How do you feel about supporting the Barts-MS Blog via crowd-funding? #CrowdSpeak #MSBlog #MSResearch
“As part of our efforts to find, and redefine, our mojo and evolve the blog it has become clear that we need a blog administrator to lessen our work load and to support all the planned activities going forward. This is particularly important for managing the guest posts and to handle editorial issues.We have asked you in the past about monetising the blog, i.e. advertising (GoogleAds) and sponsored posts, and you said no.”
“As part of our efforts to find, and redefine, our mojo and evolve the blog it has become clear that we need a blog administrator to lessen our work load and to support all the planned activities going forward. This is particularly important for managing the guest posts and to handle editorial issues.We have asked you in the past about monetising the blog, i.e. advertising (GoogleAds) and sponsored posts, and you said no.”
“Some of you have suggested crowd-funding to achieve this aim. Do you agree with this or not? To do this we would need to start our own charity to handle the funds; this would make it easier for us to manage and use the funds. We could potentially use the charity for other MS-related activities, for example other hard to fund initiatives.”
Thanks.
Works for me. We will of course promote it in as far as we can should you desire.
I would definitely support/promote any charity that may be founded to support this blog. Your efforts and time are invaluable to us, the PwMS. However, I chose 'Not sure' for the first question. The reason is that you could explore the possibility that someone, perhaps a person with MS, could volunteer to be the admin and in that way you could also save some money. Given how important your work is, I presume that it won't be too difficult to find such a person, as they will also benefit (even indirectly) by the existence and quality of your blog.
I'm totally in favor of establishing a charitable trust to Blog, to the very maintenance of space, relieve the workload of Profs. and to help achieve the proposed goals (scientific research, etc.).
In principle, very supportive of crowd-funding the blog, and your starting a charity.Do though, please, think very carefully about the independence of the prospective charity, how closely tied to purpose of the blog, how closely tied to individuals, how else other monies might be used etc. Hashing out the scope, aims and objectives is seemingly simple, but you need to walk a fine line between limiting a charity too much, or letting a charity be hi-jackable. Probably telling all you wise grannies to suck eggs, but do get good advice, and don't just pick a constitution off the shelf without thought!
Agree with the comments above from mossy saxifrage… I nolonger have a Google account and cannot complete the survey, hence this post
You don't need a Google account to complete the survey.
Might do to look into Patreon.
Survey completed. I think crowd-funding is a great idea! However, I also think that Anon 4:37 has a great point – there are likely several of us who are (or were) in IT, who could probably perform this function. They would probably do so with more dedication and passion than anyone that you got off the street or bumped into on a late Friday night at Good Sams. If they're willing to donate some of the time spent, then aces! That's that much more cash saved in the fund for other meaningful stuff that you want to use it for.(note MD, this does NOT include new blinged-out hamster wheels for the beasties).
How about giving a person (or two) with MS the opportunity to work as admin? Someone who is an IT expert but perhaps struggling with mobility due to MS. They could work from home, would be very dedicated to this work as it helps so many people with MS and also get paid for their hard work!
That would seem like a good solution to me.