Upcoming GreekChat Fundraiser
 

I need to run a fundraiser for GC very soon. Details on why will be posted on the actual fundraising thread. Right now I'm looking for some ideas on what exactly to do.

First thing that comes to mind is to run a chip-in style fundraiser through one of the many available crowdfunding sites. Not sure which one to go with so suggestions on that would be helpful.

Any other fundraising ideas that might work specifically for GC would also be appreciated.

Maybe I'm crazy, but if you can find a seller of pink sequined tights, I would totally buy a pair...

I've seen a website called FundMe used to raise money. Maybe look into that? Either way, I will support Greekchat, I LOVE this site!

Is it possible to offer a paid membership where you can get the ability to use avatars, signatures etc - ie, make those features a paid feature instead of free?

And I know I've asked this before, but do the old threads from years and years ago that haven't been bumped since contribute a lot to the cost of running the site or is it negligible?

That's already available. Everyone who has an avatar has paid.

Are you already using affiliate links of any kind? Several blogs I follow use affiliate links through Amazon and ask readers to make their Amazon purchases using them.

Now this is a little bit of a crazy idea - and I mentioned it in the "What to tell overconfident PNMs" thread - but I think the GCers here could put together an annual recruitment guidebook for sale on Amazon Kindle.

I'm thinking it could basically be a compilation of several of the greatest hits of stickied recruitment threads - approximate recruitment dates, recommendation guidelines and help, websites, clothing guidelines, insider perspectives, do's and don'ts, recent pledge class sizes, upcoming colonizations, etc.

It's sad, but human nature, that plenty of people value the information from a source they pay for than from free internet resources. I bet you'd get plenty of parents and inbound college women who would pay $10 for an "official" guidebook. Other people would pay just so they don't have to take the time to scroll through lots of threads.

I saw a separate thread yesterday recommending a small fee ($5 or so) for new member sign ups. Sorry - I forgot who posted it, and now I can't seem to find it.

I just wanted to second that idea. It might cut way back on new members signing up, but there's so much great value you can get just from being a reader, and it would cut down on spam.

GC premium memberships are already setup like that. Details on the bonus account features for paid subscribers are available at http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/payments.php

Negligible

Anywhere "Amazon" is mentioned on GC it's linked with GC's affiliate link. You can see those links in the message you posted above. In the past few years the link has brought in less than $25 in commissions. If GC was a general product review type forum the associated commissions would likely be quite substantial.

This is a good idea and is actually already on my to do list for GC. At some point I would like to partner with authors to publish guidebooks such as what you described. GC has 3-4 million visitors per year, so GC would promote the books and profits would be shared.

Dealing with SPAM has consumed a big chunk of my life and I'm getting to the point where I do not want to deal with SPAM anymore. Just as an example, another forum that I publish has had around 30,000 spam bot posts in the past 2 weeks or so and I still need to clean that up. I've closed registrations on other forums for that same reason, the other remaining open forum I mentioned will probably have new sign-ups closed as well (maybe today). With GC we've been a bit fortunate that there has not (yet) been a consistent swarm of spam bots flooding the site, but that could easily change in an instant. We are automatically blocking (on GC and the other smaller sites I mentioned) a big percentage of the spam bots, but that is not enough. Some spam bot networks even pay people in low wage countries to help the bots get past the auto blocking features, so it is a constant battle with them.

I've been working on a new setup which should completely and efficiently handle the spammers. There will be a number of ways for people to join GC, some free and some paid, but spam bots will not be able to get into the GC forums anymore. Still more work to be done on that but at this point I need to focus on a fundraiser as there is an immediate need.

This is another option that I've considered. For that to work for GC I would need to figure out how to enable search engines to continue indexing the site as that is how a lot of our members have found GC. What I would probably do is enable visitors to read a limited number of pages then they would have to join the site to continue. That would give them a chance to see what GC is all about before joining. Options to join GC for a small fee or other ways for free in order to help block the spam bots are also being considered.

I'm not tech savvy and not sure of the feasibility:

I know some GLOs have an unofficial message board/forum for its members, or used to. Any way to engage chapters or whole organizations to host their MBs/forums on GC? Perhaps their internal forum would be "chaptername.greekchat.com"?

Another idea, and again I have no idea what this takes, but anyway to make GC a paid app?