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Welcome to the official thread for the United States Goon Fund!!! This thread serves as a hub for people to either request money from the fund or help contribute to the fund to help others! In need of help? Click here to submit a request to our google form!! WANT TO DONATE? CLICK HERE FOR DIFFERENT WAYS TO HELP! Please note, effective 6/3/23 - all requests will be capped at $125 due to low funds. This is an attempt to make sure everyone gets money. If your request is over this amount, we WILL keep your request active until we can fulfill it in full at a later date. This cap will be removed when our funds situation improves and any backlog is satisfied. 11/26 - WE ARE LOW ON FUNDS, IMMEDIATE NEEDS MAY NOT BE FULFILLED DUE TO THIS. PLEASE TAKE THIS INTO CONSIDERATION AND DO NOT RELY ON THE FUND FOR THE TIME BEING. 11/29 - Low funds is not an issue at this time, but this is an update in regards to the new 30 day rolling rule. If you request more than $125 over a 30 day period - we will have to limit your request or even deny it. We are not making it a super hard limit. For instance, if you requested $125 - 28 days ago and need more funds - we will accommodate that. This is more to prevent people requesting large sums from the Fund weekly. 4/2 Update: We have gotten our funds issue cleared up, there is a small surplus that exists again and the commitee feels confident to lift the warning for the time being THIS FUND IS NOT ENDORSED BY THE SOMETHING AWFUL FORUMS OR ADMINS. THE ADMINS HAVE NO EXTRA INSIGHT INTO FINANCIALS, DATA COLLECTION, OR HOW THE COMMITTEE WORKS BEYOND WHAT IS PUBLICLY AVAILABLE. CURRENT COMMITTEE MEMBERS AS OF 11/17/23 KINGCOBWEB SPENG31B REALLY QUEER CHRISTMAS DOCBEARD TILER KIWI We have a Discord if you prefer to contact us this way. CURRENT CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES GOON FUND GENERAL Q&A What is the purpose of this thread? When covid first hit, goons in CSPAM were in need of help to pay bills, get emergency payments, or even just get some food. While some goons helped out by giving a couple bucks to people, eventually a fund was created via patreon by Plinkey. Unfortunately, this fund had to be dismantled in late 2022 and that's when goons came together to start a new fund that would not fall victim to the fate of so many other goon projects. What makes this goonfund different from the last, or even from a scam like when that goon raised money to buy pants? During the setup of this fund, it was decided that the best way to organize this to give the most help, with the least amount of trouble caused by bureaucracy, was to set up a nonprofit company and aim to become a federally recognized 501c3 tax-deductible charity. This would also allow the fund to be super transparent in terms of financial presentation, while still allowing the fund to protect the privacy of those who request money. As such, the United States Goon Fund is a true nonprofit corporation headquartered in the state of Washington. 501c3 status is currently in progress as of the time of writing. Why are you not a 501c3 if this was a specific goal of the fund? 501c3 is a federally recognized status of a charity, however, the charity must first be set up as a nonprofit corporation as a state entity first - which this is! Once this first step is complete, the fund must make sure the corporation filing meets IRS qualifications (At least 3 sitting directors on the board, another 501c3 charity set to receive any funds in case the fund is dismantled, waiting 3-4 weeks after receiving an EIN to allow the IRS database to be updated). The goal of this fund is to attain this status as soon as it is deemed possible, and the IRS allows the fund to backdate 501c3 status to the original filing date of the corporation. Can I donate or request money if I'm not in the USA? Sadly, no. Tax codes around international money transfers are... complicated, to put it mildly. To make it easier on this small organization, we can't accept donations from people outside of America, or give money through the fund to people outside of America. If you are in the UK, there is a UK goonfund you can request funds from here. Who do I contact if I have issues with a request, donation, just want to complain First off, you can email us at usgoonfund@gmail.com with a guarantee to reach at least one of the committee members. I want to shitpost in this thread and otherwise poo poo on people doing good deeds or not bootstrapping themselves food Yeah, no. This thread is not the place to do any kind of general shitposting, and good faith is expected in every aspect of this project. If you have a problem with how the fund works, upset about not receiving money, wanting a question answered, concerns you have about being a potential donor, or any suggestions you have to improve what we are doing - we welcome all of this! We just again ask, and expect, your post to be in good faith. Do not try to troll this thread. Q&A FOR REQUESTORS Where do I go to request help? Click here! Who can request money? Anyone with a SA account username! We are certainly willing to help out a friend of yours if they need a small amount of money, but the goal of this thread is to help the goons who post on this website (or once posted on this website) with any issues they are currently having. What can I request money for? As of right now, you can request money for anything you feel you need. If you need money to get groceries, please feel free to request. If you don't think you'll be able to afford your phone bill - we are here! Need money for an uber to get home after work? Send in a request! If you have less emergency needs, we are happy to help with those - but please see below about how we plan to handle your request. Do I need to have proof of what I need the money for? No! We do not require any proof of your need of funds. We are going to assume good faith on your part that you truly do need this money. Someone who is normally of means may still request aid if there is a sudden issue, but the hope is you will be willing to give back when you become of means again. Please consider this fund to be a pool of money the community uses to give and take depending on who needs help right now. Today you may be the one giving, and tomorrow the one taking. Both of these things are fine to do! Just operate in good faith, and this can work for us all. Does the reason I need the money matter? If times are good and there is plenty of money in the fund, not really. But, with the assumption that we may not always have funds available, we will go by either: 1. First come, first serve. 