An appeal from Father Dave

Hi Fighter,

I’m actually going to make two appeals to you today.

The first is a simple one: please watch this Sunday night’s edition of “Compass” on ABC TV (Australia).

Mind you, I have not been given any special preview beyond this 30-second snippet so it is possible that this screening will cost me my job and any number of friends.

If you know how these things work, they film about 100 hours of footage and then choose less than 1% of it for the show, which means they can pretty much portray you as they like! Even so, I have a great deal of faith in my mate Olivia (the main artistic mind behind this production) and am hoping that this screening will portray us well and will create new opportunities for us in our work. 🙂

The Second Appeal

The second appeal is for … well … financial support for my online work. 🙁

I’m told that I always do a terrible job of asking for money, and that’s probably true, and that’s probably because I don’t like the stuff (necessary as it is), and I certainly don’t want to place further financial burdens on those who are already struggling.

Having said that, let me give you a blunt outline of how my online ministry functions:

Outgoings are always around $1,500/month.

About half of these costs are my hosting fees. I know that there are cheaper web hosting packages around and that local Australian servers are always more expensive. Even so, there are legal issues and security issues associated with storing other people’s data (such as email addresses) and my sites tend to get hacked rather a lot, so I need hosting that is local and secure and I’m convinced that I’m doing it about as cheaply as I can.

Most of my remaining monthly fees go to my support team in India who handle most of my trouble-shooting, site promotion, article submission, video distribution, etc.

As to incomings, I receive roughly $500/month from our loyal Fighting Fathers member base. There are around 30 people who contribute $10/month through www.fighting-fathers.com and two people who contribute $100/month.

Advertising and product sales bring in a few hundred dollars per month more. The remainder (around $600/month) is paid for from Fighting Fathers reserves, which are dwindling.

The online work has not always run at a loss like this. In times past I used to put a lot more time into building advertising sites and doing online sales. A few years ago though I decided I needed to devote almost all my time online to writing and publishing articles and videos. I still think this is the best use of my time, and my preference would be to solve the financial shortfall by finding another 60 people who will chip in $10/month as members of www.fighting-fathers.com – a membership that, I believe, offers membership benefits that outweigh the cost of the subscription.

OK. I’ve said what needed to be said. Your suggestions are all welcome, and whether or not you sign up to www.fighting-fathers.com I still hope you watch Compass on Sunday night (ABC TV @ 6.30pm).

Your brother in the Good Fight,

Dave
www.fatherdave.org
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www.holytrinity.org.au
www.binacrombi.com.au
www.israelandpalestine.org
www.prayersforsyria.com
www.zerocostwebsite.net
www.dulwichhillgym.com
www.boxersforpeace.com
www.warriorweekends.com
www.how2changetheworld.com