the August 2023 Beehaw financial update (opencollective.com)

submitted 11 months ago by alyaza@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: $523.79

as expected, a full month of running on last month's setup has come in pretty high. luckily, we expect downsizing to begin this month (and we have a pretty good idea of what we're going to do) so this will be our last month of costs at this scale. our initial estimation is that we can halve or better what we're paying now on a monthly basis.

$428.73 for Digital Ocean hosting, which can be further subdivided into

$336.00 for hosting the site itself
$67.20 for backups
$25.53 for site snapshots

$28.87 for Hive, an internal chat platform we've set up (also being hosted on Digital Ocean)

$24.07 for hosting Hive
$4.80 for backups

~$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)

$22.87 for BackBlaze (redundant backup system that's standalone from Digital Ocean)

overall contributions this month: $1,310.90

support still more than covers our expenses, and particularly with our upcoming downsizing we don't believe this will be a problem. breakdown is:

100 monthly contributions, totaling $624.95
2 yearly contributions, totaling $67.10
36 one-time donations, totaling $618.85

between monthly and yearly contributions we are still sustainable overall—but now that the Reddit bump has ebbed most of our savings will come in the form of lowering costs and not "sheer amount of money being thrown our way."

total end of month balance: $4,347.79

expense runway, assuming no further donations

assuming expenses like ours this month: we have about 8 months and one week of runway

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[-] verbalbotanics@beehaw.org 67 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Hey just a thought, but have you considered also measuring your labor in terms of hours worked by admin staff etc? I'm assuming it's unpaid.

I think showing the financials is great but to me it shows only one part of the picture, if that makes sense. Your work has value!

I really appreciate all the work that goes into this place, and really, thanks for all you do.

[-] Lionir@beehaw.org 61 points 11 months ago

I would wager I've spent between 40-70hours a week working on Beehaw directly or on things relating to it with as high as 90hours a week at the peak - I would wake up, open Beehaw, eat, sleep. None of us get paid for this, it would likely bankrupt Beehaw in less than a week if we were paid even minimum wage. The only reason I can do this is because I don't have a job - which is putting me in a bad financial situation honestly.. I really should've gotten a job but I didn't.

Thank you for the appreciation.

[-] SillySpy@lemm.ee 40 points 11 months ago

Surely that isn’t sustainable for you or beehaw? On the one hand, please take care to look after your own best interests. We really appreciate your work, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of your well-being.

On the other hand, if the project is based on full time volunteer work by people who can’t afford to volunteer full time over the long term, surely that is a major risk to the long term viability of the instance?

[-] Landmammals@lemmynsfw.com 16 points 11 months ago

It worked for reddit for 18 years. They just need more volunteers.

40-90 hours a week isn't sustainable, but adding a few more people takes it out of burnout territory.

[-] tanglisha@beehaw.org 18 points 11 months ago

Reddit has always had paid employees, only the mods are/were unpaid.

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[-] Lionir@beehaw.org 15 points 11 months ago

That's certainly true but the issue is that we don't really have other options. Lemmy's system allows for little delegation outside of giving full admin powers. There's an issue to improve that but as with all of Lemmy's moderation woes - it seems no one is working on it.

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[-] AbraNidoran@beehaw.org 25 points 11 months ago

I really do appreciate the work you put into Beehaw, but to echo what others have said, I don't think anyone wants this to be unsustainable for you, or anyone else working on Beehaw.

At the least I think it could be reported as part of donations/expenses? Rough numbers would be fine too (because the overhead of tracking hours is not fun). So I'm imagining something like:

400 hours unpaid work (2 full time people working, 1 part-time) (if paid, that's $6,000 at minimum wage, $8,800 at a livable wage)

Which is a lot of money, and very scary, but at least it makes the behind-the-scenes work visible.

That said, I'm going to go set up a monthly donation now 🤗

[-] pli5k3n@beehaw.org 24 points 11 months ago

I want to add my support for the unpaid labor being reported as part of the financial report. It would add more clear transparency to the total effort involved.

The human toll is hard to quantify but should not be ignored.

[-] Lionir@beehaw.org 12 points 11 months ago

It's worth mentioning that a lot of moderation work is kinda always in the back of your mind and work even when it's not directly - answering people's questions, chatting in our mod chat, talking to other admins, etc.

[-] pli5k3n@beehaw.org 9 points 11 months ago

No illusions on my part. This is true for a lot of jobs that have 24/7 support activity and also jobs that have an emotional toll that lingers when not "working" (social workers, teachers in bad neighborhoods, nurses, content moderators). And as such, the pay scale is commensurate. It's not that it solves the problem, but that it can afford the individuals time off and rehabilitation services.

[-] Lionir@beehaw.org 15 points 11 months ago

I feel that putting dollar amounts on the work would be confusing to people, they might think we'll take that money. I've thought about making a post to donate money to me personally because well, I need the money but I don't know.