2. Timeframe needed. 3. The need of the request. To give an example, if there is only $100 in the fund at the moment and two requests have been submitted - one in need of paying a utility bill in 10 days for $100 - and the second needing $50 for gas money needed by tomorrow. We will likely target the second request as the need is much more present, and the fund should have recuperated the extra money in time to help the utility bill before their deadline. Can the fund cover my rent? While exceptions can be made, the purpose of this fund is more smaller scale. The fund may be able to help cover a portion of rent, but the fund can't be expected to pay people's entire rents. That said, there is no reason to hold back if you are in that desperate a need. If the fund has the availability, the committee will decide after a vote whether to give the full amount of the request, a partial amount, or to deny the request (the latter option would be rare, and likely only done if the requester is abusing the system). It is worth noting during the interim fund system, no requests were denied - even if several only had partial fulfillments. Should I grovel and beg for a morsel of help from the community? Absolutely not. Needing help from people is NOT a flaw of yours and isn't something you should be ashamed of. You do not need to feel bad for asking for help from this fund - you needing help is exactly why this fund is here! Our country has sadly abandoned many people who don't make 6-7 figures a year. Not having resources or family or friends able to help you is not your fault, and the fund is here specifically to be a safety net so that any goon never has to feel like they have no hope. You're not a burden for needing help. Your google form wants a lot of personal information from me. How can I trust you with this? Unfortunately, we do have to require an email address from everyone who requests in case we need to be able to get in contact with you. As some users do not have platinum status - they cannot send or receive privates messages in case anything goes wrong with their request. We also need to know at least one method that you can receive money through (paypal, venmo, etc,). However, any other personal information is not required and NONE OF THIS IS KEPT!! After your request is fulfilled, he request you submit will be deleted so that only the one member who saw your request will know it was you. Nothing personally identifying is kept except for username, date of request, and amount requested. This information are kept for bookkeeping reasons as well as to prevent any potential abuses. If you are keeping usernames, then that could mean that information could be used to shame me at a later date! If any committee member leaks that information, then they will be removed from their position immediately. If you do still feel weary about any potential leak of your information, you can also request money by PMing a particular committee member you trust with the following information: Amount you need Date you need it by Way to receive money (Paypal username, venmo username, etc) However, do be aware you are at the mercy of the member reading their PMs, compared to the google form. What if I want to make a request in the thread? We strongly discourage you from doing this. We can't stop you, but we do prefer to keep your request anonymous to keep your information safe, and also prevent any potential drama that could come up in the future. How do I get money from the fund? Currently, we have the ability to send money via Venmo & cashapp, with the ability to do paypal but it usually doesn't work for us. We will not be able to send money via Zelle for the foreseeable future as our credit union doesn't support Zelle for business accounts. Q&A FOR DONORS How do I see the financials of the fund? After the end of the month, a committee member will post a summary of the the prior month's inflows versus outflows as well as post information like number of unique donors and unique requests. There is currently no set date for when these financials will be posted in the thread. The fund will maintain public facing financials at all times, including a cash amount at the end of the last month and a current count of cash on hand. MARCH 2023 FINANCIALS APRIL 2023 FINANCIALS MAY 2023 FINANCIALS JUNE 2023 FINANCIALS JULY 2023 FINANCIALS AUGUST 2023 FINANCIALS SEPTEMBER 2023 FINANCIALS OCTOBER 2023 FINANCIALS NOVEMBER 2023 FINANCIALS DECEMBER 2023 FINANCIALS JANUARY 2024 FINANCIALS FEBRUARY 2024 FINANCIALS How do I know if you're spending the money I'm giving wisely? Currently, the only overhead expected is the cost of receiving donations via stripe (2.9% of transaction + $.30 a transaction) and the costs of any integrations, or accounting software. There will be no payroll, lavish trips paid for by the fund, or members not doing their due diligence in making sure a request is not legitimate. How can you be sure a request is legitimate if you do not require proof of need? The committee agrees, unanimously, that good faith must be assumed and expected on the part of the requestor. To begin to doubt a requestor who has shown no reason to be doubted is a path to becoming something that is unrecognizable to a mutual aid fund such as this. Anyone abusing this will eventually be found, but it is something that we would rather deal with when it comes up rather than force the vast majority of trustworthy and in need people to jump through hoops to continue their quest of survival and bettering themselves. If you disagree and won't donate because of that, we understand. Can I deduct any donations off my taxes? Maybe sometime in the future after the fund becomes a 501c3, yes! Also, you're likely incredibly rich if you can do this!! 9/19 Edit: YES!!! WE ARE NOW A US FEDERAL 501(c)(3) CHARITY!!! Enough questions, how do I donate? There are several different ways you