Mutual Aid: support Infoshop.org

Mutual Aid: support Infoshop.org (posted 15 June 2009, 8am)

Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 15 years ago, in 2009, on the World Wide Web.

Received in my inbox a few days ago. I don’t know what their current financial condition is, but these are trying times for all kinds of community projects. Infoshop.org is an invaluable resource for the anarchist community online, and they’ve been working really hard lately on a fundraising drive to to make sure that the project has the base of donations that it needs to keep on running and remain economically sustainable. If you can help, any donation will go a long way towards sustaining anarchist projects online.

From: chuck
Date: 6/11/2009 8:41pm
Subject: Support Infoshop with a donation

We are asking our fans and users to send us a financial donation so we can continue our operations. Recently we’ve gotten several generous donations from supporters. We really appreciate this support. While those donations really help out our project, we are asking our other regular readers to consider donating today or in the near future.

We appreciate the support that many of our users extend to our project in the form of story submissions, comments, promotion and financial donations. Every month, over 100,000 users visit Infoshop News and another 50,000 visit Infoshop and associated websites. This makes Infoshop the most popular English language anarchist website and one of the most popular independent news sites.

We aren’t asking for much. A $20 donation can make a big difference. You can contribute to “AMP” with a donation via PayPal (which takes all credit cards) or by mailing a check or well-concealed cash to our snail mail address:

AMP
PO Box 7171
Shawnee Mission, KS 66207

Online donation options: http://www.infoshop.org/page/Donate

Thanks!

Chuck Munson
for Infoshop.org and Infoshop News

3 replies to Mutual Aid: support Infoshop.org

Follow replies to this article · TrackBack URI

Gabriel /# 11pm • 16 Jun 2009

This may be too naive a question, but… how can we trust infoshop (or any website for that matter) to use donations to improve the content of their site? Or to even just pay their server bills or whatever they say they will use it for?

Example: A year ago I frequented a site, call it X. Site X took donations. Abruptly it went dead one day, displaying only a note from the site administrators that they had moved the site to a new venue, say Y. Site Y also took donations, and on site Y the admins explained that the founder of site X had been pocketing donations for himself while maintaining the pretense that the site needed the donations to pay server bills. I never found out if that story was true or not, but it did occur to me that maybe the admins of site Y were the scammers, since the forums of site Y were immediately flooded with people saying “I understand why you did this” and “I never donated before but heck maybe I will donate now”, etc.

&lt/rant&gt>

Follow Up

Rad Geek /# 11pm • 17 Jun 2009

Gabriel,

Well, there’s no guarantees in this vale of tears, but Infoshop does at least post a budget and report on spending with itemized expenses (although, unfortunately, I notice that their budget page hasn’t been updated in the past several months), so it’s not as if you’re just throwing your money into a black box and hoping something good will come out. Of course, you have to take them at their word that the report is accurate, but I’m willing to do that, especially for a site that’s been around as long as Infoshop has.

radgeek.com has its own budget on the donations page, which is more regularly updated, although I’m considering shifting it over to just listing my regular monthly bills (with the fundraising goal being, basically, to cover the bills to the extent possible, rather than to work out some wonky wage for myself based on a work week which is really highly variable from week to week). If anyone really wants proof of the numbers, I can always put up scans of the Internet service bill, or whatever, with account numbers etc. fuzzed out.

Follow Up

Aster /# 12am • 18 Jun 2009

Thank you for showing how this stuff works.

How optimistic are you that a gift economy system can evolve to the point of paying competent writers a living wage?

Too many LLers are hurting, some terribly. And of course everyone is hurting these days (thank you, idiots in charge of the world).

I think that after unresolved issues of philosophical foundations, finances are the next major bottleneck for the LL movement. My experience with Wellington’s social anarchist scene has had the unintentional effect by negative example of increasing my respect for competent business practice. I’ve been told that Brad is a fundraising wizard.

Could you suggest any good reading material as to how political movements seek funding? The Libertarians obviously get it done somehow, and so does much of the cultural left.

Follow Up

3 replies to Mutual Aid: support Infoshop.org Follow replies to this article · TrackBack URI

Gabriel /# 11pm • 16 Jun 2009

This may be too naive a question, but… how can we trust infoshop (or any website for that matter) to use donations to improve the content of their site? Or to even just pay their server bills or whatever they say they will use it for?

Example: A year ago I frequented a site, call it X. Site X took donations. Abruptly it went dead one day, displaying only a note from the site administrators that they had moved the site to a new venue, say Y. Site Y also took donations, and on site Y the admins explained that the founder of site X had been pocketing donations for himself while maintaining the pretense that the site needed the donations to pay server bills. I never found out if that story was true or not, but it did occur to me that maybe the admins of site Y were the scammers, since the forums of site Y were immediately flooded with people saying “I understand why you did this” and “I never donated before but heck maybe I will donate now”, etc.

&lt/rant&gt>

Follow Up
Rad Geek /# 11pm • 17 Jun 2009

Gabriel,

Well, there’s no guarantees in this vale of tears, but Infoshop does at least post a budget and report on spending with itemized expenses (although, unfortunately, I notice that their budget page hasn’t been updated in the past several months), so it’s not as if you’re just throwing your money into a black box and hoping something good will come out. Of course, you have to take them at their word that the report is accurate, but I’m willing to do that, especially for a site that’s been around as long as Infoshop has.

radgeek.com has its own budget on the donations page, which is more regularly updated, although I’m considering shifting it over to just listing my regular monthly bills (with the fundraising goal being, basically, to cover the bills to the extent possible, rather than to work out some wonky wage for myself based on a work week which is really highly variable from week to week). If anyone really wants proof of the numbers, I can always put up scans of the Internet service bill, or whatever, with account numbers etc. fuzzed out.

Follow Up
Aster /# 12am • 18 Jun 2009

Thank you for showing how this stuff works.

How optimistic are you that a gift economy system can evolve to the point of paying competent writers a living wage?

Too many LLers are hurting, some terribly. And of course everyone is hurting these days (thank you, idiots in charge of the world).

I think that after unresolved issues of philosophical foundations, finances are the next major bottleneck for the LL movement. My experience with Wellington’s social anarchist scene has had the unintentional effect by negative example of increasing my respect for competent business practice. I’ve been told that Brad is a fundraising wizard.

Could you suggest any good reading material as to how political movements seek funding? The Libertarians obviously get it done somehow, and so does much of the cultural left.

Follow Up

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