Hemlock Knots Operational Costs
Donation protected
Hemlock Knots is seeking help to cover some basic and ongoing operational costs. For the last 3.5 years, all of the operational costs (approaching $3,100) were happily paid from my family budget. Costs include domains, website hosting, podcast hosting, logo design fees, software licenses, streaming platform fees, Wordpress plugins, design templates and occasional developer fees to help with technical stuff I couldn't do myself. My time is never considered an operational cost.
Over the last 18 months, my personal income has decreased dramatically due to 2 layoffs and being unemployed for many months. I've made sufficient personal sacrifices in lifestyle and spending to make finances work, while making sure to keep the lights on for the Hemlock Knots community.
As a last resort before asking for financial support from the community, I experimented with placing ads on the website to see if I could generate some income to offset the HK costs. After 45 days of running ads on the website, we've generated only $1.62. Ads on the site have made the website ugly and the user experiences terrible, therefore I'll be removing those.
Operational expenses:
- Website hosting ($734.94 due March 5, 2023) - The total cost of website hosting for 3 years is $734.94 ($20.41 per month), including tax and some basic security features. If we do a 3-year plan paid upfront, we get the best rates per month. But we need to pay this by March 5th. See the invoice here for pricing, tax and totals.
- Podcast Hosting ($720) - The cost of podcast hosting is exactly $20/mo for the data storage needs of the show. See the current monthly bill here and the plan that we have. We are raising funds for 3 years, to match the cycle for the website hosting.
- Gofundme transaction fees ($43.65 or 3% of above costs) - There's a 2.9% transaction fee when I move the donation money into the HK checking account, plus $0.30 per donation that they keep as a service provider (see pricing here ).
- Total = $1,498.59 ($734.94 + $720 + $43.65) - Gofundme doesn't take decimals, so I'm rounding to $1,498 for this fundraising project goal.
I will not be soliciting individual donations beyond what I can document and show as legitimate operational expenses (above). All donations from this campaign will be transferred into a separate checking account for Hemlock Knots Ministries, with its own EIN. All operational costs above will be paid from the Hemlock Knots checking account only.
Thank you for your involvement, participation and support!
-Mark Curtis (Director, Hemlock Knots Ministries)
Organizer and beneficiary
Mark Curtis
Organizer
Draper, UT
Mark Curtis
Beneficiary
