Financial disclosure
As of December 2022
Readers had emailed saying they wanted to give money to help support the site. That’s very kind! I initially resisted because money makes everything complicated, raises conflict of interest issues, and degrades privacy, but after repeated requests I spun up a donation page in June of 2020.
I received 7 donations between August of 2020 and December of 2021. Donors gave $720 of which I received ~$680 after $2-$13 of fees per transaction. I infrequently posted updated amounts received to the donation page. I shut down the donation page when I put the site on hiatus in March of 2022.
I also received what I recall was a $10 donation to a paypal account I setup to accept international donations by request. Paypal shut it down and banned me. I don’t know where that $10 is, if it was ever released or what. (I did reach out to Paypal multiple times to understand what I did wrong, if I needed a different type of account, etc, and they declined to comment. So I won’t be using their system in the future.)
Aside from that $10 the net of donations sits in its own interest-bearing checking account. I have it earmarked for site hosting costs or some big and worthy project, but so far I haven’t spent any. The balance as of Dec 18, 2022 is $697.42.
Donation Breakdown:
5 donations were $50 or less.
One was received after helping a student with their school project and providing a presentation to their class.
A second was received after a week of correspondence helping a new player as they looked for a guzheng and teache
A third was received with a thank you for the website.
A 4th was received without a note
A 5th was received without a note
One of the first donations received was a larger donation from a performer and store owner. It came after a brief email conversation, appreciation for the site, and updating some old/incorrect information. (<- notice how there is no amount? Yeah, this is why money makes things complicated. I don’t know if the donor would be comfortable with me sharing how much they gave, but by withholding that it looks like I’m hiding it. I take solace in the fact that it wasn’t the largest donation.)
The largest donation received was $270 from a reader expressing gratitude for the site’s information and wishing to show appreciation on behalf of readers generally. I don’t have any record of corresponding with this person so it was a heck of a nice surprise!
Cost comparison
Hosting costs are currently $267.75/yr with an additional $20/yr for the domain name, so total costs are $287.75. This would mean there were I to need it, donations have provided enough for 2 years of hosting.
Plans for the future
I have entertained the notion of something like a low cost Patreon. To do that I’d want a steadier cadence of updates, so we’ll see if I ever get to that point. I am more comfortable with a patreon as I’d expect amounts to be lower and more distributed. I’d still change my update types to better address the interests of the audience, but it would be the audience en-masse, rather than a small number of people.
Final thoughts
I hesitate to spend the money because I currently can afford hosting, and I don’t want to spend people’s generosity on just maintaining the site. I want to use it to add to this project in some new and positive way. In effect, it’s a question of scale.
For those curious, since beginning my guzheng journey in 2016 I’ve spent just under $12,000 on guzheng and guzheng-related equipment, materials, and travel costs, as well as receiving about $1,000 of recording hardware and books as gifts. That comes out to about $2,000 a year. (I don’t track gas costs, so that could make it higher.) Roughly $3,000 went to lessons, and $800 for my first guzheng, meaning the remainder of around $8,000 ($1,600/year since site was published) have been travel, hardware, and other purchases costs directly because of this website.
With numbers like that, $680 of donations can just disappear, and that doesn’t feel right. I want to use the donation money for something meaningful in a way that honors the gift. Until I figure out what that might be, I’ll leave the donations sitting in their own account.