*** Forum fundraiser 2015 [£500.00 / £500.00 raised] ***

[orudge]

As regular visitors will know, these forums are run on a voluntary basis, funded partially by advertising, but mostly by your very generous donations. While donations are accepted all year, I like to post this topic once a year to try to get enough donations to run the site for the upcoming year.

2014 continued the trend of previous years, with a total of around 100 million hits. The forums continue to do very well, but the server they are hosted on does of course cost money to run. As with last year, we’re aiming for £500 of donations this year (around US $750, or €640), to help cover as much of the expense of running the forums as possible. Your generosity is greatly appreciated, and has been appreciated for many years - without your help, the forums may not exist today. If you could spare even just a few pounds, dollars, euros, or whatever currency you use, to help the forums, it'd be appreciated.

Instead of a single large donation, you may wish to consider sending a regular monthly donation, if this is something you can afford. Hosting for the forums is paid monthly, so this can help to spread things around a bit. If you'd be interested in donating like this, please let me know.

You can find the donation page here. Donations can be taken by PayPal (including credit/debit card payments - you don't need a PayPal account) and direct bank transfer (including international bank transfers). Within the UK, I can also accept cheques and postal orders. If there is another way you would like to donate, let me know and we can figure something out. Your donations are very much appreciated.

(GBP) (USD) (EUR)

If you don't want to, or can't, send a monetary donation, you can use our Amazon affiliate links when you shop at Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. Again, the donations page here explains that.

Please note that donations to OpenTTD are NOT donations for the forums; the forums and OpenTTD are unconnected (although I process donations for both, though they are held and recorded separately). To donate to the forums, please use this link, not the link on the OpenTTD web site.

Thank you all for your support. Please let me know if you have any questions. (This announcement will be removed in the future.)

CURRENT TOTAL DONATED: £500.00 / £500.00

Click here to donate!

[TomS]

How much is needed to make the site ad free? If you can say.

[orudge]

Unfortunately that's something I'm contractually not able to say, but I would prefer to keep the adverts on as they are a small but relatively stable funding source. Should they end up making more, then I wouldn't have to ask for donations so much, too, which would be nice.

If you want to use an ad blocker though, I won't judge you.

Thanks to everybody for their support so far, we're a fifth of the way there already!

[Redirect Left]

Unfortunately that's something I'm contractually not able to say!

Wait, there is some sort of contract on the adverts here?

[Chrill]

Actually, Owen earns several billion pounds every month from adverts. In fact, he could if he wanted to buy Facebook. Then again, I believe he sees a greater potential in TT-Forums than in Facebook.

[orudge]

You're spot on today, Chrill, that's exactly right too.

I'm not contractually required to have adverts, no, but I'm not allowed to say how much they earn, or whatnot. I'm not quite sure what would happen if I did, probably nothing, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Suffice to say, though, it's not millions.

[Phreeze]

send you some mini donation, i hope some hundred other people do this as well, then costs are easily paid of

[AntoninKyrene]

Annual donation tendered. See you soon, and have a great year!

[orudge]

Thanks to the generosity of everyone who has donated so far, we're over half way there already! As always, I'm very grateful for your support towards the forums.

[Nordic Dragon]

Sent a tenner. Not much, I had to fork out for the annual MOT test this year.

[orudge]

Thanks once again for all donations so far, nearly 60% of the way there now!

[Ameecher]

Sent a tenner. Not much, I had to fork out for the annual MOT test this year.

This year again for the annual test? Damn.

[Nordic Dragon]

Every single car I've had has had an MoT due about now. Wierd.

[Greyfox]

@Owen: Just donated a tenner.

[Chrill]

And the Chrill has donated 500 million pounds.

No.

Still, you should be jumping over £300 now!

[orudge]

Indeed so - sorry, I was away at a wedding so hadn't been updating this. I'm pleased to announce that, thanks to all your generosity, along with a "top-up" donation from OpenTTD, we have reached our target of £500. As always, you've been very kind and generous - thanks very much for helping to keep the forums going!