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Group Sponsorships #update

Mark Fletcher
 

Hi All,

I have just pushed a new group sponsorship feature, based on Shal's and Samuel's proposals. Here are the details:

  • In Group Settings, there's a new Allow Sponsorships checkbox, with the help text Allow members to sponsor the Groups.io fees for the group.
  • If a group allows sponsorships, a new Sponsor This Group button appears on the group home page.
  • Clicking that button brings you to a page to enter an amount (of at least $5.00USD) and a credit card, if we don't have one on file for you. The text is By sponsoring this group, you are helping pay the Groups.io hosting fees. Any amount you sponsor will be held by Groups.io and used to pay hosting fees as needed. Sponsorships are non-refundable.
  • You do not need to be a member to sponsor a group but you do need to have a Groups.io account.
  • Free/Basic groups can allow sponsorships. Converting from Free/Basic to a Premium group still requires a credit card to be on file when you do it, but you can delete the credit card after you've upgraded the group, relying only on sponsorship reserves to pay for premium.
  • To see how much money is in a group's sponsorship reserve, go to the Billing/Upgrade tab under Admin. It will appear as a line like There is $23.00 in reserve to pay hosting fees.
  • Group sponsorships are logged in the activity log and a moderator notification is sent out as well.
  • Any group sponsorships that you have paid are listed in your Account on the Billing page.
  • If a fee is paid solely by sponsorship reserves, you will not be sent a payment receipt, but you will still get an email notification.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Thanks to Shal and Samuel for the idea.

Thanks,
Mark
J_Catlady
 

Fantastic idea. Not sure how I missed it. (Must have been hiding under my rock at the time, aka had the thread muted.:) It completely avoids all the objections I’ve expressed about member fees, competition, warped forces/space around groups, technical issues like refunds, member fees being disincentives to join groups.io, and a dozen others.


On Jan 13, 2021, at 10:05 AM, Mark Fletcher <markf@corp.groups.io> wrote:



Hi All,

I have just pushed a new group sponsorship feature, based on Shal's and Samuel's proposals. Here are the details:

  • In Group Settings, there's a new Allow Sponsorships checkbox, with the help text Allow members to sponsor the Groups.io fees for the group.
  • If a group allows sponsorships, a new Sponsor This Group button appears on the group home page.
  • Clicking that button brings you to a page to enter an amount (of at least $5.00USD) and a credit card, if we don't have one on file for you. The text is By sponsoring this group, you are helping pay the Groups.io hosting fees. Any amount you sponsor will be held by Groups.io and used to pay hosting fees as needed. Sponsorships are non-refundable.
  • You do not need to be a member to sponsor a group but you do need to have a Groups.io account.
  • Free/Basic groups can allow sponsorships. Converting from Free/Basic to a Premium group still requires a credit card to be on file when you do it, but you can delete the credit card after you've upgraded the group, relying only on sponsorship reserves to pay for premium.
  • To see how much money is in a group's sponsorship reserve, go to the Billing/Upgrade tab under Admin. It will appear as a line like There is $23.00 in reserve to pay hosting fees.
  • Group sponsorships are logged in the activity log and a moderator notification is sent out as well.
  • Any group sponsorships that you have paid are listed in your Account on the Billing page.
  • If a fee is paid solely by sponsorship reserves, you will not be sent a payment receipt, but you will still get an email notification.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Thanks to Shal and Samuel for the idea.

Thanks,
Mark


--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu
Scott Chase
 

RE: Free/Basic groups can allow sponsorships.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sound like Free/Basic groups are not able to Allow Sponsorships. But, rather Free/Basic groups must upgrade to a Premium group to Allow Sponsorships, and incur a Premium-priced debt before sponsorship funds can be collected to help pay on that new debt.

My hope was that there would also be a method to somehow allow funds to be collected from members to help support the Groups.io service without having to upgrade a Free/Basic group to a Premium Group and incur a personal financial liability. I recommend that this continue to be looked at, so that members of existing Free/Basic groups in the future can somehow also freely help fund the Groups.io service.

Thanks,
Scott
Shal Farley
 

Scott,


Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sound like Free/Basic groups are not able to Allow Sponsorships. But, rather Free/Basic groups must upgrade to a Premium group to Allow Sponsorships, and incur a Premium-priced debt before sponsorship funds can be collected to help pay on that new debt.

