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Apr 28, 2024 22:15
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- blight rhino
- Feb 11, 2014
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EXQUISITE LURKER RHINO
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Nap Ghost
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I have forgotten to update this thread in the last month!! I am incredibly sorry. There's been a lot of changes since then, we have a new committee member - It's docbeard! He has already been trained up and starting to fulfill requests without the training wheels on!
We also had a huge cash crunch issue after black friday. We got hit hard and we were down to about $100 when some incredibly generous goons following the cspam thread dropped $1K each! Those funds were highly needed as we have received 17 requests since thanksgiving!! (I just posted in the cspam thread about two hours ago it was 16, we already got another one!).
So please, if you are in the giving mood and want to help your fellow goons - I promise you, our overhead is tiny as hell for a charity. Once we have received money from the payment processor - 95% of it goes to Goons, and the other 5% went to state and federal governments for fees! But for every dollar you give going forward, .97 cents makes its way directly into a goons hand to become crusted over with cheetos! Even more makes it over if you send us money via venmo!
Thank you all for your help and support, and for those of you who did bravely step in CSPAM to vote or voice confidence in the committee itself. You make our jobs easier to carry out!
That's awesome. And those posters are awesome.
blight rhino fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Nov 30, 2023
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Nov 30, 2023 03:26
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- Seth Pecksniff
- May 27, 2004
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can't believe shrek is fucking dead. rip to a real one.
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Man. .... CSPAM ... good?
I refuse to believe
This is not the thread for this bullshit as I've repeatedly said
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Nov 30, 2023 04:01
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- StdNormDist
- May 2, 2010
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Thanks for doing this. I almost never post but have been lurking since like 2001 and owe this community of weirdos. Donated and subscribed to help goons in need.
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Dec 9, 2023 14:22
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- VinNYC82
- Jan 26, 2004
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Just wanted to take a second and thank everyone involved with this fund. I made a request for some money yesterday, and this morning when I woke up, the money was already there.
I, like many others here have fallen on some hard times recently and I promise to put back into the fund once I am in a better position. So, thank you to all who made this fund possible.
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Jan 25, 2024 17:14
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- really queer Christmas
- Apr 22, 2014
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I posted an announcement over in CSPAM yesterday, here it is below with some quick thoughts -
DECEMBER & 2023 FINANCIALS
2023 is officially over! As such, I would like to present the final version of the December financials. This also functions as our end of year financials; and as such I will review the whole of 2023 with all of you!
We also held our quarterly meeting yesterday, so I will present the minutes for that, as well as try to sum up for people who get bored by bureaucracy (probably everyone). Without further ado, here's the good stuff!
So a lot of numbers, what do they mean? Well, we ended the year with about $2,900 on hand in some form or fashion. About $2,400 of that was in pure cash, and another $500 was in our paypal account. We also had another $650 that had been paid to us, but was still being held by Stripe as of 12/31/23. We ended the year off with a big surplus on hand, and my God did we need it for January. I'll get into that in a bit, I'll bold it if you just want to jump down to that portion and ignore the rest of the financial drivel.
I hope you don't though, because you'll miss this - The Goonfund raised $65,000 from March 17th - December 31st 2023. An absolutely insane amount. What's even crazier, is just under $59,000 of that money was disbursed to goons in need - about 90% of the total funds collected. What happened to the rest of the money we took in? We lost about $2K or 3% to bank fees - cost of getting funds from people to the fund, and about 1% to the government - registering as a charity and a business through the government. The other 5.5% is what we had on hand at the end of the year. So you can be assured that if you give $100 to the Goon Fund - $95.8 goes to goons themselves, putting our overhead at about $3.2 per $100 given. For reference, the average overhead for nonprofit organizations are about $20 per $100 given. That means an extra $16.80 gets to go towards people in need instead of getting lost along the way.
Getting back to the numbers, December was down in requests in comparison to November but the dollar amount requested was roughly the same. So less requestors, but more needed. Which makes sense with the holidays.
