All,
We are now ready to start accepting donations for the purpose of buying a laser cutter. You can donate by any method you prefer. Our goal is to raise $5,410 for this.
I have set up a pledgie campaign for the fundraising, but I want to explain some caveats with it. By using Pledgie.com, we incur fees in two ways. First, Pledgie.com takes a 3% slice from any donation. In addition to this, since Paypal considers this transaction to be a purchase, Paypal also takes ~3%. This adds up to a total of about 6% for any donations processed via the pledgie site directly. For this reason, we want to encourage people to donate by other methods if they feel comfortable doing so. Any pledges/donations that take place offline can be entered into the pledgie campaign manually so that the “percent raised” graphic will be accurate. The link to the pledgie is here: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/15103
One more thing about Paypal. I think that if someone were to simply send $$ via paypal to our hive13 paypal account, that would be considered a personal transfer and would not incur any fees. If someone out there could try this so we can confirm, I’d appreciate it. That would allow us to still take the donations online, but avoid the fees. Let me and Craig know if you want to try this.
A blog post announcement is the next step we are currently working on, and then after that spread the word via Twitter, etc, etc.
Thanks to everyone who chips in. Every little bit helps!
Let me or any other officer know if you have any questions. We are really excited about getting this tool!
~Dave
P.S. - This is the laser we are planning to get: http://www.fullspectrumengineering.com/co2laserv260w.html
P.P.S. - before you ask: Kickstarter has a similar, but higher, fee structure. 5%->kickstarter, 3-5%->amazon