can donate - if you want to give money monthly, then that has to process through Stripe. The first, is our one time flexible donation link: Here. This link will let you donate how every much you want and only do it once. What if you want to donate a certain amount every month and want to pick the day it comes out of your account? Well then the following links are for you! Each one is already set to do a recurring amount out of your account once a month, the only difference between the links is the amount. Give $5 Monthly Give $10 Monthly Give $20 Monthly Give $50 Monthly Give $75 Monthly Give $100 Monthly Give $250 Monthly Give $500 Monthly Want to give more monthly? Let us know and we can create a special link for you! Can I give via paypal, venmo, or cashapp? While you *can* do this, we'd prefer to get all funds via stripe as the other sources will charge us more to receive cash. 3/28 Update: Actually, sending us pure cash via Venmo/Cashapp costs us the least amount of money. But it has to be with cash from a bank. If you use a card to transfer money, then you will pay to transfer the money AND we will pay a fee to receive it. Cash only transfer will mean we will pay a small 1.9% fee while you pay nothing - which is about a percent less than a stripe card "swipe". 9/30 Update: We have turned on ACH via STRIPE now. Please see the Stripe links in the next post as ACH is the cheapest way to process payments. PLEASE BE WARNED THAT ACH MEANS YOU MUST HAVE CASH IN YOUR ACCOUNT ON THAT TIME YOU SELECT OR BOTH OF US WILL INCUR NSF FEES!!! GIVE VIA PAYPAL: LINK GIVE VIA VENMO: LINK GIVE VIA CASHAPP: LINK What if I have any issues with my transaction, want to cancel my recurring donation, or otherwise need a refund? 9/30 Edit: We managed to bang rocks together until we figured out Stripe has a customer portal. Check it out here. If you are still having trouble or can't access your account through this link... Please email us at usgoonfund@gmail.com with any of these issues. Make sure to label the subject line appropriately so we can know what you are needing from us. Please also be as prompt as you can with your issue, as refunds will be much easier to process the sooner we know, and we may need time to process any recurring donations, so please don't email us 5 minutes before it's supposed to process. really queer Christmas has issued a correction as of 14:43 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Mar 17, 2023 15:05
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WAYS TO DONATE: CLICK HERE FOR OUR ONE TIME DONATION This link will let you donate how every much you want and only do it once. What if you want to donate a certain amount every month and want to pick the day it comes out of your account? Well then the following links are for you! Each one is already set to do a recurring amount out of your account once a month, the only difference between the links is the amount. If you want to donate more than this monthly, please let us know and we can set up a link for you. Give $5 Monthly Give $10 Monthly Give $20 Monthly Give $50 Monthly Give $75 Monthly Give $100 Monthly Give $250 Monthly Give $500 Monthly GIVE VIA PAYPAL: LINK GIVE VIA VENMO: LINK **THIS IS THE CHEAPEST OPTION CURRENTLY SO LONG AS YOU USE A DEBIT CARD** GIVE VIA CASHAPP: LINK We are opening up this thread now to get a head start and let people know we are fully able and capable to send and receive money. We aren't 100% ready (venmo is still an issue) but we need to transition away from the interim and we are capable of receiving our first deposit from Stripe on March 21st. It also fills me with joy to be able to launch this on the year anniversary of my mom's death. I'm very happy to be able to help people in need, as she did all through her life. really queer Christmas has issued a correction as of 18:54 on Sep 30, 2023 |
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Mar 17, 2023 15:07
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Quick update. Good News: Venmo is now a method of payment for us now! Our first stripe payment will be in our account tomorrow or Friday. Bad News: Cashapp won't let us send money until we join a debit card to the account... which we do not have yet. We don't have enough donations to meet the end of month requests - currently we have $258 coming to us after fees, and we have a total of $700 in requests from the start of the fund that has been unfilled. As well as 2 partially filled requests and 1 unfilled request from the interim that we are hoping to meet when we have the funds. Bad News that could be good news: We received a request from a Canadian. We cannot send money to them through the fund, but if anyone would like to help - please pm a committee member and we can give you their payment information to help them out. They are requesting $50. Other news: Jeff and the admins have allowed us to be able to spam out some post-vertisements across the forums to get the word out to other people to donate and request aid. A special thanks to new CSPAM admin vyelkin for helping us with this. I am required to make sure everyone who reads this is well aware that this fund has nothing to do with the Something Awful Forums. The admins, mods, or Jeff himself do not have any special insight into the running of the fund, any special information about the financials (beyond what committee members post), and shouldn't be contacted about any requests or the operation of the fund. I do want to thank everyone who has contributed to the fund so far! Here's to helping people out!!
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Mar 23, 2023 03:48
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Thank you to the goon who covered the Canadian request!
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Mar 23, 2023 19:36
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500 good dogs posted:Actually, this is a good opportunity to ask (sorry if I missed it) but can you guys share precisely what information you get from Stripe payments? Full name? An address? Stripe gives everything to us, so we see all names, addresses, last 4 of card, card type, etc. We are obviously not looking at these things but if that is a concern for you, I can provide the venmo to you and we can use that.
