Donating

 

• 1The Rules
• 2Donating
  • 2.1Why donate?
  • 2.2What does it cost to run Drugs-Forum?
    • 2.2.1Costs and income from June 2009 - June 2010:
  • 2.3How to donate?
    • 2.3.1Donating by sending cash by mail:
    • 2.3.2Donating through bank transfer:
    • 2.3.3Donating through Credit Card:
    • 2.3.4Donating through Alertpay:
    • 2.3.5Donating through Paypal:
    • 2.3.6Donating goods or books for DF to sell on ebay or Amazon:
  • 2.4Functions for donating members
  • 2.5Need further help?
• 3Member groups
• 4Your account
• 5Your profile
• 6Reputation System
• 7Forum posting functionality
• 8General forum use
• 9Forum posting tips
• 10Reporting Posts
• 11News page
• 12Documents
• 13Video
• 14Audio
• 15Drugs-Wiki Functionality
• 16Blog
• 17Groups
• 18Chat
• 19Image Gallery
• 20Questions & Answers

[top]Why donate?

Drugs Forum relies on donations to operate. We do not run banners or advertisements. Drugs Forum has bandwidth costs, hosting costs, url costs, software costs and hardware costs. The popularity of the sites have become so enormous, that costs have sky rocketed and funding is much needed.

Hardware expansion and a new server are vital to grow and to allow the ever increasing number of visitors, members and new functionality. There are many expansions of drugs-forum planned, which can take place after we get a new server. The total site will get much faster. More info can be found here: Running Expenses & donation discussion

Donating members get a large package of extra functions, which can be found at the bottom of this page plus access to restricted areas. This will make browsing and using this site a very different experience.

There are 4 levels of donating:

1. Benefactors have contributed €1.000 or more.
2. Sponsors have contributed €500 or more.
3. Supporters have contributed €100 or more.
4. Donating members have contributed €5 a month or €50 a year.

If you donate, then as a thanks for your support, you will receive donating member functions for a certain amount of time:
€ 10.00 - 2 months (minimum donation)
€ 20.00 - 4 months
€ 30.00 - 6 months
€ 40.00 - 8 months
€ 50.00 - 1 year

*excluding transfer fees that paypal calculates (4.5%)
Please use the currency converter to see what this is in your local currency.

[top]What does it cost to run Drugs-Forum?

[top]Costs and income from June 2009 - June 2010:

Hosting costs(including server maintenance): € 10.555.44 (average €880 per month)
Software costs: €1.370
Hardware costs: € 0

The site has costed a total of €11.925 ($15.100) last 12 months. Per month this is €994 ($1.260)

Donations have brought in €5.135 (€430 per month)
So Drugs Forum has a deficit of €6.790 (€565 per month) which needed to be paid by Alfa.

The good news is, that we are getting much more donations than previous years and almost half of the costs are covered by this. Even though the total balance is still pretty bad, its a major improvement. Apart from financial support, it also shows me I'm not alone in keeping the site up.

The bad news is that costs are rising exponentially and we need a new server of at the very least €4.000 right about now.

So we need to double the incoming donations and find a solution to source either a server or at least €4.000

[top]How to donate?

Currently it is possible to donate:

1. Cash anonymously by mail
2. Credit Card
3. bank transfer
4. Alertpay
5. Paypal
6. Donating goods or books for DF to sell on ebay or Amazon

[top]Donating by sending cash by mail:

Euro's are welcome. Please exchange currency into Euro's before sending. Do not send cheques or coupons, because many can not be cashed in Holland.
As said you can donate anonymous by sending money through normal mail.

Note that this is the only correct address to send cash donations to:

Substance Information Network
Postbus 31271
6503 CG Nijmegen
The Netherlands

When sending cash, only send paper, no coins. Please make sure the envelope does not show there is money inside. There are many ways to do this secure. Some suggestions:
Put the money in a envelope, which is placed in a second envelope.
Put the money between cardboard.
Put the money in a cd casing. (between the back and the cd holder)

Make sure to include a note with your account name.

[top]Donating through bank transfer:

To transfer a donation to our bank account, please submit a donating support ticket here and request the details needed for a wire transfer.

[top]Donating through Credit Card:

Use Alertpay to send money with your credit card.

[top]Donating through Alertpay:

Alertpay is a very easy, fast and reliable online payment method. If you want to donate trough alertpay.com then an account is needed. Please contact us with the email address associated with your account and the amount you wish to donate in Euro. If you wish to make recurring donations in this way without needing to send multiple messages, explain this also. Please submit a donating support ticket here.
Alertpay makes payment with VISA, Master Card, American Express, from Alertpay account to Alertpay account and bank transfer possible.

[top]Donating through Paypal:

For donations trough Paypal, please use the payment screen here.

[top]Donating goods or books for DF to sell on ebay or Amazon:

If you want to donate goods or books to Drugs-Forum, so that we can sell them on ebay or amazon, then, please submit a donating support ticket here. Goods should be legal and can not be psychoactive. You will be asked to send the goods or books to a specified PO box. After they goods are received we will put make them available trough our ebay or amazon account. Once the goods are sold, ad the payment has been received, this will be added to your forum account.

[top]Functions for donating members

1. Secure and Encrypted browsing with SSL. Access Drugs-Forum through https and encrypt all data between your computer and Drugs-Forum.
2. See members in thread 'real time' and see them replying. With this live function, the forum experience changes quite a bit.
3. Chat access.
4. Invisible mode: Browse without members seeing you online.
   
5. Use an Animated avatar. Use bigger and animated clips as your avatar.
6. Drugs-Wiki editing.
7. Post our own blogs.
8. Your Personal Notepad
9. See reputation comments on profiles
10. Donating member Title: be acknowledged as a funding member.
11. Increase your Private Message storage limit to a smashing amount of 500 messages.
12. Use PM message tracking.
13. You will also be able to avoid to be tracked by denying all Private Message receipt requests.
14. Set your custom user title.
15. Use (Animated) signature images.
16. Expanded posting rights:
    Newbie or not, you can edit your posts, give reputation ratings. Post polls like gold members can. You can also choose anonymous posting in certain forums. You also have the option to disable certain forums from appearing when you click 'New Posts', like the Dutch of German forums if you don't speak the language.
17. Fast review for Gold Membership and sources forums access and easier promotion to Titanium / Palladium Membership.
    Although donating does not affect the decision on whether you can become gold member or not, it will help get your member status reviewed earlier. It usually takes quite a while to get reviewed, but donating members are at the top of the list. The higher the donation, the higher your rank will be.
18. Expanded download/ upload rights. Your up/download limits are much larger than other members.
19. Forum wide various expanded functions and allowances.
20. Newbies have all privileges of Silver membership.
21. Donating increases your Contribution Spectrum level.
22. Change your user name.
23. Custom Avatar: Donating members can request one custom animated avatar to be created for them using an image of their choice. See below for some examples. When you have donated, please join the Donating Members Forum Crew and post a request.

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[top]Need further help?

If you can't find out what you need to know here, then submit a donating support ticket to contact a member of staff.

Donations are non-refundable.