Update 01 — This Week in Mastodon Community Redistribution

Update 01 — This Week in Mastodon Community Redistribution


Hi everyone! Hyperlink here! Happy MastoMonday! I just wanted to drop by and offer a fundraising update. This one is probably gonna be a long one, so grab a mug of something warm and snuggle in for some in-depth talk about the next week or so of this redistribution!

tl;dr here’s all the stuff that I’m covering in this update….

* Information about the first round of redistribution payments
* To be included in the first round of payments, submit your PayPal or CashApp by 7PM EST on Thursday!
* Updates on the future of the campaign beyond the first payments
* Things that could go wrong, and what I’m doing to prevent that

…but before we get started, I just want to say one more time, from the absolute bottom of my heart, thank all of you so, so much for all you’ve done. Whether you signed up to receive money, donated whatever you could, organized stretch goals, or just shared the word with a friend or two, all of you are directly responsible for helping to foster a more empathetic and compassionate world. Thank you for taking this far, far beyond anything I ever imagined it would be.

As we get closer to processing our first round of donations, I want you to know that I value this community and the trust you’ve placed in this fundraiser immensely, and I’ll be doing absolutely everything in my power to ensure that funds are distributed as transparently and efficiently as possible. If you have any questions, concerns, or ideas regarding this project, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me on Masto or via DM.

Ok, with that said, let’s get into it!


QUICK NUMBER CRUNCH: WHAT FIRST PAYMENTS WILL (ROUGHLY) LOOK LIKE

Between the 40 SurveyMonkey entries and 144 Google Form responses, 184 folks have requested to receive funds from this fundraiser. Hell yeah! When I started this campaign, I said I was going to start the process of distributing funds one week after the campaign started, which is this Thursday. Since then I’ve learned I don’t exactly have that level of flexibility regarding withdrawal dates, but I’d like to honor that date as a deadline of sorts for this first round.

So, to be included in the first round of redistribution, all PayPals/CashApps need to be submitted by 7pm EST this Thursday. (Of course, you’re welcome to submit after that and be included in future rounds of payment.)

As of 8:44pm EST on Monday night, this campaign has raised $21,335.81 after GoFundMe transaction fees (those fees are $689.19). However, GoFundMe won’t be releasing these funds in their entirety for the first withdrawal: they’re releasing $14,030.77, currently estimated to appear in the brand new Capital One account I have created exclusively to house stimulus redistribution funds on or before April 28. To get money to folks as quickly as possible, I’m going to distribute this first $14k as soon as it’s available.

$14,030.77 in donations divided by roughly 184 people means that if funds were distributed right now, each person would receive a first payment of $76.25. (In total, if fundraising stopped today, each person would receive $155.95 before all is said and done.)

This value is subject to change as more people request funds and the campaign goes on, but I wanted to give you a clear picture of where we’re at right now. I wish I could distribute more of these funds more quickly, but we’re limited by what GoFundMe can send. Rest assured that ALL funds after transaction fees will be distributed as soon as I can.

Once funds are available in the Capital One account, I will calculate how many of those funds are going to folks via PayPals, and how many are going via CashApp. I will transfer the funds for folks with PayPals into a PayPal Business account I’ve created for this fundraiser and initiate a mass payment from there, and then send CashApp payments from the Capital One account to CashApp folks.


REDISTRIBUTION BEYOND THE FIRST PAYMENT

I’ve told GoFundMe to start withdrawing funds from the fundraiser pool into that Capital One account on a daily basis after this first withdrawal, so beyond this first payment, I should have a little more flexibility on when I can set cutoff times and start this PayPal & CashApp distribution process.

I’ll save more specific details on second and third rounds of payments for a future update, but I wanted to give some more clarity on what the future of this campaign looks like.

A few folks have asked me if the fundraiser has a set end date, and at this time, the answer is no, there is no set end date. Many folks have still not gotten stimulus checks in the mail (like me, for example!), and I’ll definitely need to do more than one round of distribution to ensure everyone gets their funds in full, so I see no reason to prohibit folks from donating more at this time.

In the immediate future, I think the right thing to do is probably to aim for the second round of payments to take place just one week after the first, provided that’s possible. Beyond that second round, it may be more sustainable in terms of workload for me to do payments on a bi-weekly basis, but bulk payments with PayPal may be easier than I anticipate. I’ll keep you all updated as this develops.


WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Distributing these funds in an efficient and transparent manner is extremely important to me, and I’ve been trying to be proactive in clearing potential obstacles to people receiving funds as quickly as they can. However, this is definitely a large and complex project, so I want to be honest about some of the risk factors I anticipate for this redistribution effort and the steps I’m taking to address them.

The first thing that could go wrong is an issue withdrawing funds from GoFundMe — earlier today, at GoFundMe’s request, I updated this campaign with significantly more information about who I am and how the campaign runs, and I’ve provided a ton of government and bank identification along with the information for my Capital One account. I’m reasonably confident getting the money out of GFM will go smoothly, but a risk exists that problems arise here.

Once the funds are in that account, most of them will need to go to PayPal, which is where I feel the biggest risk factor lies. It seems to me that PayPal has a reputation for locking funds for lengthy review processes, and I want to avoid that as much as possible. Their customer support staff has been significantly reduced for COVID-19 reasons but I spent a significant portion of last night and today registering my Business account for Mass Payments, submitting verification information, and chatting with their support team about ways I can avoid any unnecessary hold-ups. I’m also going to try to transfer some of my personal money in and out of the account to hopefully trigger any verifications they might want to perform. Hopefully this goes smoothly.

Finally, there is a risk that CashApp limits the amount of funds I’m able to transfer at a certain limit. In my experience CashApp has been pretty user friendly, but this is a risk factor nevertheless. I’ll be looking into any verification information they might need from me to mitigate this in the coming days.

One last thing that could go wrong is misspelled or non-functional PayPal or Cashapp handles. I don’t anticipate many of the responses will be misspelled, but I regrettably didn’t ask for any contact information in the Google Form in case things go wrong. In the event payments to one or more people are unable to be completed, I’ll keep a list of those people’s submissions, mention in a future GoFundMe/Mastodon update how many payments were unable to be completed and ask for folks to get in contact if their payments were not received after 24 hours. In the event a payment is unable to be completed and no one reaches out, after a certain amount of time (two weeks maybe?) I’ll fold that money back into the fund to distribute to everyone else.



…whew, that was a lot! I hope that helps clear up where we’re headed in the next week or so of this fundraiser. If I missed anything, or if you have any other questions, please just drop me a line and I’m happy to help out. I’m so excited to get the first round of cash into folks’ hands — let’s keep the momentum going!

In love & solidarity,
Hyperlink