Annual Update
Published on December 15, 2023 by the people's eva
Hello All!
Here's our end-of-the-year update on our Collective! We have had an amazing first few months on Open Collective. Our donations here have allowed us to run one of the ONLY servers in the fediverse dedicated to Black queer folks completely based on donations! We were also able to hire TWO (count em, TWO) moderators to ensure good coverage for our users. Finally, we were able to pay for the use of LibreTranslate, allowing us to have a button for automatic translation of other languages, which I know I use all the time.
Getting started with Open Collective did take awhile, but after a few weeks of patience followed by a ton of perusing their many guides and we were in business! We learned how to submit expenses, get reimbursed, how to manage exchange rates, etc and it really was quite easy. I also got to flex my donation-post-muscles on Mastodon to ensure we got donations sufficient to cover the above costs. I personally loathe asking for money, so it was good practice!
In 2024, my plans are to get our server listed on some server directories to help any Black queer folks looking for a new social media home find us. Growing our current userbase and maintaining the sanctuary we have for our users to feel at home are two things I would love to continue to be able to do. And Open Collective (as well as OCF, our fiscal sponsor!) make it all possible. Cheers!
-eva
Here's our end-of-the-year update on our Collective! We have had an amazing first few months on Open Collective. Our donations here have allowed us to run one of the ONLY servers in the fediverse dedicated to Black queer folks completely based on donations! We were also able to hire TWO (count em, TWO) moderators to ensure good coverage for our users. Finally, we were able to pay for the use of LibreTranslate, allowing us to have a button for automatic translation of other languages, which I know I use all the time.
Getting started with Open Collective did take awhile, but after a few weeks of patience followed by a ton of perusing their many guides and we were in business! We learned how to submit expenses, get reimbursed, how to manage exchange rates, etc and it really was quite easy. I also got to flex my donation-post-muscles on Mastodon to ensure we got donations sufficient to cover the above costs. I personally loathe asking for money, so it was good practice!
In 2024, my plans are to get our server listed on some server directories to help any Black queer folks looking for a new social media home find us. Growing our current userbase and maintaining the sanctuary we have for our users to feel at home are two things I would love to continue to be able to do. And Open Collective (as well as OCF, our fiscal sponsor!) make it all possible. Cheers!
-eva