Taking Care of Our Own

2011 Spring Quarterly Fundraiser, Day 4

As regular readers know, we depend on Vlad Tepes for his invaluable video services, so it’s only fair he should be able to depend on us. Dymphna and I came to the independent conclusion that we needed to help Vlad pay at least a small part of the costs of his new website service. That’s why we decided to deliver a tenth of your generous donations to him this quarter.

He’s not the only one we’d like to help. Despite the modest amounts that come through our hands, we do what we can to assist other colleagues. When money is not available, I do my best to deliver in-kind services: articles, linkage, digital images, referrals, etc. We’re all in this together.

I hope to see the day when Gates of Vienna can actually pay transcribers, translators, and contributors. If we manage to acquire the expertise to develop a reasonable business model — and the increased traffic to support it — we might be able to reward some of the dedicated people who make this blog possible. We wouldn’t be able to pay them what they’re worth, of course — not even Bill Gates has that much money — but it would be gratifying to provide some form of compensation for their contributions to this joint effort.

None of that is possible right now. For the time being we’re going to have to scrape by as we have been for the last few years. Just keeping this blog open is task enough for the moment.

But I never thought we’d come this far. When we started these periodic fundraisers a few years ago, it was always on a quarter-by-quarter basis. It never seemed possible that we could make it through the next round — surely the wolf could only be kept from the door for a little while longer, and then reality would intrude. Soon enough I’d be down there at Food Lion or McDonald’s, filling out the employment forms and trying on my new corporate uniform.

Surprise! Despite the bad economy, despite all the signs of impending doom, despite the Long-Legged Mack Daddy, every quarter our readers have decided that I should stay in this line of work for a little while longer.

So who knows where we might end up?

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

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Today’s donors hail from the following locations:

Stateside:

California, Colorado, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, and Tennessee

Near Abroad:

Canada

Far Abroad:

Australia, Belgium, Denmark, India, Spain, and the UK

Many thanks to each and every one of you. You will be hearing from they official thank-you note writer (i.e. Dymphna) in due course.


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