this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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Lemmy.ca's Main Community

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Welcome to lemmy.ca's c/main!

Since everyone on lemmy.ca gets subscribed here, this is the place to chat about the goings on at lemmy.ca, support-type items, suggestions, etc.

Announcements can be found at https://lemmy.ca/c/meta

For support related to this instance, use https://lemmy.ca/c/lemmy_ca_support

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

We recently crossed the first anniversary for many of us on Lemmy and the Fediverse, and we are thrilled to announce an important milestone: we have started a new registered not-for-profit organization! The organization is registered as β€˜Federated Open Communications Canada’, and we will go by 'Fedecan' in our day-to-day operations.

Over the past few months, we have been working behind the scenes on the necessary paperwork, bylaws, and other administrative tasks to get the organization rolling. Thanks to the invaluable feedback from our previous check-in, we decided to take the leap and register federally, which will allow us to operate across Canada more easily. For more details, you can check out the FAQs on our new website.

Resuming Donations

With this important step completed, we are now ready to resume accepting donations. We have set up several donation options to accommodate different preferences on convenience and fees. Our first priority is to reimburse those who have been covering server and other costs, and to set up regular financial updates. We are open to adding more donation options, so please let us know if there is an option you prefer.

Our current costs

  • Server hosting - $150/month
  • Domains registrations - $50/year
  • Non profit requirements - $500 one time

Our Next Steps:

  • Reimburse individuals who have covered server and operational costs and to set up more regular financial updates
  • Collaboratively creating guides and learning resources about Lemmy and the Fediverse (ex. how things work, data/privacy details, and best practices for moderating or running instances, etc.) + translations
  • Exploring other platforms to run. Some that are on our radar include Sublinks, Pixelfed, and Matrix
  • Developing logos, colours, and other branding details based on ideas from the community

What we want to know:

  • Do you have any questions, comments, or concerns? This will also help us expand our FAQs
  • Which other platforms would you like us to explore?
  • Do you prefer any other donation method?

We want to help build a better online experience for everyone, and that requires an organization with a strong foundation. This should be the first step in that process.

Thank you for everything so far, and we look forward to seeing you around! πŸ₯³

The Fedecan Team

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[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 28 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I wanna give /u/otter a big πŸ™Œ for all the work he's done here. All the fedecan site and content was him, as well as dealing with the more mundane paperwork to sort this all out.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago

😊

It was totally a group effort! Thankfully, I had some extra time the past few months to dedicate to this, and I learned a lot throughout the process. Really excited to get started on the next portion of the project!

[–] anonymoose@lemmy.ca 24 points 3 months ago

Very cool! Thank you for taking the initiative on this!

[–] QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyz 21 points 3 months ago

Holy moly, this is great for ensuring both the continuity of your instance and the infrastructure necessary for federated social media! Really good plans all around.

[–] grte@lemmy.ca 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Great news. I use this site far more than I used Netflix before I cancelled that service so I consider a monthly donation money well spent.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 months ago

This is it right here.

[–] morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Happy to see you're accepting donations again!

[–] uhmbah@lemmy.ca 18 points 3 months ago

FOCC ya! If anyone can, Fedecan!

[–] Beaver@lemmy.ca 17 points 3 months ago

Exciting stuff! Here’s to healthier social media!

[–] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] otter@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago

Thank you! I'm hoping to shift some of my focus now towards getting those guide pages up, in particular the ones on moderation and community building. I heard we already have a PR so hopefully it's easy enough for everyone to weigh in / contribute :)

[–] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

FYI, the "Support Lemmy" link in the menu on lemmy.ca site is going to the general Lemmy donation page at join-lemmy.org

[–] paddythegeek@lemmy.ca 15 points 3 months ago

Sponsored monthly! Way to go everyone, this is awesome. Contributing feels like something good I can do in the face of a whole lot of bad in the world rn, and I’m grateful this instance exists and is so well supported. 🫑 πŸ™

[–] veeesix@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 months ago

The website looks great!

[–] stormio@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Just the other day, I was thinking about how nice it would be for the team behind lemmy.ca to expand into other Fediverse services. I'm glad to see it's on the roadmap. The future is looking brighter for non-corporate social media in Canada.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

We're excited too :)

I was thinking about how nice it would be for the team behind lemmy.ca to expand into other Fediverse services

Did you have any particular service that you might us to focus on?

[–] Gestrid@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not the person you replied to, but what about Mastodon?

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago

We haven't made any final decisions yet, but right now I think a lot of us already use https://mstdn.ca alongside Lemmy.

It might be a duplicated effort to spin up another mastodon, whereas we could focus our attention on new platforms + support the existing Canadian mastodon instance in other ways

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[–] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You mentioned the costs for server hosting, domain registration and non-profit requirements, which is great so we have an idea of how much needs to be covered with donations going forward.

You also mentioned reimbursing people for past costs. What's the current debt?

Thanks for doing all of this.

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Since we took over in June 2023, truckbc has been paying personally for the server. All costs including the non profit registration (covered by me) have added up to about $2500 so far.

I don't have the number handy but going off memory, Smorks has about $1000 in donations from before he was going to transfer our way.

Ideally I'd just like to keep our finances totally public, but we're not that organized yet.

