Thank you to all who donated anything in the past, especially during the last year (2023).

i.e., all those marked "Supporter" under their username.
May God bless you in 2024 and beyond!

Thank you for bumping this thread because I was unaware of this feature.

I'm enjoying the forum so much better since I made the donation. It's easier to read on my phone as well.

Paypal link is:
https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/send-receive-money/send-money

Send to: matthew@chantcd.com

I don't know what all is involved in setting it up, but many of the groups that I donate to have a paypal link that allows for an automatic recurring monthly donation. I like the automatic feature because it is easy to get busy with life and forget to sit down and make the donation every month.
I can't recall if you've said how much CI costs, Matthew, but if a number of members kicked in even 5 bucks a piece every month, that should make a dent.

Yes I agree that would be useful. Don't know how hard it is to set up though.

And you're right -- it's very easy to hit a modest goal when you have a decent level of "participation".

As for how much CathInfo costs, let's just say I'm running the site the most efficient way possible, which most people couldn't do. It's just the Internet and electricity costs. Without going into too much detail, let's just say that a forum with this traffic level would cost a lot MORE per month if I was just paying a monthly fee to host it. I'm saving a lot by hosting it myself. 

But even if I paid the regular webhosting fee, I would actually be more vulnerable: any single enemy could file a complaint with that webhost, and Cathinfo would be shut down faster than you can say "Oy Vey -- shut it down!"

FYI --

If you are a "supporter" you almost certainly have ads turned off, which includes the "nag message" that appears when you use CathInfo with an ad blocker (enabled).

The first thing I do when I receive a donation or a gift (from an identified member!) is turn off their ads. I don't think I've been slow to do this once -- much less forgotten to do it.

HOWEVER the CathInfo site has no way to know that it's "you" unless you're logged in. I've had at least 2 Supporters say they're seeing ads and/or the nag messages. One of them confirmed "yes, I seldom log in".

I did careful testing when I set up all of the above -- according to my best information right now, the nag messages only appear when you are NOT marked as a Supporter AND you have an Ad Blocker turned on. And of course, the ads only appear for non-Supporters as well.

I'm perfectly willing to fix any problems -- but as far as I know, there are no problems. Everything is working as designed, in all my testing.