Finally, we ended the year off with a total of $3500 from people in recurring monthly donations! That means we have a very steady source of donations in that helps us meet our monthly needs. Thank you once again to our donors, without which we literally couldn't do anything.
For some extra 2023 information - we gave an average of $102 to 195 unique users during 2023. We had a total of 577 requests with venmo being the most paid out option and paypal being the least paid out.
Overall, we somehow got a goon project off the ground grossing $65K and helped 195 people along the way. I'd go ahead and wager few would have thought that would have happened when we first set up that interim form back on November 26, 2022.
JANUARY ANNOUNCEMENTS
Alright good news off the ground, time for some bad news. January has absolutely killed us. We averaged about 1.75 requests per day in December and 2.05 requests per day in November (though remember, December had a higher average request amount). Well, we are up to 2.5 requests a day in January and those requests have been averaging about $92.36 per request (though several of these have had requests well beyond our limit of $125). We have given out $5,357 so far this month and still have 6 pending requests for funds that total $525 right now. Don't believe me? Here's what the request log looks like since Saturday:
Yes, we had 6 today alone. I hate to present all this good news and beg for more money, but the month after Christmas is rough for people. Even moreso when some bread, milk, and eggs will run you an hour or two wages. So if you are in a position to help, we could use a little extra to help out and make sure we don't run out as we approach the end of the month (the time when we get the most requests).
What about if you are already giving recurring donations but can't do more? If you still want to help out, check to make sure how you are giving funds, if you can afford to check to see if you are giving through a credit/debit card and change that to be a bank account. This massively reduces fees from 3.5% down to a 0.8%. For instance, we have two people giving $500 a month to us, one via CC and another via bank account. The credit card is only giving us $485 whereas the bank account is giving us $496. This may not seem like much but over a monthly and yearly period could massively reduce our overhead - which means more money in people who need it's pockets.
Finally, in regards to the quarterly meeting, Here is the full minutes. For a brief summary-
- We are still working on getting a website up and running (lol).
- I am working on EOY receipts for donors. I will have it done by month end. Thank you for your patience.
- We will need to refile our registration in washington state soon as it will expire.
- Nonprofit tax form is due May 15th, 2024
- We have a mailchimp account, we hope to use it soon.
- Someone is working on a logo for it. It looks awesome but is still in sketch phase.
- New category for google form (more below)
As for the new category thing, we discussed whether adding a category at the end that asks people what the funds they are requesting will go towards. For instance food, medicine, utilities, rent, etc. This isn't for gatekeeping purposes, but for audit and information purposes. The major concern that was brought up was someone seeing that and feeling guilty that their request isn't as important as someone else's because "well at least im not starving" etc. We don't want people to feel that way, but the information would be good to gather for these monthly wrap-ups and to answer any potential audit questions.
Now then, here's hoping 2024 is just as successful!
Go Lions.
I'd like to reiterate what I said yesterday, and hell let's do it in list form.
- We raised more than $65K last year.
- We disbursed nearly $59K, with 3K on hand at year's end. The remainder was spent on either state/fed registrations or merchant fees (cost to transfer money from your account to ours).
- January has been brutal for the fund.
- We had 6 requests yesterday, and another 6 so far today. - All but 2 were for the max limit. 8 of those 12 requests were from first timers. The other 4 were from people who have requested in the past, though are within the monthly limit.
- We have enough to cover the current requests, but we will have to begin rationing any requests made after today - unless we get help from donors.
It feels disingenuous to say "Wow look at how successful we were, now give us more funds." But January seems to have been a very brutal month for goons. As of yesterday we were at 2.4 requests a day, and we are already up to 2.5! Despite our recurring donation base improving significantly over the year, it still isn't enough to meet demand. So please, if you have the means - help a goon today.
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Jan 26, 2024 00:19
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- HelloIAmYourHeart
- Dec 29, 2008
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Fallen Rib
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It seems really counterintuitive that December would be low and January high, but it makes sense.