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[-] TheFriendlyArtificer@beehaw.org 57 points 11 months ago

If this level of transparency was available for various news and other social sites, I'd be more likely to buy a subscription to them.

The honesty is great and makes this feel more like an actual community or a co-op.

I'll be curious to see how these numbers change, both the monthly cost and the amount of contributions, as more and more people join up.

[-] the_itsb@beehaw.org 19 points 11 months ago

Agree with everything in this comment, especially

makes this feel more like an actual community or a co-op.

🥰 TOTALLY, and it makes me feel very good about my recurring donation - the people running the server care, I care, pretty much everybody interacting here really, truly cares about the community, I genuinely love supporting that. This is a beautiful place on the internet.

[-] TheRealMalc@beehaw.org 40 points 11 months ago

I love the amount of transparency in this post!

[-] chloyster@beehaw.org 32 points 11 months ago

Keep up the great work y'all 🫶

[-] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 28 points 11 months ago

Here, have some money

[-] Penguincoder@beehaw.org 8 points 11 months ago

What is your intent with a comment like this? Anything constructive we can address for you?

[-] alyaza@beehaw.org 47 points 11 months ago

What is your intent with a comment like this?

they were being quite literal [i got their donation email :)]

[-] Penguincoder@beehaw.org 23 points 11 months ago

Alright, apologies @Quill7513@slrpnk.net , I was assuming the worst with a sarcastic comment.

[-] Cube6392@beehaw.org 20 points 11 months ago

Nope. This post was just the reminder I needed that I'm financially stable again after a hard month and that I'd pledged myself to put some money in the pot going forward to ensure the future of Beehaw. The comment coming from my slrpnk.net account is quite simple. I was on mobile and didn't realize which account I was logged into

[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 16 points 11 months ago

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with encouraging other people to donate, even if they are peacocking a little bit.

[-] Quexotic@beehaw.org 28 points 11 months ago

I wish there was a link to donate at the end of this post.

[-] reverendsteveii@beehaw.org 12 points 11 months ago

Yeah this is absolutely the right place for it, at the bottom of a post that will attract almost exclusively people who care about the financials

[-] Lionir@beehaw.org 10 points 11 months ago

Yeah.. it's at the top as the link for the post

[-] Quexotic@beehaw.org 11 points 11 months ago

Well, maybe it needs to be in 2 places for dummies like me. Lol. I kicked in a few bucks. Thanks. For what you do, friend.

[-] gifflen@beehaw.org 26 points 11 months ago

Thank you for the transparency! It is important to remember that it's not just the amazing work the mods do here but there is a real cost to running this.

[-] wildeaboutoskar@beehaw.org 23 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Thanks for posting, it's really interesting to see what goes into running something like this.

Chucked a bit into the pot. It's not a lot but I want to contribute where I can.

[-] RangerRick@beehaw.org 19 points 11 months ago

I love to see the transparency. Thank you for facilitating such a great online experience.

[-] circularfish@beehaw.org 19 points 11 months ago

Y’all are doing yeopeople’s work! The transparency is much appreciated.

[-] LallyLuckFarm@beehaw.org 19 points 11 months ago

I love these breakdowns of the financing! Thanks for all your work and communication, it really makes me feel like a stakeholder in the community instead of a string in a database.

[-] nlm@beehaw.org 14 points 11 months ago

As always, thank you for your transparency! <3

[-] crow@beehaw.org 10 points 11 months ago

A thought I’ve had for a little bit now is what is making sure Beehaw isn’t sold off? I have no doubt in the current intentions of the admins, but as Beehaw grows it can become very valuable for data companies. If this wonderful community thrives, there will be eventually be people and companies making offers to buy everything we’ve built. Is there any plan to ensure Beehaw doesn’t sell out? I’ve been burned before, and I want to ensure that if I’m going to contribute financially that I won’t lose Beehaw.

[-] Lionir@beehaw.org 22 points 11 months ago

I mean, that's a question of trust. There's nothing I can do other than promise that I or any of the admins would never sell off Beehaw.

That said, if it reassures you, our disregard for "growth for the sake of growth" should push away any kind of company seeking money. It'd be much more lucrative to go for a big instance like lemmy.world.

How could we do more than ask for trust?

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[-] admin@beehaw.org 15 points 11 months ago

Our 'Northern Star' (or guiding principle) has been, for over two years, 'be(e) nice'. This is the ONLY objective that we have.

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[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Hey there - I work in film production and have a fair bit of HDD space just laying around. How much do you need to be useful for backups? Happy to contribute some hardware to the cause if it’s at all remotely useful and host a local backup as one more offsite redundancy for you. That being said, I don’t really know what your data storage demands are.

[-] Penguincoder@beehaw.org 8 points 11 months ago

Current requirements are about 50GB a day, and keeping 7 days prior, and one a week (about 300GB a month) for backups alone, not keeping more than a month. Also using backblaze B2 as a standard for that storage now.

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