Using Patreon - yes or no?

[rebecca (Rebecca Willén 🦕)]

Great initiative!

[Olov (Olov Aronson)]

I believe that one of the key issues is to come up with membership “privileges” that would make it interesting (or even exciting) to contribute with a small sum of money each month. Perhaps it’s difficult to make “members” contribute with money to IGDORE per se since it is quite hard to see exactly where the money ends up. Instead, we could invite people to become supporters of specific research projects or research programs organized by IGDORE. Let’s say each member contributes with 10$ a month. Then, the member can choose up to three specific research projects or programs that he or she wishes to promote. Each of these projects are given 2.50$ extra financing each month. The member can change what programs or projects that he or she wants to support at any timepoint. The remaining part of the membership fee that is not directed to any specific supported program or project (at least 2.50$ for each member) is transferred to the general IGDORE budget, which may be distributed to researchers in less promoted research fields and used to support the IGDORE infrastructure.

This way, it may become more interesting to be a member since a membership actually comes with a certain amount of influence (as it entails a say over which projects and programs are afforded most funds). Supporting a particular research project or program should involve some extra insight and communication possibilities so that the member experiences that he or she is an important contributor to the research.

What do you think about my suggestions? I’m just brainstorming, but I’m convinced that in order to attract a large number of members we need to think about this from a member’s point of view. A new member does not just want to donate money into a black hole each month. He or she wants to know how the money is spent, have an influence over what research is being done, and experience that he or she is involved, somehow, in the research.

[rebecca (Rebecca Willén 🦕)]

@Olov

Instead, we could invite people to become supporters of specific research projects or research programs organized by IGDORE. Let’s say each member contributes with 10$ a month. Then, the member can choose up to three specific research projects or programs that he or she wishes to promote.

This is a VERY nice idea! I like it!

[Gavin (Gavin Taylor)]

@Olov

Perhaps it’s difficult to make “members” contribute with money to IGDORE per se since it is quite hard to see exactly where the money ends up.

This is true, at the moment small donations just help cover our general operating expenses (e.g. web hosting) rather than funding researchers, so it’s not that exciting.

@Olov

Let’s say each member contributes with 10$ a month. Then, the member can choose up to three specific research projects or programs that he or she wishes to promote. Each of these projects are given 2.50$ extra financing each month. The member can change what programs or projects that he or she wants to support at any timepoint.

This is a nice idea, it would kind of be like crowd-funding for researchers. At the moment affiliated researchers’ projects aren’t very closely linked to IGDORE, but I have suggested we try to set up research teams/groups here: Discussion on research teams at IGDORE

Regarding crowdfunding research, Andy Matuschak is an independent researcher who does this via patreon and has written up some thoughts about it (some more posts on this are available for his supporters): Three years of crowdfunded research - Lessons from 2021