Christmas bills, property taxes, high utilities because of weather... makes sense to me. A bunch of people who had their insurance deductibles reset are going to get hit with medical bills in short order if they had to seek care at the beginning of the year.
edit: I work in medical billing and y'all are welcome to message me if you have any questions about your medical bills.
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Jan 27, 2024 03:57
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- Pillowpants
- Aug 5, 2006
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I hate to be that guy, but from what I can tell my son spent almos 2000 on online gaming since Christmas’s. Needles to say, once my check hits in I should be fine -but I could use a quick infuse of cash a every little bit helps so that I can go grocery shopping in the AM. I’m mainly just asking for a much help as possible until then.
Pillowpants fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Jan 27, 2024
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Jan 27, 2024 09:58
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- Anne Whateley
- Feb 11, 2007
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 i like nice words
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You should be able to call Apple/Google to get back money your kid spent on apps without your knowledge or consent. There are a ton of articles about it if you google. (and obviously put a lock on phone purchases)
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Jan 28, 2024 00:46
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- bus hustler
- Mar 14, 2019
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Moved to bank account, should be hearing about annual raises in the next few weeks and will probably up my donation a bit, 2023 was a weird year filled with unemployment and a pay cut during horrible price increases across the board.
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Jan 29, 2024 20:06
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- really queer Christmas
- Apr 22, 2014
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I am happy to report receipts have gone out to a good many donors! I did not send out receipts to anyone who did not donate $100 or more. I have a couple of venmo people I still need to send messages to. If you were a donor last year and made over $100 in contributions and did not get an email - first off, check your spam since it likely got thrown down there (thats where it was for me). Secondly, get in contact with me and I'll check to make sure we have the right contact email and get it to you if that was the issue. Finally, I did what I could for venmo and cashapp people - if you need a receipt and have not gotten one, get with me and I'll get one for you. If you made under $100 in donations and want a receipt... I can provide one upon request.
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Jan 31, 2024 04:36
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- HELLO LADIES
- Feb 15, 2008
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:3 -$5 :3
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Got my receipt, was not flagged as spam. I'm on Gmail, and my personal spam filter is aggressively egregious poo poo that routinely tags legitimate if commercial mail as spam, so all things considered the Goonfund mail not being flagged is probably a pretty good sign?
Hope to give more this year than next year, very proud of and grateful to all you goons putting in the work.
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Jan 31, 2024 04:59
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- Sarah Cenia
- Apr 2, 2008
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Laying in the forest, by the water
Underneath these ferns
You'll never find me
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i've fallen upon some bad times money wise lately and the goonfund kept us afloat until payday.
im sorry I haven't been able to make up for it yet but I wanted to say thank you all, really.
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Feb 2, 2024 00:36
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- really queer Christmas
- Apr 22, 2014
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JANUARY 2024 FINANCIALS
New year, new books! Minus the carryover from 2023, the P&L Statement of Activities and the Balance Sheet Statement of Financial Position are all fresh for this wonderful new year we have going on! As we mentioned several times this past month, January was tough and we dropped below $100 in the bank account at one point. We thankfully had some wonderful help from donors to prop us up until the recurring amounts were enough to get us to February - which has been a little easier of a month. In that we have only disbursed about $2500 after 12 days - with about 2.1 requests a day. It's still a little heavy, but we just hit the biggest recurring day of the month so we will keep you all updated.
Talking about the SFP (balance sheet) we had about $1700 in liquid assets at the end of the month, with just under $1500 about to drop in our bank account. I'd like to personally thank stripe for not recognizing this as owed to us as of 1/31 since they sent it to us, but it had not arrived in our banks yet. That's only 30 minutes of my life gone searching for that.
