Special Membership Request

[Badger]

We need your help.

Our site is not a commercial sales venture, but just a private research and social site. With the help of your donations, it’s largely paid for personally by my wife and me for the last 13 years.

Our site is FREE to everyone interested in old firearms and as of today, we have over 31,000 members worldwide. Out of that general membership, we have 145 members (less than 1/2%) who have graciously chosen to voluntarily donate a nominal amount of money, to help defray several thousand dollars in annual system bandwidth, server, disk storage, and maintenance costs. This special group receive additional recognition and access capabilities to the site and may be recognized but a colored "Contributing Member" banner panel under their name, as well as a unique color display of their chosen username.

Our site’s financial stability has generally worked out over the years, but there are times where our bank balance gets right to the bottom due to fewer contributions in a given year, and personally we’ve had to cover the shortfall in operating costs. That’s where we are today and combined with my young age of 71 and retirement translating to a lower monthly fixed income … well, to be honest, we need your help.

So, I would ask our entire membership to gauge the value of our site to their hobby and if they are able, please consider making a first-time donation, or if you’re already a Contributing Member and can afford it, perhaps make an additional special donation to get us through the current financial challenge. Any Donations (click here) automatically get added to your existing membership time. Even if we could get our Contributing Member group size up to a 1% level of total members, that would help keep us in the black.

For more information on How do I become a "Contributing Member" (click here)?

Finally, I’ve been given a lot of thought to the future of our site. My age combined with the fact I went through a triple bypass operation last year, leads me to consider passing the torch to younger leadership. My only concern is making sure our site has the right leadership going forward, so if you think you’d like to put a group together and become owner-operators, send me your thoughts, background and a business plan on how you see the future of what everyone has built here. I get emails all the time from various companies wanting to buy our site as they’ve done with the Gunboards web site and others, but we have no interest in selling out our members to commercial (for profit) bulletin board consolidation operators. We would pass the site on for free to the right group, who would take over the operating coats and continue with our legacy. Interested parties can email me at badger@milsurps.com

To everyone, thanks for your support over the years.

Regards,
Doug

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[RASelkirk]

Done! I've been on here a few years and never realized the percentage of "payers" vs others...

Russ

[Sarge1998]

TCO Badger.

[303 Gunner]

Done! Couldn't be happier than to contribute!

[usabaker]

Doug, Your site has been invaluable to me and I made some good friends and even more acquaintances since I have been a member. You can count me in on additional to help out, I'll get it out to you on my after the 29th (payday). Thank you again to you and your wife for this great service.

[WarPig1976]

I decided to dip into the beer money to help out. Wasn't anything in there so I hit up the Harley fund. Nope, nothing there either so dipped into the kids college fund,,,I can already tell he ain't gonna need it anywayz.

[CINDERS]

Done Badger one of the best sites on the net is this place.

[Gil Boyd]

Great to see so many of our long standing and new members alike, come on board and support such a brilliant site as this.
In life sometimes it just needs a little reminder to the fact that someone is doing all the work and taking all the financial risks, well done Doug to you, and your wife.

We have without doubt on this site, the worlds finest minds on weaponry, who have helped thousands in the minefield of knowledge, and no doubt saved them costly mistakes.

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

[StratA]

Done. Less than a year here and I haven't had much time to contribute but the info has been invaluable.

[rcathey]

Re-upped for 5 years!