Donations

[jagabom 21]

I don't think it is right to post how much people have or have not donated to AVSIM. That is a personal thing.  The number is in their profile for members to see and should be removed.

Jim

CYWG

[pete_auau 1,152]

where  does it  say how  much users   have  donated  all I see  is   they  have  donated  not  how  much?   and  it  should  remain

[harrry 322]

2 hours ago, pete_auau said:

where  does it  say how  much users   have  donated  all I see  is   they  have  donated  not  how  much?   and  it  should  remain

Here is your profile view.  I am sorry for breaching your privacy but it is there already.  I agree it should not be but thank you for helping the site which helps us.

pete_auau

03/26/2016

$25.00

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AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support! 

Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.

Latest Donations

$5.00

Brendan Hallett 
Sunday at 04:37 PM

$10.00

Offline Donation 
Sunday at 05:20 AM

$25.00

carlmagnus 
Thursday at 10:25 PM

$10.00

Captain_Al 
March 21

$5.00

Offline Donation 
March 19

View Donatio

[Jim Young 2,356]

I totally disagree.  Many of our members are proud to be known as supporters of AVSIM (or they would not donate).  What is so personal about how much you donated?  I do not know of any website on the Internet that hides this information from the public or membership.  We encourage donations and the amount of the donation, whether $1 or $1000.  If you are a Silver or Gold or have the Lifetime Member Badge under your Avatar, it shows you are a proud member of AVSIM and support our community.  I have donated but not much this month so I'm just shown as a Donator.  Right now I'm donating my time as a volunteer.  Members are proud of what they donate.  Are you trying to make us hide the information so that no one will think we have proud AVSIM supporters?  Just asking.

Jim

[Jimm 437]

Considering the $36,000 bill that AVSIM has to pay each year (and will probably go up from year to year), I have always been of the mind that everyone should donate.  I see far too many members here, beating their chests because they've been here the longest or have the most posts and think they have leverage, and yet, no donations had been made, and that's sad.  As Jim pointed out, he volunteers his own personal time to devote to this site, as do all the rest of the staff...you can't put a price on that. Yes, I am proud to say that I donate to AVSIM, perhaps not on a scheduled basis, but I kick a little when I can, because I DO care about this site and what it offers.  Every little bit helps and it would be wonderful if everyone would skip that next great add-on and pay it forward.  The add-on will always be there, but the future of this site may not, so think about that.

As for publishing the amounts, I am on the fence about that...seems a bit political in a way, and if I had to choose a better option for listing donations and contributors, maybe a check-box option to hide the amount, but allow for the name to be publicized, which that is somewhat present when donating, that you can opt to be an anonymous donator.

[Chock 17,769]

Think of it this way: Every time you or anyone else helps someone on a forum thread with a reply to a query about something, you are contributing to Avsim too, and everyone can see that. And if you have helped someone, you don't need to brag about it, but neither should you be ashamed of people knowing it, because the real reward is in knowing that you have helped someone and are contributing to what makes Avsim cool.

But like it or not, Avsim has costs, and not merely monetary ones either; both in the time people give as volunteers as well as the donations people make. When the servers were assaulted a few years back, I and many others were happy to throw some money at sorting it out, for all I know you might have been one who did so too, because we valued the service it provides and were annoyed at someone indulging in causing it harm. That such a thing occurred, where hundreds of people in the FS community coughed up their money to help, was nothing to do with waving a big flag around saving 'look how philanthropic I am', but it was certainly nothing to be ashamed of either, in fact it was great to see everyone come together and say: 'we're not gonna stand for that!'.

 

[HighBypass 2,339]

8 hours ago, Jimm said:

The add-on will always be there...

Not so!

Cough... PMDG MD-11...cough....

Ahem couldn't resist! 

 

[Chock 17,769]

8 minutes ago, HighBypass said:

Not so!

Cough... PMDG MD-11...cough....

Ahem couldn't resist! 

 

Well, that and quite a lot of add-ons from Flight1 that I've bought in the past for FSX that I can't download from their site any more since they aren't there even though they are listed on my purchase history, which is a bit annoying to say the least lol

[JimmyD 12]

 

On 3/28/2017 at 5:58 AM, Jim Young said:

Are you trying to make us hide the information so that no one will think we have proud AVSIM supporters?

I can't speak for the OP, but I really don't think that was the intent.

I am a proud supporter too, but what if there was a way to select if you wanted to share this info or not? I like the little $ Donor symbol, maybe it could be selected vice a monetary amount. Just saying, you don't have to totally fill up your profile with details if you don't want to, but once you donate it's out there whether you want it to be or not.

Not taking sides... just a thought for consideration.

Jd  

[Jim Young 2,356]

Understand.

AVSIM has no intentions of removing any badges that indicate a member is a donor or the amounts they gave.  The software is an add-on and used by several websites around the Internet.  We have been using it for years now and the amounts and the display of badges has always been part of this site.  We had several members who requested badges based on the level of the donations as not too many member frequented the donation site to see exactly who gave what and when and how many times.  Perhaps the developer of the software will modify it so that we can hide donations but I hope not.  As everyone can see, there is a space next to each donation where the member can leave a short message of thanks or appreciation so I do not think it was the intent of the author to have names hidden.  Tom, the late owner of AVSIM, had the amounts shown.  I'm a little upset over all of this concern as we do need donations from our membership to survive.  Having to remove this ability would damage our ability to maintain the website as the only other source of funds is from advertising and I do not think AVSIM could survive on advertising alone.

Best regards,

Jim

[Jim Young 2,356]

I just looked and it appears Chase has now removed the ability to see donations from individual members so evidently there is a switch to turn off this ability to see everyone's donations.

[JimmyD 12]

Thanks for your input Jim, I might have not explained it clearly, but I fully support the badges indicating that you are a donor, it was just the option to show or not show the amount of your donation, but I guess that's a moot point now. Didn’t mean to upset you, and I certainly wasn’t downplaying the importance of donations to maintain AVSIM.

I agree, as you previously stated, any donation amount is appreciated and helpful in maintaining the site. But, and I’m speaking for myself, when I see some of the larger donations, I get a little intimidated thinking that my measly amount won’t do much, and I might be embarrassed by others seeing my tiny contribution. I know pretty silly right?

But maybe by not seeing the amounts donated might encourage someone (me) to make many "smaller" donations, be it a loonie or toonie ($1 & $2 for non-canucks) which will significantly add up over time...

Hey, I didn’t have that second cup of coffee today, I’ve got $2 burning a hole in my pocket, where’s that donation button…

So there might be a silver lining in this cloud after all.

Jd

[pedrotrindade 335]

Will be possible in the future to donate without using paypal? An alternative could be a bank transfer or to use a credit card just like we use in any purchase? It's because I really don't like PayPal fee!

Thanks

[n4gix 4,947]

1 hour ago, pedrotrindade said:

Will be possible in the future to donate without using paypal? An alternative could be a bank transfer or to use a credit card just like we use in any purchase? It's because I really don't like PayPal fee

You can use a Credit Card instead of "PayPal". It is an option that's available when it comes to the payment screen...

...granted, you still go through the PayPal portal, but you do not have to create an account with PayPal if you choose to use a CC.

[Jim Young 2,356]

I thought AVSIM pays the processing fee.   In any case, credit card companies will charge a transaction fee too.  Most of the time you do not know about transaction fees as you do not see the charge imposed by the credit card company with companies like AVSIM.  If you have an account with just "PayPal" and are using their credit system, they charge a fee for each transaction.  I did not realize they were charging us and you too.

Best regards,

Jim