Donations to the Paro Project

[Bill Little]

During my participation in the International Paro Conference in September one of the sessions addressed the future of the Parosphromenus Project. The reality of the situation was the organization has always been severely underfunded and actually operated on a shoe string mostly funded from a small number of donors. One of the suggestions discussed was to ask our membership for a onetime donation, but the issue was we would potentially receive donations in multiple currencies. I suggested perhaps an alternative solution would be to establish a Paypal account whereby virtually any currency could be contributed. I am pleased to report that solution has been adopted and put into place. You will see a “Donation” button on the homepage to support this effort. Unfortunately, the description is only in German at this time so I have taken liberty of translating it into English. Please excuse any slight deviations from the original text. I did the best I could do. I hope that our membership, particularly our North American friends, will come forth and contribute to the cause. A donation, regardless of the amount, will contribute to keeping this wonderful organization moving forward in their efforts.

TRANSLATION

[i]Declaration on the subsequent request for donations
The Parosphromenus Project (P-P) is an NGO. Membership is free for everyone. All employees work completely voluntarily. Expenses are financed privately. In order to operate this Website and to update from time to time, we therefore have to rely on voluntary donations from our members.
Costs fall for example on the software with which this website has been designed, the regular rent of the provider, update costs and 2015 technical for some expenses related to the first international conference in Hamburg (Germany), for example, the rental of the translation system. Nobody receives honoraria, travel expenses or other financial support. All donations are needed only for such purposes and issued.
We have the beginning of the PP in 2010, wrote to all personally known to us friends of the Paro and some organizations and asked for a donation, so that we could start. That allowed us to gather about 600 euros to begin operation. This was enough for starters. Over the years, members of the Steering Group and some other people who wanted to support our initiative, we then characterized helped that they have donated lecture fees and other monies. To date we have been able to fund operation with the original funds collected. However, now our financial cushion is low. If we do not wish to run the risk cutting back on the PP website we need to acquire some additional funding, in other words we need financial help.

In particular, spending on the Hamburg meeting and the forthcoming necessary for the sake of development of the software updates and changes to the site now make it necessary to inform our members that we need their voluntary financial support. We have therefore decided to set up for this purpose, an extra account with Paypal, so that everyone can make a donation for the continuation of the PP from any country in a very simple manner.
So, if you wish to support our PP, please consider a financial donation by clicking on this “donate” button of Paypal and your amount is automatically credited to the Paypal Koto of PP. It is used without any deductions to continue being able to support our activities.
For this purpose we stand: Helene Schoubye (webmaster of the PP) and Prof. Dr. Peter Finke (founder and head of the PP).[/i]

[David Jones]

Thank you Bill for the translation and great to see the donation option now available. The history of the funding is important and it is good to request financial help. One question, the very last line has “…For this purpose a stand:…” What might that better translate into in English – as that does not make real sense? Could it be “…for this purpose we stand…”?

[Bill Little]

Dave – that does sound better and makes more sense. Unless Helene comments I will make the change tomorrow.

[Peter Finke]

Things begin to work. I think, we did a step forward. We might step out of our financial problems as the fees for the provider etc. are concerned. Please, members, go on like this. It helps to stabilize our project!

[Bill Little]

Those of you who are North American members and participants in the Parosphromenus Project no doubt remember my plea last month to consider making a donation to the Project. In following up on my own suggestion I attempted to make my donation utilizing the button on the homepage. There appears to be an issue in using the donation button for American Paypal clients. For some reason, our ID and password is not recognized by Paypal Germany and Paypal is not willing or able to explain why this is not possible. For those of you that have attempted and failed or are not yet made the effort to contribute I make the following suggestion.

1. Enter your Paypal account in your normal manner and sign-in
2. Select send money to a friend
3. When asked for an email address or phone number, enter the following email address peter.finke@parosphromenus-project.org .
4. Then enter the amount you wish to donate. I entered the amount in Euros and Paypal made the conversion from dollars to Euros automatically.
5. Select send … I received an email back within minutes indicating the transfer was successful. While the message indicates it may take 3-5 days for the transaction to be processed, I received a response from Dr. Finke within several hours indicating the funds were already in the account.

So, it works, and it is easy to accomplish with your Paypal account. We often procrastinate in following up on tasks like this. My suggestion is, if you were planning on making a donation to this worthy effort, make the donation. Make the donation now – right NOW! Please, don’ wait until tomorrow or next week. Do it today it is vital if you wish to see the organization survive. Without additional donations the PP will be forced to dial-back the website or ultimately close down the site. Thank you for your support in advance … Happy New Year to everyone.

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