I'm not sure where you got that impression. Mark said: "Free/Basic groups can allow sponsorships."

He does go on to say that:"Converting from Free/Basic to a Premium group still requires a credit card to be on file when you do it, [emphasis mine] but you can delete the credit card after you've upgraded the group, relying only on sponsorship reserves to pay for premium." I think that applies at a later time, if and when the group owner decides to upgrade to a premium plan, which might not be until the group has accumulated enough in their sponsorship reserve to pay for the upgrade.
My hope was that there would also be a method to somehow allow funds to be collected from members to help support the Groups.io service without having to upgrade a Free/Basic group ...

I think that's what happens if the group owner never applies the funds to an upgrade. Groups.io has the desired support and the group owner didn't need to even temporarily provide card information.
Shal
Andy Wedge
 

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 06:05 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:
If a fee is paid solely by sponsorship reserves, you will not be sent a payment receipt, but you will still get an email notification.
Now might be a good time to reflect on and confirm what happens if insufficient sponsorship funds are 'in the bank' and there is no credit card on file so a group gets downgraded:

https://groups.io/helpcenter/ownersmanual/1/upgrading-or-downgrading-groups/downgrading-a-premium-or-enterprise-group

Andy
Andy Wedge
 

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 06:05 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:
Group sponsorships are logged in the activity log
Yes, I can see that from my test $5.00 sponsorship

and a moderator notification is sent out as well.
I received a notification email but there is currently no option in the Moderator Notification panel to control these sponsorship notifications like there is for other types.

Regards
Andy
Samuel Murrayy
 

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 07:14 PM, J_Catlady wrote:
Fantastic idea. ... It completely avoids all the objections I’ve expressed about member fees, competition, warped forces/space around groups, technical issues like refunds, member fees being disincentives to join groups.io, and a dozen others.
That may be, but my other proposal (about free-member slots) was meant to be separate from this suggestion and in fact both features can complement each other.

This sponsorship button makes it easier to group owners to gather funds without having to set up a financial system (I assume some group owners will active encourage members to click the button) which can be used to pay for premium services, but it does not the problem that the "free-member slots" suggestion was trying to solve, namely to make it possible to have free groups without membership number limits or to have premium groups where owners can limit their costs aggressively without having to turn away potential members who are willing to pay.
J_Catlady
 

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 01:25 PM, Samuel Murrayy wrote:
both features can complement each other.
They could. But if only Mark's original plan plus this sponsorship plan are implemented, you end up with exactly what I thought was optimal, and what I'd suggested (although not the specifics), namely: Mark's original plan with an enhanced ability for owners to solicit donations/contributions to allay their high fees if they have high member counts. And you avoid all the issues I've brought up involving the paid memberships.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu
Mark Fletcher
 

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 12:07 PM Andy Wedge <andy_wedge@...> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 06:05 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:
If a fee is paid solely by sponsorship reserves, you will not be sent a payment receipt, but you will still get an email notification.
Now might be a good time to reflect on and confirm what happens if insufficient sponsorship funds are 'in the bank' and there is no credit card on file so a group gets downgraded:

https://groups.io/helpcenter/ownersmanual/1/upgrading-or-downgrading-groups/downgrading-a-premium-or-enterprise-group


The same thing happens in that instance. An email goes out to mods saying that there's an overdue invoice and you get two weeks to pay the invoice (minus any remaining sponsorship fees) otherwise the group is automatically downgraded to basic/free. There is no mechanism right now to automatically pay the invoice if additional sponsorship monies come in to cover it. 

Mark
Janice
 

Is the credit card number held in some kind of file or is it deleted once the donation is paid?  I ask because I'm sure some of my members will ask me.

Janice B
Duane
 

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 05:12 PM, Janice wrote:
Is the credit card number held in some kind of file or is it deleted once the donation is paid?
I think it's remembered, BUT you can go to your Account Billing page and remove it after paying, https://groups.io/account?page=billing  (I won't be removing mine since I use it to pay for a group.)

Duane
Mark Fletcher
 

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 3:17 PM Duane <txpigeon@...> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 05:12 PM, Janice wrote:
Is the credit card number held in some kind of file or is it deleted once the donation is paid?
I think it's remembered, BUT you can go to your Account Billing page and remove it after paying, https://groups.io/account?page=billing  (I won't be removing mine since I use it to pay for a group.)