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Mar 23, 2023 20:27
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bvj191jgl7bBsqF5m posted:This didn't happen, I still don't have Diablo 4 While this is cspam, I'd like this thread to be a non-shitpost zone please. In other news, paypal has decided to be like cashapp and let us know linking our bank account is not good enough to send people money and we also need a debit card. While getting the card is in the works, essentially, the only place that's letting us send money right now is venmo. If you have made a request via PayPal or cashapp, this will likely come from a members personal account until this issue is resolved. As well, if you do want to send us money through a nonstripe place - venmo is actually better on fees if you want to send cash to us - as they only charge 1.9% compared to stripe 2.9%. If you prefer card, this is much worse as venmo will charge you and us to make that transfer. So if you do want to keep anonymity or would prefer to make cash transactions, feel free to send money to our venmo account. @usgoonfund
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Mar 27, 2023 17:02
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END OF MARCH FINANCIALS As our first month (well half month) of operation ends, we are now able to present the financials for the fund as of right now. We are presenting as much as we can without jeopardizing anyone's identity. All figures and amounts are anonymized as much as possible, and if anyone feels this is revealing too much please let us know. Anyway on to what happened since March 17th: First off, we have processed 14 requests (either in full or partially) since March 17th - which is one per day. We have given out a total of $1,845.00 during this time. Both of which was an expected baseline... Here's what wasn't expected:  Here is the total amount of requests still outstanding which totals $1,796.00. Anything in yellow means that we gave our cap of $200 (except the third request, which I reached out to and they were understanding about the delay). Meaning that to reach our cap of $200 per person, we still need to give out $735 + $101 (Note: $200 was given today to one of the requests in yellow but this will not hit our bank until April, so it won't show up on later financials, but I show the after effects here). That's quite a bit! Normally I'd say it's nothing we can't handle but... it kinda is. I want to preface the remainder of the financials by saying that I don't want to sound like some bogstandard money making charity constantly moaning about needing money, but uh guys we need money.  Here is all activity from our various bank accounts, including the venmo account. The 3/15 transactions were paypal verifying our bank account (but they still won't let us use it  ), and all the other deposits were stripe payments and withdrawals was money being sent to venmo requesters. So since our paypal doesn't work and venmo is the only way we can give right now, that means that's the only way we've been operating, right? Not exactly: We have been utilizing our personal paypal accounts and sending money to people. We do have plans to pay ourselves back when a reserve is built, but considering the volume of requests that is unlikely to be soon. Either way, we've kept tabs of how much each member is giving during this crisis period. It's also worked great since it's been a way of donating without paying fees   And of course, if you thought this is a moneymaking operation - GUESS AGAIN! We are already in the hole and we've gotten no donations in several days - so there's no stripe payment coming and what cash we have is going to be used quickly in our next round of requests. As mentioned at the start, there was $200 sent via venmo earlier today that won't hit our bank till April - so feel free to increase the venmo payouts to $890 and reduce our cash to $302.52! I apologize to not be able to have no real good news at the end of our first month financials, but getting things off the ground is never easy - and Jesus has this project faced a lot of loving bumps. To those who requested, please don't feel like this is targeted at you or feel guilty - im trying to make the people who have money feel guilty so don't get caught up in that. But I hope this look behind the curtain reveals why we had to make the $200 limit during the interim, and why the committee voted to keep it when our financials are just not up to where we want them yet. My goal is to get our monthly income similar to Plinkey's fund - about $3k - which should get us to covering most requests and leaving only some goons partially in the dark. Please let me know if you have any questions or want to point out mistakes. We don't have any formal software yet so I'm preparing this all on google sheets and is thus prone to oddities including weird colors being used for formatting.
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Apr 1, 2023 03:29
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A big serious thanks to the goon who just dropped $1k
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Apr 1, 2023 03:41
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For those unaware, we started a fundraising promotion for the Goonfund! We've had a couple donations made in the past couple days, and if you make a donation in April, feel free to post the receipt in this thread and claim which megathread (or another forum!) you claim loyalty to and you have a chance to win a commissioned artwork for your thread to claim superiority over the other threads in CSPAM! Don't have much to give? No worries, giving even $5 a month gets you 10 points - and if you make a post in your thread to let people know - we'll give you 30 points!
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Apr 10, 2023 03:05
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Quick update for people! First off, we got our debit card and cashapp SHOULD work for us now. Why do I say should? Well, Paypal STILL will not work for us! It doesn't matter what we do, we just get this screen even after KCW spent an hour on the phone with them. Our current solution for paypal requesters is for KCW to fulfill the request out of his personal account, and then use the debit card to reimburse himself. It's not perfect, but this has to be our path forward especially since we've paid out $2K via paypal already. As such, I have updated our form to remove the "unavailable option on cashapp" and added a short description for paypal encouraging people to select another option as well so paypal can be a last resort option for the time being. Also, here's a quick update on our financial position:   Reminder that we have a fundraiser ongoing!! Click here to see how it's going and join in to help a good cause and get some artwork showing your megathread off to the masses! Please feel free to ask any questions about this or anything else here or in that thread!  Finally, a bump for this person if anyone is able to help them out: A big flaming stink posted:hey, this isnt a direct financial request, but I have a pretty urgent situation (not involving me for once).
