Site Update: Fundraiser realities and scheduling changes

As many of you know, we launched a Fundraiser Drive in mid-September 2020 to help us pay for podcast transcripts. We planned to fund the remaining backlog through a new Ko-fi and ongoing transcripts by boosting our monthly Patreon intake.

We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who stepped up to become a new patron, increase their existing pledge, and/or signal-boost us on social media. Unfortunately, while we’ve had slow-but-steady success with the Ko-fi, our Patreon increases have not been enough to get us over that finish line.

It looked like we had hit our Patreon goals each month (with a solid surplus, even). However, when the end of the month rolled around and payments were due, the amount we’d actually received was quite a bit less than the pledges that had been made. While we understand that financial circumstances can change suddenly, we gotta admit these last-minute pledge drops have been a special kind of heartbreaking.

That said, sitting around moping won’t improve site accessibility. As stated in our last Fundraiser Drive post, accessibility and fair pay are our top priorities. We have to find ways to provide transcripts with the funds we do have, even if that means cutting content elsewhere.

So, the AniFem managers got together, crunched some numbers, and found a compromise:

• We will take two weeks off every anime season (a total of eight weeks a year) from publishing new contributor articles and have “reruns” of previous articles during that time instead. These breaks will occur the week before and the week after premieres. Talk and Links posts will continue without pause.
• We will also take four weeks off a year from posting new podcasts. This break will occur right after the season retrospective podcast.

The money we’ll save on writer and editor fees, combined with our current Patreon funds, will be enough to cover a years’ worth of podcast transcripts. Hopefully during the next year we can find some additional revenue sources so this doesn’t have to be a permanent scheduling change, but we’ll keep you posted on if and when that happens.

Granted, this plan only works if our Patreon amounts stay level with where they are now—and the past few months have shown us there are no guarantees there, either. So if you can, please subscribe for $1 or more each month to help us pay our writers and editors without having to cut any more content from our schedules.

As always, we welcome any questions or concerns, either via Disqus or a private message. We may not be able to act on your feedback, but we do promise to listen. 

Thanks as always for your support and your understanding, AniFam! Take care out there, and here’s hoping for brighter skies in the new year.

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Editor’s Note: This post was edited after publication to clarify and correct the site’s updated schedule.