[–] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 months ago

Ideally I'd just like to keep our finances totally public, but we're not that organized yet.

That's not something I know anything about, so I'll let you guys sort out what to do there (along with everything else) :)

But given what you've been open about so far:

~$1500 in debt ~$155/month ongoing costs (amortizing the domain reg over the year)

Thanks, I'll come up with a good donation amount based on these numbers :)

[–] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

How was the process for registering a non-profit?

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Tbh not too bad, just some dredging through paperwork and having to write up the bylaws, etc. Vancity was pretty helpful in getting the banking setup.

[–] Beaver@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago

Wow, another reason to switch to Vancity.

[–] cybermass@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I wish I could donate now, but I broke my foot and I'm off work because of it so I don't have any income. Thank you for all your hard work to provide this service to Canadians and other people from around the world!

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 months ago

Don't feel bad, take care of yourself first!

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Give only if you can. If enough of us who can give do give, we should be able cover the current costs and provide some buffer.

From each according to their ability, etc

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[–] Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 months ago

This is great! I've been wanting to provide support. Now I'm signed up for monthly.

[–] greg@clar.ke 8 points 3 months ago

@otter this is amazing!

[–] lightrush@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago

Subscribed monthly.

[–] No_Eponym@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't know if I'm missing it somewhere, but many banks now let folks set up recurring interac e-transfers. Just set a monthly $5 with my bank.

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[–] AstralPath@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago

$20 on the way. Thanks for the work you folks are doing. I greatly appreciate it.

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is great, but I'd also like to have an idea of what is needed to support this on an individual level. I know that isn't easy since this is just starting up, but we should have an idea of what's needed individually once things have been running for a while. Suggested donations would make it easier to know what's appropriate to keep this afloat.

In the meantime, I'll do a one-time donation partially to help build a cash reserve (and to support the year of good service I've already received).

Thanks again for all your hard work, both in running the server and in getting thos NFP set up.

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Agreed, but like you said it's hard to know right now. We only need around 30 people at $5/mo to cover costs, but will 30 people donate? 🀷

We'll post a funding update in a month or so once things settle in a bit.

If you're tight on cash, don't give it to us.

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I mostly posted that to raise visibility. I understand it's a hard question to answer right now. $5/mo was kind of what I was thinking, but I don't even know how many accounts/users are on here, so I can't say if that's realistic. I've already given more than I ever did to Reddit and consider it money well spent.

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ultimately if we end up "over funded" then once we've got some savings built up, I'd like to re-donate that to the projects we use (like lemmy)

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If it helps provide resources to get other services like the ones that were suggested, that would also be great. But knowing we're helping the developers would also be a win by me, even if I don't agree with their politics.

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 months ago

That's basically how I feel as well. We'll put it to the community before we do anything though.

[–] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 months ago

Yay for future potential pixelfed!

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone involved in formalizing this. Really helps to know that lemmy.ca will be support and stable for a while to come. I really also love the census you did. Would love to see that continue. I've signed up to support monthly through GitHub.

I'm going to brain-dump some suggestions that come to mind for the future:

  • I really like how OpenCollective.com makes it easy to see the incoming and outgoing transactions for a fund. You've setup up a bunch of payment options already, so I don't want to add to that burden, but it would be cool to see a similar kind of reporting for Fedecan -- it doesn't have to be super sophisticated, heck even a CSV transaction log would do. It would be useful for transparency, but also so that the community can ensure Fedecan's expenses are comfortably paid for.
  • My dream is that the Fediverse provides viable alternatives to big tech's social platforms, and the first thing that comes to mind is how Facebook and its various services are the default for so many people. Facebook' Social Graph, Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Facebook Marketplace and Instagram come to mind. If Fedecan can work towards providing a stable alternative to even one of those, it would be an effort worth supporting.
  • Currently the only other Fediverse services I use are Mastodon through social.coop, and BookWyrm through Bookrastinaing. I'd love to see Fedecan build or support essential services like that.
  • This is leaving the Fediverse scope, but I recently learned about an initiative from India where they're tackling monopolies like Uber by building services that don't take commission. NammaYatri.in is one example. They use the Beckn protocol and India's ONDC stack. In the very long term, I wonder if Fedecan could support those kinds of initiatives, to setup alternatives with healthier incentives baked in.
[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Re: open collective, we looked at it but it seemed limited for Canadians. I liked that aspect of it too, so I'm working on a grafana dashboard for us to try and do something similar.

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[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago

Congratulations folks!

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago

Congratulations! I will put in a little donation this weekend.

[–] Albbi@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I didn't expect Github Sponsors to have no fees attached. I'll probably just do an etransfer though.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)
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[–] Rooki@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Have my little 5$ donation on github sponsors. It was just a one timer, but i will see if i can do more next time :) and just a question can someone contribute to the guides and learning resources? Because i would like to contribute there if i can.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

Totally! We set up the website with collaboration in mind so that anyone can help write the guides + iteratively improve upon them. This should ease the workload and allow everyone to weigh in on the best way to present the information. The website supports internationalization, so we can have the guides in different languages too.

I'll make another post here later to get feedback on the planned structure / contribution process. I can tag you in that post if you would like :)

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