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Apr 15, 2023 19:36
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speng31b posted:drat thanks to the latest donors that was really helpful So this post is gonna be somewhat rough to write and has kinda taken me some time to get my thoughts together and let the drama somewhat settle a bit (or at least, come to a conclusion). While the past month has not been as financially successful as I would like to have hoped - we still haven't hit the $3k a month plinkey had on patreon. We have had a couple guardian angels that have watched over the goonfund since we got off the ground. I call them guardian angels because they literally provided 1/3 of all funding all on their own. One of them has literally provided 50% of our total donated funds as of this moment! During the interim, when we were at the end of our rope several times and completely out of a donor base - we had to go back to two or three people in particular for help and aid. These people were reliable, answered super quick, and could be depended on to get goon funds and trust that we had done our job in return. I'm not going to talk about the other two - who I still do absolutely appreciate what they did for us. I want to talk about our top interim donor and donor who just dropped $500 as a parting gift - Lady Radia. She was absolutely instrumental in getting this fund off the ground, she was in the early discussions for how we wanted to set this up, she even wanted to be part of the committee!... Until she realized that would mean being a woman on a public facing 'job' on a public forum that may require you to put PII out there for any weirdo to see. So she backed out and offered to be help behind the scenes - which she was MASSIVELY. I can't tell you how important she was for getting people funds on short notices, and how awful i felt going to her even after giving, 1, 2, 3K out to people because she was the only one left able to give. But she was always happy to, and just wanted to make sure no goon went without the basic necessities of life. So why am I writing what feels like an obituary? Because, as I foreshadowed, a weirdo goon decided to doxx Radia late saturday night and shes now stepped away from being a goon for her own protection. I have been so utterly angry at the circumstances that led to her needing to self-ban, but what has made me even more angry is the pure injustice of it - someone who has contributed to this community in a very real way (that isn't just good posts) essentially had this community spit in her eye for it. It was not able to protect her when the doxxer announced to a former admin that they planned to do it, and then that person went ahead and posted her phone number to a very watched thread in SAD. While she is free to come back to the forums at any time, (and may do so in the future!) she has effectively left SA for her safety. Despite this, today she sent us $500 knowing we still needed funds to help people, and I'm not gonna lie - it tears me up to think that someone who literally just got doxxed by a forum and now has their safety threatened - is still concerned about others. I asked her yesterday if it would be ok to let people know about what she did and she is ok with it, and I want to make sure the people who use this fund know that there are good people out there who want to help and look out for them. That no matter what you are dealing with, we really do want to make sure you get the help you need. I hate having to limit requests so much, and hate having to wait till deadlines to make sure we have the funds available, but some of our donors have always been there to make sure we never fall below their safety net. That despite everything bad you can say about this website and goons in particular, there are some amazing people here. And I'm saddened that we lost one for the foreseeable future.
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Apr 18, 2023 01:38
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speng31b posted:genuine thank you, that is insanely rad This. Everyone helps however much they can. If you're able to help with $5 because that's all you have, then so be it. The person who will get 10 people's $5 is able to get a tank of gas so they can get to work today is going to appreciate it as much as 1 person's $50. It's nice to actually build a community of people that can trust and depend on each other in times of crisis.
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Apr 18, 2023 03:07
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I lost track of this thread for a bit after the reboot. There previously was not a method to set up a recurring subscription. Reading the OP, it says that there is now and that CashApp is the way to get it to you with the lowest fees. You also mentioned you were having trouble with Paypal. Are you just having trouble sending or receiving with Paypal? If I set up a recurring donation via Paypal would that be an issue? Or is there a way to do it via CashApp (I don't use this and would prefer not to set up a recurring payment on a platform I don't check regularly, but it's not a big deal if it is easier for you guys and gets the most money there)? We have recurring donations available through stripe - which is a renowned Cc processor for charities. They take a slightly larger fee than venmo or cashapp but it's the only reliable way to do recurring. As well, stripe does CC as well as DC so you don't have to have it directly taken from your bank account. I'll quote the links below: really queer Christmas posted:
edit: we discussed it, and we do want to give people more options. Here are the links to be able to donate through the specfic payment methods we use to send money out. This will help us keep some cash on hand specifically to give to goons in case we are a tight on actual cash. Copied directly from the recently updated OP: GIVE VIA PAYPAL: LINK GIVE VIA VENMO: LINK GIVE VIA CASHAPP: LINK really queer Christmas has issued a correction as of 05:00 on Apr 18, 2023 |
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Apr 18, 2023 04:30
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If you haven't already, email us at usgoonfund at gmail dot com and we can refund the money back to you on the platform you sent us the money.
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Apr 18, 2023 21:47
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APRIL 2023 FINANCIALS UPDATE   As of today, we sit in a MUCH better place than we did a month ago. For this, we have our very successful fundraiser to thank, with a particular thanks to the CSPAM COVID thread, which raised $texas$ amounts of money for the fund! The only concern I have right now is that we have about 38 people signed up to give a total of about $1,380 per month. Meanwhile, our per day disbursement average is $173 or about $5K a month. We did have a backlog that we fulfilled thanks to the new funds, so that did play a part in it. Speaking of, I am very happy to report that we currently have two active requests - 1 we are waiting for the requestee to get back in touch with us to confirm payment details over some confusion. And the other got a partial disbursement and we are waiting confirmation on if they will need the remaining amounts. Otherwise, we currently do not have a backlog! As for general updates:
really queer Christmas has issued a correction as of 02:23 on May 1, 2023 |
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May 1, 2023 02:21
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kingcobweb posted:I’m the $0.01 earned interest Update: 
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May 1, 2023 23:16
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lobster shirt posted:would like to request 14 cents...  give kcw his liberal anime tits avatar back, as the fund is now earning dividends thanks to liberalism.
