Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fanworks Auctions Donations thermometer

I noticed that the "thermometer" on the donations link page has not changed since before the auctions. I also noticed that there is an "edit" button available for it. I didn't know whether we were supposed to update the thermometer ourselves when we make a donation, so I tried clicking on the button. It asked for a password, but would not accept my MB password. So now I figure one of two things is happening:

1) Since the link was put on a different tab of the same page as the NFic request, perhaps it is expecting the NFic password. Since I am not a member of that side of the board, I could not test this hypothesis.

2) The password being requested is an administrative password. I am hoping that this is the situation, since having everyone make their own updates seems to me to be a recipe for disaster.

If the link is updated only by administrators, when is the next planned update? I must admit to being curious about how close we are to the fundraising goal. And if we're supposed to add our own updates, would someone please add in my $35 donation (for the two auctions I won)? Thanks.

I'm not trying to pressure anyone to complete yet one more task in short order; I realize that between the changes in the MB and the flood (I hope) of donations that are coming in now that the auctions have ended, the board's admins are probably swamped. There's no hurry on this. I'm just curious about how the thermometer is supposed to work.

Thanks.

Joy,
Lynn

Kathy has been updating the thermometer, and she is the one with both the password and access to the PayPal account, but she has been away for a few days. I think she's most likely - apart from catching up on the sort of things we all have to do after being away - getting to all the donation acknowledgement emails first.

Give her a day or so, okay? I know we're all anxious to see where we're at!

Wendy

Hi Wendy,

Thanks for the quick reply. It does sound like Kathy will be super busy. I'll keep an eye out for whenever she gets enough of a breather to update the thermometer.

I hope we made the goal.

Joy,
Lynn

And we're updated - thanks, Kathy! And over halfway there already!

LabRat

Yes, over halfway!

Thanks for your patience, everyone. I was out of town from Friday to Tuesday, but I've caught up with donations through this evening, so everyone should have received a thank you email. Also, if anyone who donated earlier wants to get a copy of their donation receipt, let me know. (Send email to lcficmbs (at) gmail (dot) com.) I wasn't including a copy of the receipt that included the total amount donated in the earlier thank you's, but I've started doing that now due to the auction. So early donors who want it should just ask.

Kathy

Thanks for donating so much time and effort into the campaign, Kathy.

So since we still have several hundred dollars to go, will there be another round of auctions? I'll try to encourage my muse to pay me another visit in the hopes of being able to have more swag to offer.

Joy,
Lynn

Well, we're about to have tshirt sales, so that should get us someway further along.

But another round of auctions and/or swag wouldn't go amiss with me. I had a couple of possible items for both categories that I was hoping to be able to offer but I failed to properly read the rules and missed the deadline by the time they occurred to me. So I'd definitely welcome a second chance.

LabRat

Don't forget there are checks coming in too that haven't been counted. It is not all paypal.

Artemis

Also, several people said they would be doing their donations this weekend.

True, Artemis and Virginia, I had forgotten about the cheques and the T-shirts. This is definitely looking promising.

Joy,
Lynn

Just wondering...is there a time limit in which we need to reach our goal?

Very encouraging that we are over half-way there...and still have donations coming in--whether potentially this weekend or by check in the mail.

And a t-shirt sale . Really excited about the t-shirts...

Laura

We haven't set a specific deadline, and if we don't reach goal, I wouldn't be opposed to keeping the thermometer up indefinitely to reach people who don't visit regularly. But fortunately we've already raised enough to pay the current round of expenses (the upgrade) and are now working on future hosting and domain name expenses for the L&C websites associated with the boards (the kerths, nfic, etc.) which gives us time to consider projects like shirts, etc.

So between checks and more auction/swag donations, not to mention shirts, I'm optimistic we'll get there sooner rather than later.

Kathy

As Kathy says, the big expense is paid. What we are hoping for is to have a fund to draw on for the hosting etc charges for several years - and there's also the fact that Annette paid for these herself for three or four years after the proceeds from the last fundraiser ran out. So, yes, if we can put away 5+ years of payments, that would be wonderful.

If there's interest in another auction, I'm certainly happy to help put it together - I'm thrilled to see that there were at least a couple of people who were interested in donating but didn't get a chance to post, and if there are people who didn't win this time but would bid next time... why not? Also, there's the fact that the problems with the upgrade did disrupt the recent auction somewhat, and of course it's the first time we've done one on these boards so I'm sure we can learn some lessons and do it better

I'll put up a poll and see what the interest is.

ETA: And here's the poll.

Wendy

Could we have a 'reverse auction' (for want of a better term)?

For example, a bidder posts something like:


Someone then responds with:


Someone else then ups the ante:


The original taker or someone else responds with:



When the auction is over, the last person offering a donation gives the donation and the last person offering the story begins writing!

A traditional auction is probably safer, but we could try this way and see if we can generate both funds and stories.

Corrina.

Hahaha, that sounds like a ton of fun, Corrina! Great idea.

ETA something I just posted in the auction poll thread:

Or what about (just brainstorming here) challenge offers like "I will pay $10 for each ficlet of 500+ words posted during the month of May that has Lois choosing Clark over Dan Scardino (up to 5 stories total)." That could be a lot of fun, seeing what different authors come up with.

Thermometer has been updated again. Just a couple of hundred dollars more and we'll be three-quarters of the way there! Wow!

LabRat

I just noticed that, too--getting closer and closer

Laura