The future of the list

[Unka Bart <mendicant@buddhist.com>]

HI Gang,

That loud retching sound you hear is the sound of yer kindly ol' Unka Bart
losing his lunch at the suggestion of moving to a newsgroup.  Whoever
suggested that is requested to go wash his or her mouth out at once...

But sadly, in regard to collecting for a fund to run the list, please allow
me to add the voice of the guy who wears the shirt.

During 1995, I acted as custodian for exactly such an effort to collect
enough money to keep Porschephiles afloat independently of the private
resources of Stan Hanks, who had started and run it on his business
resources for the previous 5+ years.

We started in Februrary and I mailed Stan a check for $10,2++ on or about
the 28th of that December.  We had over 2,000 listers, many *very*
affluent.  We had two "classes" of donations, "Members" ($15 was minimum)
and "Patron," ($100 and *up* - we had a handful of $200 and one guy who
owns a famous radar detector company gave $500).  The draw was that you got
a number that you could proudly display in your sig, e.g. "Patron#2."

In all, we had only 182 donations.  And it was an *enormous* PITA to run.

Food for thought...

Yer kindly ol' Unka Bart