Last weekend, I started a discussion here, about money. By the laws of unintended consequences, this discussion morphed into active fundraising to keep Atheist Nexus viable.

To reiterate some points from the earlier discussion, and expand:

Current funding for Atheist Nexus consists mainly of

Google Ads: $150 bucks monthly
Donations from members: $35.00 monthly.

Members: 10,000
Unique Monthly Visitors: 200,000
Monthly Page Views: 1,000,000

Atheist Nexus is in the top 75,000 most visited sites on the Internet.

Based on the numbers (Br. Richard, please correct me if they are not accurate), the reach for Atheist Nexus is tremendous. Will a billboard reach so many? A bus ad? I don't know. Considering the investment, the return is amazing.

That's also the issue. Atheist Nexus is currently run by a volunteer administrator, with minimal contributions. No one can begin to survive on that amount of money. If we are going to have a full time Atheist Nexus administrator, then it's time to jump start the development of a funding process. Same for making programming changes to expand the capability of the website. Same for creating a not-for-profit organization.

I think that many members of Atheist Nexus would contribute, but the green "donate" button is a bit like wallpaper - we see it for a while, then forget about it. Or we think, maybe next time. Last weekend, with encouragement of matching funds, quite a number of Atheist Nexus members stepped up to the plate with contributions.

Two members are providing a time-limited offer of matching funds, up to $750 each, for contributions of at least $25.00, by Oct 15th. Just go to the green "donate button" on the front page, and click on it. Then leave a note on the comment wall for Louis Davout, so that your contribution can be matched, tripling it's value.

For those who have, thank you so much. For those who have not, I'm hoping that you'll be inspired to make a contribution, to the amount that you are comfortable with, as a personal investment in keeping Atheist Nexus viable and starting us towards a more sophisticated process of keeping the site vibrant, exciting, influential, and welcoming.

Over the next week, I'll continue posting information and background regarding funding for Atheist Nexus. Please check on this thread to learn more during the days to follow!