Hi Jess,

Thank you for sharing your story with me and answering my somewhat intrusive questions, basically to a stranger. I appreciate that. I really like to get a sense of why a person is doing what they're doing, and figuring out how best we can help them be more successful in this space.

Sure, we can always do links (and will!) and a little promotion here and there. But when I see something innovative like the community that you've built with Discord, I'd like to see it grow and ensure it doesn't disappear one day if the founder loses interest or such. Sadly I've seen this more times than I can count in my career, and the world usually loses a great resource in the process.

So I think -- like you do -- about how to make things sustainable. And it's so great you've given this a lot of thought and have some solid goals that you're working toward. I think the idea of a non-profit is great, but it can definitely be a struggle to get off the ground and then to sustain it with the amount of fundraising typically needed to be done. (We have an associated non-profit arm as well -- Psych Central Community Connection at psychcentral.org -- and I serve on the boards of a few, and co-founded one of them, so have some experience in that space as well.) I think the idea of a non-profit is a good one to pursue as long as you're realistic about the challenges you face in doing it.

What I'd like to offer is something more than a link, perhaps a relationship where we can help you with some of the resources you may need short-term and see how we can collaborate together to try and help as many people as we can.

People are usually surprised when they hear me offer this sort of thing, asking, "Well, what do you want in exchange?" The answer is usually unclear at the onset of such efforts, other than the knowledge that I may help in some small way to make the world a better place. I feel like one of the reasons we're on this planet for a short time is to absolutely help one another, and this is the way I find I can do it most effectively.

So let me know how, outside of some promotion to our readers and members, how we can best help you, and I'd like to do it.

In terms of the promotion, I'm thinking maybe you could write a blog entry for our community blog describing what you're doing, the motivation behind it, and encouraging people to join, as I think it would work as a great promotional effort for your community. If you're uncomfortable doing this or whatever, we can do it as an interview, or I can write something up (but I think the latter is generally not as effective than hearing from the founder themselves). We can then link to that blog entry from our community, which will usually get a pretty good response. We'll also begin to research appropriate places throughout Psych Central where adding a link to your community makes good sense.

Let me know your thoughts, or if you have additional ideas you'd like to explore.

Best,
John