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May 1, 2023 23:29
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To any euros who wanted to help via paypal, I got a request in from a non American who needs about 50-70 euros of help. If you're able and willing to help, please PM me and I'll get you their info
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May 8, 2023 14:30
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MAY 15th MID MONTH UPDATE   So... we've had a busy May! Like, super busy. As you can tell, we gave nearly as much in two weeks of May as we did for all of April. The economy is sound! Strong and Stable!! We have had some interesting developments on top of this, like finding out that paypal does work for us if there is a partial balance! For instance, we only had like $30 in the paypal account and had a request for like $50, so Paypal sent $30 via the balance and debited our bank for the remainder! I thought wow, it must be fixed! So I then tried to utilize paypal to send a request through and immediately got stopped with technical difficulties because they can't connect to our linked bank!!  We also just, and I mean like 2 hours ago, received word that our amended filing for state registration has been accepted. So there should be no other blocks between the goonfund and 501c3 status except for the actual filing... which can be daunting, not going to lie. The main issue with the filing is the expedited version can only be filed if annual income is less than 50K and we are on projection to be over that right now. As for where we stand right now in terms of funds, things are somewhat thin. Last week alone we disbursed $3K over 15 requests. Quite simply, we can't do that again. Our biggest problem remains having people willing to drop large sums, without there being a volume of support - i.e., a goon dropping $200 is fantastic, but having 10 goons have $20 subscriptions would make sure the fund is more viable long term and has a more predictable budget. This is probably more on us for not advertising the fund as well as we should. Its prominent in CSPAM - being stickied to the top. But there's many people who never step foot into CSPAM who'd likely help out if they knew what's happening. This does dovetail into something that has been a great thing for us though - The demographics of requestors have been quite diverse! cspammers probably make up half of the requests, but there's been people from across the forums who have reached out for help. I think there's only two or three subforums that have yet to have a regular poster request money from the fund. Which goes back to what we originally stated we wanted for this fund - to help Goons no matter where they post. As for the contest, when Tiler has a chance they can update on the artwork and emotes. I think the organizing thread had yet to decide anything, but it's not like theres a time limit so 
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May 16, 2023 02:05
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silicone thrills posted:I did not realize how high the stripe fees were. I might see about switching my monthly over unless you think it would be best to wait until after other stuff gets handled like the 503c stuff? Stripe's fees mostly hurt on the smaller recurring stuff - since they take a flat amount on top of the percentage based amount. They are, still, the only service we have that lets you do recurring payments at this time. So if you really do want to set and forget, Stripe is it sadly. Coolness Averted posted:I'm waiting for paypal to work properly since I don't have venmo/cashapp as an old man. But I've also been watching to see if any emergencies come up before then and get mentioned in the thread, though yeah that's not as useful for fund organizing as stable revenue. Paypal does work if you send us money and having a paypal balance lets us send money via paypal since, for some reason, that makes the account work properly. Paypal does charge the most fee - as much if not more than Stripe - so if that's why you'd prefer to use it - I advise sticking with stripe. Best fee situation for us is to send cash via venmo - very little fees are paid by us (like 1.75%) and you pay no fee as well. CC through venmo will cost a little bit more but still be a bit cheaper than stripe. I just wish venmo offered recurring options.
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May 18, 2023 01:24
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Hey, we got in a request from an EU goon in need of about 50 euros. I've reached out to some people but haven't heard back, if anyone can let me know if they are interested in helping within the next day, please do. As well, if you'd like to be put on notice for future EU/Canada requests, that would be appreciated since there isn't really anything in place for non-US/UK goons right now.
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May 22, 2023 22:26
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MAY 2023 FINANCIALS UPDATE   As previously stated, I'm here if anyone has any questions on these financials/want to know what these things are saying. Speng asked me to make a chart to detail out donations versus payouts to help people that are more visual learners:  Essentially, blue is how much money that came out of the fund. Green is what is naturally being added from subscribers, and yellow is from people doing one time donations. The difference between blue and green is what we need to make up in yellow to break even on the month. And as you can see, we came FAR from that in May! We had a massive amount of requests come in during May, and while we have fulfilled all but 1 of them, though that last one is for $1000 due by the end of the month. Our cash situation is a bit dicey right now, it'd be a lot dicier if not for a cashapp donation of $500 from this morning, but our situation is a bit worrisome with the beginning of the month coming up. It feels so weird to say that after the amazing April we had and the fundraising we had, but it has all gone to goons in need - who cannot control when life careens off and they need help. If anyone isn't opposed to it, we may need to do another fundraiser, though we need to plan it out and our current idea needs admin buy-in before we can go live with it. We are planning to buy a banner ad tonight to try and get the word out about the fund - we feel like we have done a good job advertising for people in need, it's just a matter of getting in recurring donations that we need to advertise a bit better on. Why do we feel like we've done a good job on advertising for people in need? Because the posters who have requested money have recently been from forums outside cspam. Posters that have been posting for a long time in Games, GBS, TGR, D&D, PYF, and of course CSPAM. In regards to fees, Stripe is still the only recurring way to give. The cheapest for us is still Venmo, followed by Cashapp, but this has to be a cash transfer - it can't be through a card. As for 501c3 status... that's on me! I need to dedicate time to going through the paperwork and filing the drat thing.
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Jun 1, 2023 02:40
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So we are down to about $99 in our bank account, with $42 in the venmo account and $195.55 in the cashapp. We are tapped out of essentially all requests except through cashapp, and that may be gone by the weekend's end. As expected from the early part of the month, we've already given $625 since yesterday! We did have someone give $100 this morning via stripe, but that's likely not going to hit our bank account until Tuesday, the 6th. If anyone is able to contribute, it would be super appreciated! Otherwise we will not really be able to provide for urgent requests (vast majority of requests ask for funding within 2-3 days).