This is right. We don't actually store the credit card information, and it never actually touches our servers. Stripe, our credit card processor, takes care of all of that.

Mark 
Andy Wedge
 

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 06:05 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:
a moderator notification is sent out as well
Hi Mark,

can we get the group subject tag as a prefix to the email notification subject to match other notifications please?

Thanks
Andy
monamouroui
 

Mark, 

Thanks. I like your solution. It is a well thought-out and useful feature. I have no issues. I think it will help influence some of us on the fence to convert from a Free/Basic Group to Premium. 

Also, it's great we can toggle the sponsorship message off when it's reached the amount needed to help pay for that years access fee. For me it offers a little more transparency so my members won't have doubts or feel a constant pressure to pay.

Sara


On Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 1:05 PM Mark Fletcher <markf@corp.groups.io> wrote:

Hi All,

I have just pushed a new group sponsorship feature, based on Shal's and Samuel's proposals. Here are the details:

  • In Group Settings, there's a new Allow Sponsorships checkbox, with the help text Allow members to sponsor the Groups.io fees for the group.
ro-esp
 

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 07:05 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:


- If a group allows sponsorships, a new `Sponsor This Group` button appears on
the group home page.
- Clicking that button brings you to a page to enter an amount (of at least
$5.00USD) and a credit card,
It would be nice if people without a credit-card could contribute as well. For instance by "Ideal"

- If a fee is paid solely by sponsorship reserves, you will not be sent a
payment receipt, but you will still get an email notification.
as in sent to nameofthegroup+owner@groups.io ?

groetjes/ĝis, Ronaldo
Joseph Hudson
 

Oh thanks Mark, I think that this will be a definite good deal.

On Jan 13, 2021, at 12:05 PM, Mark Fletcher <markf@corp.groups.io> wrote:

Hi All,

I have just pushed a new group sponsorship feature, based on Shal's and Samuel's proposals. Here are the details:

• In Group Settings, there's a new Allow Sponsorships checkbox, with the help text Allow members to sponsor the Groups.io fees for the group.
• If a group allows sponsorships, a new Sponsor This Group button appears on the group home page.
• Clicking that button brings you to a page to enter an amount (of at least $5.00USD) and a credit card, if we don't have one on file for you. The text is By sponsoring this group, you are helping pay the Groups.io hosting fees. Any amount you sponsor will be held by Groups.io and used to pay hosting fees as needed. Sponsorships are non-refundable.
• You do not need to be a member to sponsor a group but you do need to have a Groups.io account.
• Free/Basic groups can allow sponsorships. Converting from Free/Basic to a Premium group still requires a credit card to be on file when you do it, but you can delete the credit card after you've upgraded the group, relying only on sponsorship reserves to pay for premium.
• To see how much money is in a group's sponsorship reserve, go to the Billing/Upgrade tab under Admin. It will appear as a line like There is $23.00 in reserve to pay hosting fees.
• Group sponsorships are logged in the activity log and a moderator notification is sent out as well.
• Any group sponsorships that you have paid are listed in your Account on the Billing page.
• If a fee is paid solely by sponsorship reserves, you will not be sent a payment receipt, but you will still get an email notification.
Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Thanks to Shal and Samuel for the idea.

Thanks,
Mark
Lynne
 

The sponsorship was turned on for one of my free groups, but I don't see any notice on the group's home page.  I double-checked that I had confirmed the group change as well as logged off and then viewed the home page.  Still no notice.  Am I doing something wrong or does it take a while for the sponsorship blurb to appear on the home page?

Thanks!

Lynne
Niman H
 

Great idea to add this option. What fees are charged by Stripe? Our members will want to know. Is it per transaction or a percentage?

Nancy
Andy Wedge
 

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 04:03 PM, Lynne wrote:
but I don't see any notice on the group's home page.
It's a new button rather than a notice that appears on the homepage.

Andy
Duane
 

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 10:03 AM, Niman H wrote:
What fees are charged by Stripe?
The standard Stripe fees are 2.9% + 30 cents (same as Paypal) and are deducted from the payment.  A $5 sponsorship should net $4.55 to GIO.

Duane
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