Making donations to forums

Would you do it?

[timchuma]

There are only a few forums I would actually donate money to for help in their maintenance and running costs.

I already pay extra for my USENET access which I would not do without.

For the two other forums I am considering donating to, I used to subscribe to the publication the first one published so it would be much similar.

I am still considering subscribing to the other forum as they already have a lot of sponsors.

If I was richer and had my own web business I would pay money to Webmasterwold.

Thanks.

[rogerd]

Some people will contribute if they really feel they have received significant benefits from reading or participating in a forum.

It's not realistic to expect that a major percentage of members will make an optional donation. There's probably a good comparison at National Public Radio, which has many regular listeners but only a modest fraction who contribute.

If your forum model calls for contributions, it's probably a good strategy to include some benefits, too - private forums, more storage, bigger avatars, etc.

[timchuma]

I have already contributed to the first forum as it will close down if they don't get funding.

The second forum does offer extra benefits so I will probably subscribe if they start restricting access to normal users.

Thanks.

[lakhya]

Some of the niche forums provide valuable info,suggestions and hard to get data to its members. I have personally benefitted from particiaption in a few forums catering to my area of interest. I would like to see these groups continue the work they are doing. So helping out such groups with donations whenever possible is quite ok with me.