we tend to bundle expenses for multiple months together/as the person running the expense needs it billed (more convenient for all involved), so funds aren't coming out on the same monthly basis as funds coming in

[-] ericjmorey@beehaw.org 15 points 10 months ago

Cash basis vs Accrual basis bookkeeping strikes again!

[-] RagnarokOnline@reddthat.com 50 points 10 months ago

Thank you for setting the standard for transparency and professionalism with user funding.

[-] MangoKangaroo@beehaw.org 24 points 10 months ago

That's a pretty healthy difference between donation income and expenditures. You love to see it.

[-] minishoemaze@beehaw.org 22 points 10 months ago

The longer I am on Beehaw the more I appreciate it. Proud to be a contributor and grateful for you all 🐝👍

[-] menturi@beehaw.org 19 points 10 months ago

I really appreciate the trancparency. I'm happy to call this my home hive.

[-] TimTheEnchanter@beehaw.org 18 points 10 months ago

Thanks, as always, for the info!

[-] d3Xt3r@beehaw.org 16 points 10 months ago

Just wanted to say thanks for the transparency, and thanks to the mod team for making Beehaw such a great community!

[-] soeren@iusearchlinux.fyi 13 points 10 months ago

awesome. you are really creating something special with your instance and it seems to pay off. how are you paying only $2.28 on digital ocean for backups? did you stop using digital ocean backups?

[-] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 13 points 10 months ago

I think we utilized snapshots to downsize so there were less backups this month

[-] Penguincoder@beehaw.org 17 points 10 months ago

This is sort of correct. Doing file level backups with restic to B2 for needed data files. The system can always bee reinstalled as needed, its the data on it that we need to save; not the whole thing. So 1 snapshot this month for last month of the whole system, a 'known-working-good'. Then did a bunch of updates, configurations, and restorations. Didn't need to roll back, so removed the snapshot.

Backups are still working just not doing it on DigitalOcean side.

In addition, the costs will be lower next month for DO as well. They charge you for the time a VPS is on. This month, the beefy expensive server was on for a 'few weeks' even though it wasn't serving 'beehaw.org'. Just needed to sync some things and files between that one and the new, smaller tier DO. Still charged for the time that expensive one was on. Next month (This one? Sep) won't have that beefy server on it at all. So; should see lower cost.

[-] soeren@iusearchlinux.fyi 13 points 10 months ago

Thanks for the response I was never in doubt about your backup process. The digital ocean pricing for the backups seemed low to me compared what digital ocean suggest what backups would cost for me.

[-] newtraditionalists@beehaw.org 12 points 10 months ago

Thanks for everything you and the team do! And thanks to all users for contributing to this instance, and helping to make it as great as it is!

[-] Ellvix@beehaw.org 10 points 10 months ago

Is the linked opencollective system the best / only way to donate? When I first joined and was unsure and hopping around on instances I starting doing patreon mastodon.world; does any of that flow towards beehaw?

[-] Lionir@beehaw.org 15 points 10 months ago

OpenCollective is the only way to donate to Beehaw.

Only Lemmy.world / Mastodon.world get the money you give to them, of course. Same goes if you donate to Beehaw.

[-] arnoid@beehaw.org 9 points 9 months ago

It’s so great and refreshing to have this level of transparency!

[-] storksforlegs@beehaw.org 7 points 9 months ago

It looks like there's been an increase in donations, this is great! :) Thanks again for the updates.

[-] Auzy@beehaw.org 5 points 9 months ago

That's actually really good news. Congrats.

Looks like you may even have some spare beer money left over

this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023

263 points (100.0% liked)

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