Your experiences with Donations as a business method

A cost recovery revenue stream

[tangor]

Reading in a Google adsense thread [webmasterworld.com...] a number of posts proffered "donations" as a fix for lost revenues.

Breaking out of that thread, I am curious if any others have experienced any success with Donations as a way to cover operating costs, fund new work, perhaps bank funds for future expansions.

The above is stated that way specifically since Donations, by law in most countries, is not a profit revenue stream, though it is considered income and perhaps some tax liabilities may be attached.

I have a few hundred sites I manage or operate. Ten of those sites have a Donate function embedded. Of those ten only TWO (2) have meet their goals of covering all operating costs annually with a +10-15% bank against new work, and have done so for the last 12 years.

The sites are rather evergreen in content, decidedly niche, though it is a fairly robust niche with a number of competitors, yet the Donation function does work. The sites are top notch, internationally recognized, and have active interaction with users via email and listservs, so there is some personality involved.

I expect many replies that donations do not work, ie., can't pay my mortgage, but those are the ones that would never work in the first place.

Have any others had success with the Donation paradigm to keep a site, and its content, on line, all costs covered, year after year?

[explorador]

I guess it depends on the country/region. In my case (latinamerica), donations for a website or cause in the form of money are very, very difficult because it's easy for anyone to loose track on what was done, so, it's easier (easier, not easy) to get donations in the form of objects, tools, etc. because it limits anyone on any second use they could want to.

Mentioned country/region because of culture. Why? in my country is very clear that if you have a website and it's ugly, asking for donations will only make people to hate it because it's pure garbage. If the site is very good, then people get the idea "you have money" and you shouldn't suppose to be expecting any.

Back to my first paragraph, I organized a few social work things and helped myself with one or two websites (traffic) to make things clear, communicate, to show organization and "power" (sad thing) you can also look at it as "backed up by". As I already had experience on this we didn't go for money, and yes we got many things and help from diff companies, but it was due to them liking the cause, the work and the organization (and no money).