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Jun 3, 2023 00:01
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I updated the OP but I wanted to make a post to update people as well. Until the fund situation improves, the committee has instituted a cap of $125 per request for the time being. Your request will stay active until we get the funds to fulfill your request fully in the future. Active requests made before the new cap were given a max of $200 and are going to be considered satisfied until we have the funds to fulfill it. I have also made an outreach thread in gbs as I, and the commitee, believe that we are bringing in people who need help from all over the site... but not people wanting to help. So we are going to try and see if we can get more people to help out. Hopefully this will help the cspam goons that have done their best to keep the fund afloat the past few months.
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Jun 4, 2023 01:00
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Cup Runneth Over posted:I think there's two main differences between this fund and the last one: The graph is discrete. As of May 31st, we had about $1515 per month in recurring. That's gone up a little bit since then. It was $1545 as of yesterday, and we added $65 today - so $1,610 a month from people who are just doing recurring through stripe. The only reason we made it through last month was because of 1. the April Fundraiser we did 2. Shrioc TheParadigm posted:Its not a question about ease of links, ease of 'well, do I have to sign up for a new thing to manage it or can I just do it from what i have already'. Stripe is super easy and doesn't require any account setup. You click one of the links and you put in your card and email and... done. It charges you and you never have to remember it again. Hell, if you do remember and want to change something, I have our goonfund email in the OP that you can email and we can fix anything that's wrong. We have already had a couple emails from people wanting to cancel/change card/contact info/resend receipts, etc that we have handled. Patreon is simply out of the question. Our overhead would quadruple - which would mean we'd need that much more in funding to make up for it. And I don't see us getting thousands more in funding from Patreon to justify it when there is a super easy way to subscribe as is. And, not to mention, would destroy the fund from the justifiable drama it'd bring.
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Jun 10, 2023 22:37
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Thank you Homeless Friend for their new ad for the goonfund.
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Jun 11, 2023 17:59
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The GBS thread asked about financials, and I provided some up to date ones - so here they are:   We are back in the green again, which is good! The main problem though, is we still have $1,386 in outstanding requests as of right now. The good news is that about $200 of that is due by middle of next week, and the rest is due by month end. We are planning to fulfill $200 through venmo today - I have sent an email to confirm the payment info with the requestee as their venmo name brings up multiple people, and I always try to confirm with them even when I'm 99% sure I know which one is the correct one. Chasing down wrongfully sent money will be much harder than just being patient, IMO. As I said in the GBS thread, expanding has been a net 0 so far. It's brought in more funds, but also more requests - which isn't a bad thing! It just means we do need to move forward on a fundraiser to try and really get some more forum eyes on the Fund. And maybe we can have some extra new features, per speng, to make it a bit easier for people to feel comfortable donating.
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Jun 12, 2023 23:58
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Late June Financials Update:    So I wanted to drop a quick update before the end of the month for a couple reasons. First off, June has been much kinder to us in terms of donations, and we've increased our monthly recurring intake by about 30% over May - which is a big help! Secondly, while all the above looks great... we do have a pretty big problem. We currently have $3500 in unfulfilled requests. To be clear, all but one of these have received some kind of aid - about $125 to $400 depending on the age of the request. But some of these requests range from a couple hundred dollars to even $2k ... and we just do not have the funds to fully fulfill all of these. The committee itself is pretty split on how to approach this because, as you can see, we do have the funds to disperse out to some of these requests... but it leaves us completely dry to help the daily small requests. And all but two of these requests is due by the end of the week (one was due a couple days ago, another later in July) So because of that, we want to come to the general membership of the fund (according to our constitution it's essentially anyone that posts ITT in good faith) to get your input on how to proceed with this. We aren't really coming to ask for funds to fulfill all of this... because these super large requests are pretty out of the scope of the fund, short of every registered goon on this site kicking in $5 a month. So I'd like to open this to discussion of how people think we should proceed, but also so that the committee has a real objective in mind for future situations like this.
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Jun 25, 2023 19:31
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I dont want people to really focus on the 2k request, as we have had (and have currently) 1k requests which are much more within our realm of reaching if we have funds, but are people ok with us going for these if funds are there but may put us in a bind for daily requests?
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Jun 25, 2023 21:33
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Main Paineframe posted:the monthly recurring donations are currently $2k/mo. the fund has paid out to 56 people in June, and the month isn't even over yet The reason I say may, is because one time donations are so random. For instance, I just checked stripe and we just got an extremely large donation that will probably pay for the next week all on its own. Obviously this isn't reliable but it has let us keep going in terms of being able to handle the larger stuff.
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Jun 25, 2023 22:20
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Also, so people are aware, we've never turned down any smaller requests. Or really any request, everyone has gotten something even if it wasn't the full amount.