We've had quite a few months of surplus that we've been banking, and it was only time until we had a big loss month. That was January! We ended it only losing $800 but that's because someone literally dropped $1K on us at the tail end of the month. That's also the reason we haven't had to e-beg yet as we just went under $1K in the bank account. I'm also going to take this time to mention the important of paying with a bank account versus a card. That $1000? We paid only $5 in bank fees for that. If that was a credit card, we'd have lost about $40. Want to update your card to be a bank account? Go here! Please be wary about making sure you have enough funds in your account compared to a card! Otherwise we both will get NSF fees - and we certainly don't want to cause any issues for you.
Venmo is still our most used disbursement method, this is a bit on us too though as venmo is kinda the default option we select. Cashapp hits our debit card so when times are tough, I prefer for us to use venmo to give us an extra day or two to get more funds in. It does mean we have to budget very carefully, however.
We are up to $3700 a month in recurring donations! That is fantastic! The bad news is we still average about $6K a month in payouts so we don't quite have the donation flow to match our expenses quite yet.
That's it for Financial news, here's some other announcements for you!
-Our paypal account has been transformed into a charity account! Now that means if you donate to our paypal account, instead of 3.5% fees, we pay 1.99% fees! Paypal also gave us permission to set up a new charity venmo account! Which sounds great until you see that word "new". Setting up the new account would require us to shut down the existing account, losing all of our history and forcing us to point donors towards the new account with a different ID/QR code. So we're unsure about that and figured we'd put it out there to you guys to see if its worth it, when the fees paid to venmo wouldn't change and the only major benefit is better statements and donor information.
-I have been given a timetable on the logo! I won't share it for risk of making the artist feel pressured, but it should be live very soon!
-We are working on getting a better email address to send emails out on, as the default gmail we have been using apparently triggers the spam flag much more often (and per mailchimp will be more common as of 2/1/24). However, I would like to introduce our mailing sign up list. The purposes of this email listing would be to send these monthly announcements/financials in a nice email form so you don't have to follow a thread to hear about what's going on! We would also probably use it to blast people about needing funds when we get really low. If you don't want your email clogged up with that - I totally understand, but for people who do want to be alerted, you know have that option.
Here's the unsub link too, for anyone who signs up and changes their mind.
Otherwise, we are continuing to work on our goals and we will update you on those when we have something concrete for you!
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Feb 13, 2024 03:30
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- PhazonLink
- Jul 17, 2010
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shouldnt there be cheeto dust on the up hands thumb too?
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Feb 23, 2024 21:29
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- Devils Affricate
- Jan 22, 2010
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Yeah the two hands should be mixing their chip dusts as they grasp one another. This is how goons maintain genetic diversity.
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Feb 23, 2024 22:23
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- pyknosis
- Nov 23, 2007
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Young Orc
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no ring
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Feb 23, 2024 22:51
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- Nocheez
- Sep 5, 2000
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Can you spare a little cheddar?
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Nap Ghost
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That logo is incredible.
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Feb 23, 2024 23:32
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- Tokubetsu
- Dec 18, 2007
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Love Is Not Enough
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Dope logo. Make it cheesier at the tips!
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Feb 24, 2024 14:34
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- really queer Christmas
- Apr 22, 2014
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FEBRUARY 2024 FINANCIALS
So we are in our second straight month where we have a net loss. Despite our recurring donations being at our highest, our one time donations have fallen down pretty dramatically, which is why we've had to do a lot more begging as of late. That large surplus we were sitting on as of December 31st has almost been wiped out by how tough January was, with February not really being a respite for us.
I have also separated out February from the year to date SoA/P&L so people can see the month by month breakdown of how funds are coming in/coming out. You can also see that February had only 8 less requests than January but it was $1300 less in disbursements. We also technically had another February request but it went unfulfilled in February due to their deadline being in late March.
In case the above two paragraphs are too subtle - we are in need of more funds to meet the current demand. We have received 15 requests since Monday worth $1405 total ($1,250.00 when accounting for our limits). We currently have 9 requests worth $805 (thats with limits taken into account) that are still owed . We currently have $789.30 in the bank with $95.30 coming from Stripe. We are currently focusing on people with deadlines first to extend our reach (as next week is when the most recurring donations will hit) but as of right now every new request that comes in cannot be guaranteed to be fulfilled as of right now. All currently active requests can be fulfilled but not anything after this post. We just cannot afford our current burn rate, with what our monthly recurring donations are, especially with how much lower our one-time donations have been since last year. It's the same problem I assume all charities are having - less people are working or able to afford donating which decreases donor bases capacity and increases people requesting for help. A bad combination when our surplus from 2023 is gone.
