I just went to donate but unfortunately donating $5 or more is not currently practical for me. I will have to save up and donate to use the current system however I would say most people won't do this, and what if I forget?

I would suggest removing the fixed donation amounts and allow people to choose the amount they donate, I suspect the amount of donations will increase (especially if you announce the change), most people have a dollar or two to spare, not many much more than that. Lots of small donations>=less big donations, so more small donations+current big donations=lots more donations .

Just my $0.02 (pun intended)


Update: Also had an idea of people who donate going into a monthly/bi-monthly draw to win a medium level Addon Aircraft or Scenery, I can imagine that would send the donations into overdrive.

Thanks for the great site!

If we had it worked out to let individuals pick an amount to donate, someone would be sending us a post asking why we don't use fixed amounts instead of letting the member chose.  In any case, we appreciate any contribution.  Thanks for your kind comment and your suggestions too! 

 

Best regards,

If we had it worked out to let individuals pick an amount to donate, someone would be sending us a post asking why we don't use fixed amounts instead of letting the member chose.

Haha, I see what you mean, but I doubt that they would, because they would be able to choose and therefore they wouldn't encounter an issue. And at any rate you could just post to them what you did to me. I really can't see much in favour of the current system.

 

A method of finding out if a change would be of any value is setting up a visit counter on the donate page and then comparing that with the number of donations received. Easy to do and you'll find out whether there are many others like me out there.

 

Just to put it into perspective Just Flight sell liveries for their freemium 757 at $2 each. The minimum Avsim donation is 250% more.

 

I appreciate your response but unless there is some favourable feature of the current system that I am unaware of I don't see why you wouldn't be open to change. You say you appreciate any contribution but that's not possible as you don't even accept contributions below $5. I don't mean to be rude, but your post has logic gaps, and that makes me think my suggestion wasn't even considered seriously or discussed. I really appreciate and enjoy these forums which is why I tried to donate, and found that I couldn't do what I wanted as a user. So I made a very plausible suggestion for a rather basic feature improvement that would benefit both users and staff, and, with the utmost respect, I have to say I feel as if I've been brushed off.

 

Basically I'd just appreciate a legitimate reason as to why you are not interested in my idea, even if that reason is that you have too much to deal with or even if you just can't be bothered at the moment, don't be scared to say that, we know forum admins are human too! Thanks.

 

 

Just to put it into perspective Just Flight sell liveries for their freemium 757 at $2 each. The minimum Avsim donation is 250% more.

 

With all due respect Avsim costs a lot more to keep going than it costs Just Flight to produce a Livery for that 757.

 

You need to consider that there is a cost to collecting these donations, my local Petrol (Gas) station will not even allow a card transaction under £5 anymore. not worth their while with the transaction charges they have to pay.

 

Seriously, even if you cannot afford the Payware prices these days, there is probably the biggest repository of FS freeware anyware on the internet right here that you can download for free.*

 

* except it's not free for Tom, he pays for your bandwidth. worth thinking about.

And there it is - a legitimate reason - the overheard of the transaction fees would make donations smaller than $5 unfeasible. Thanks, that's all I was after.

The irony of it is if I hadn't spent my money on payware I would have more to donate! -_-

But I have downloaded my fair share of files from the library over the years and I actually hadn't thought of that so as Glynn said, thanks Tom! Legend!

I'll have to donate next pay in that case and don't worry, I'm not as forgetful as my post may have suggested!

Would still love to hear some thoughts re the raffle ticket by donation idea however, seems like it could be a good boost for Avsim.

Cheers!

 

 

Would still love to hear some thoughts re the raffle ticket by donation idea however, seems like it could be a good boost for Avsim.

 

I like that idea, that would be a great incentive