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Jun 25, 2023 22:25
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Peachfart posted:That makes sense and is good, but if the fund has a choice between scraping by and barely making enough and filling massive requests, and having a comfortable nest egg that can immediately fill any reasonable smaller requests, I would choose the second option. You never know when those massive donations will dry up. This does seem to be the consensus at this point. Currently, our plans are to stick with the $125 cap as a soft-hard cap (hardness depends on funds) with a max cap of $200 unless all requests are filled and there is enough in reserve to fulfill during backlog. If no one has any objections to this, we will take care of the outstanding requests accordingly and put anything above $200 as a "We'll let you know if/when we can help". I think (and committee agrees) the $100 cap is too restrictive right now when there is funds there but we will go to it if things get hairy and we aren't able to raise funds. Thank you all for the discussion, and Id also like to thank tiler for helping out with the fun the past week and upcoming week while life has been so hectic for me. Also, if anyone has any ideas for a fundraiser - I'm all ears. I had gotten a pretty good idea a couple months ago about doing a competition similar to the april fundraiser but the prize would be new stylesheets. I submitted that request to the admins but they came back with a resounding no so I'm back to square one. really queer Christmas has issued a correction as of 23:18 on Jun 25, 2023 |
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Jun 25, 2023 23:15
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The committee will not be reviewing people's posts to make sure they have political opinions that match the donors. If this turns you away from donating, then that is a loss we are willing to take.
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Jul 6, 2023 20:24
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END OF JUNE FINANCIALS:    June as a month was both a struggle and a triumph for us. We expanded the fund more formally into GBS with the goal of bringing in more donors and hopefully get more eyes on the fund. And we definitely did both! And man, there's a lot of eyes on it, which I hope has been able to give people the help needed from people who have it to give. The biggest worry that I continue to have is just pure fundraising. I'm sure people are tired of hearing it but we only have a recurring donation amount of $2,215 a month to handle, what was $9,000 in requests fulfilled for June. The only reason we were able to do so was because of nearly $8K in one time donations from people - which is massively appreciated from people no matter which subforum you hail from!! A couple things I do want to point out, first off, we did have a pretty decent cash on hand at the end of the month, and I know there may be some people who still have open requests who may be wondering why we kept that much on hand. Well, we disbursed about $1500 this week and only received a couple hundred dollars since the 1st. From the 30th's $1,648 we went to this by the end of the 5th  The bank holiday certainly didn't help. We have around $5,000 in unfilled requests, 5 of these requests are $500 or greater. All outstanding but unfulfilled requests have had $125 - $400 given to them ($400 was disbursed over two months). I say this NOT to shame those who have requested this much (and would very much like people to not comment on these larger requests) but to let those who have submitted these requests know that we are doing what we can to help and haven't forgotten you - but we only have so much to give in short periods of time. The banner ads have also been a big boon - we have several people donating and requesting who have said they learned about the fund from the banner ads - thank you to speng for the original ones and thank you to homeless friend for the funny ones. I said back in June I was hoping to do a fundraiser, but sadly the prize did not win admin backing - which was crucial as the prize can literally only be implemented by them. So if anyone does have an idea - please let me know!! I do also want to reiterate that our fund is open to all goons who are members of this forum - ie you are not permabanned or on a burner account. We do not care if you're funny as poo poo or white noise as hell, we do not care about your political opinions (if you're a nazi or transphobe you should be banned thus alleviating us of this problem), or otherwise how active of a poster you are. really queer Christmas has issued a correction as of 03:08 on Aug 14, 2023 |
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Jul 8, 2023 01:45
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Nea posted:It's very high effort, but have you considered running a telethon/long stream of some sort? dont know if i can be entertaining enough on a stream or have enough content to make people tune in and donate. its worth a shot though Coolness Averted posted:Do those figures factor in where we're at with remibursing the board for the help getting things up and running, such as kingcobweb's seed loan? KCW is still owed his $564, He was supposed to collect it last weekend but forgot and it worked out for the fund since we got down to under $300 at one point (we are now at $445). So we still need extra funds to get through that and of course to help people.
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Jul 8, 2023 16:01
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trilljester posted:Hello fellow goons... I requested $50 from the Goon Fund yesterday in dire emergency and I think the fund is on hold right now... if anyone could Paypal me $50 ASAP, it would really help. PM for my Paypal address, thank you goons! The fund is not on hold for anyone, though some people have been capped - but even capped we do respond to small requests. We should have been in touch with you yesterday to discuss this request as we sent funds to you twice through a personal paypal and the goonfund paypal - so that's on us. If anyone is worried we haven't responded to you yet - please free to PM us or email the goonfund email as we do check all sources of communication pretty regularly.
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Jul 12, 2023 00:15
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Segata Sanshiro posted:I'm in similarly dire straits with grocery money, if anyone can help me out I have cash app and venmo, just PM me I sent a PM asking how much you need
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Jul 16, 2023 15:17
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Solitair posted:I also need $50 for groceries. Sorry to do a direct call out, but I sent you a PM yesterday and haven't heard from you. If you're still in need, please send a PM or do a request through our google forms so we can get you grocery funds.
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Jul 25, 2023 23:01
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Feral Integral posted:Hi I just lost my job, rent is due, unemployment is on hold for at least a month. Need some help, badly. Filled out the form I saw your request last night, but since you put deadline as today I wanted to wait till we got a new deposit today before we sent funds. I can send funds when I get home from work.
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Jul 26, 2023 18:11
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I'm working on getting more formal financials for more proof so people feel secure, but I'm putting out a big emergency call for funds please! We have had 10 requests in the last 2 days, all due ASAP or by August 1st, and the total of all them is about $1300. Here's the current balances on hand:    If you can help or know someone who is able to help, please do. There are some people who have already received a lot of aid, so I will try limiting them first and then do what we can afterwards.
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Jul 28, 2023 23:39
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