In less depressing news, I have filed for our yearly state registration renewal - The Goonfund will continue being a business for another year. I still need to file with the IRS - but we have until May 15th. My job has given me very little free time right now so my hope is to work on it in April to give myself enough time in case there's any issues, not that I expect any - we are a pretty simple and small company.
We would also like to ask the thread for help with ideas for fundraising. Last year we auctioned off an artwork and 2 emotes. One of those emotes were delivered, I don't think the organizing thread really wanted an emote, and the artwork got left in limbo. I have been reluctant to commit to more forums stuff when we haven't delivered on last year's promises, and auctioning off prizes is... very complicated tax wise compared to simple fundraisers. Still, if anyone has any ideas for what we can do - we are all ears. We need funds and we are willing to do what it takes to get it depending on what would bring in the most cash.
Besides all of that, I'd like to give a shoutout to Docbeard who figured out how discord works and has been a gigantic help to me this year in terms of budgeting, making our request form easier to work on from our side, and fulfilling requests even during the morning hours - whereas I could only do it in the afternoon. Genuinely, I'd have lost my mind were he not involved.
Finally, here's a result of how February's requests broke down by reason. Other is quite high, so I guess it would be good to know if there's any categories we are missing to try and get that down some. It's... a bit depressing to see a good 1/6 of all requests are for food. I guess that does square with 1/6 of americans not eating meals every night. Which... yeah, depressing stuff!
Finally, as I already posted, we have a logo for the Fund now! I have already added it to as many places as I can think of. So you should be able to differentiate us from all those other Goon funds out there (which there are a lot, strangely????). Just look for the cheeto crusted fingers and you know you're giving money to the right people.
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Mar 7, 2024 03:09
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- really queer Christmas
- Apr 22, 2014
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For you GBS people, I finally updated the OP for the two of you who reads updated OPs. I just copy pasted the CSPAM effort post I already did, but the OP was wildly out of date and never had much substance here. When I made this thread, I was more concerned with trying to convince a potentially hostile audience that this wasn't like how a lot of other goon projects/ fundraisers have gone before. That instead, we are a legitimate business trying to do what we can to help people. I'd like to think that's been a success though I admit I am not as good at keeping up with this version of the thread compared to the CSPAM one - even though our donor/requestors are pretty even split between the two forums (probably closer to 45-45 and the other 10% hailing from the other forums). Trying to be better about that this year!
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Mar 7, 2024 03:16
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- Seth Pecksniff
- May 27, 2004
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can't believe shrek is fucking dead. rip to a real one.
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I have a question and don't know where to ask, so I'll try here. A friend of mine has a gofundme to raise funds for a lawyer so she can see her son. Long story short, she's trans, ex-wife is mad she's trans and has been bankrupting her with frivolous lawsuits and she now needs 3.5k to pay for a lawyer with a deadline of March 19th. I feel like there are people here who would be able to help her, but I don't know where to post.
I'll let RQC speak to the Goonfund portion of this, but site policy says we can't do personal fundraisers for various reasons. Unfortunately this part is out of my hands because it comes straight down from management.
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Mar 8, 2024 19:36
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Apr 28, 2024 22:15
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- really queer Christmas
- Apr 22, 2014
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If you're a goon in need of funds, regardless of if you are doing a gofundme, you can ask for help. We don't really help friends or family though. We get those requests occasionally and we just can't fulfill them. Ignoring the "official purpose of the charity" we don't even have the funds to meet our current monthly need, we can't then extend our reach to non goons.
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Mar 8, 2024 19:43
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Nov 30, 2023 02:27
