About a year ago now, we asked you guys what you thought we should do to keep
DBR afloat. Your generosity helped us keep going over the last year and
we're immensely grateful for that, and for all the kind words and encouragement
you gave us. We wouldn't be here today without you. We tried to plan
for a full year, and we were pretty much dead on target, because now, the DBR
funds are just about tapped. We cannot currently pay the bills for this
month. So we're announcing a new fundraiser, with the goal of raising
enough money to take us through December.
Our hope is that we can maintain a free and open site. It's impossible
to make guarantees about the future, but that's what we would prefer.
We have always tried to be keenly aware of our limitations and strengths, and have
kept an eye on the marketplace as well. You have probably noticed that
almost all of our friends from other sites have joined up with cookie cutter
networks like Rivals and The Insiders.
We are now one of only a handful of
independent sites left which doesn't look exactly like about a million other
sites. That's because of you guys, and we can't tell you how grateful we
are. We wouldn't be smart or responsible if we didn't consistently examine
our options, but we have been fortunate enough not to have to go down the cookie
cutter road. And honestly, if that is our last option, we'd probably just
call it a day.
But we hope we're not at that point. If you donated last year and do it
again this year, we are doubly grateful. And if you didn't, and you've
been reading here for a while, won't you consider it? We got through last
year, and while we were grateful for the support, the base was smaller than we
might have liked, and despite our size (and in some ways because of it), we are
at the mercy of forces we can't control. We know a lot of you are students who can't afford to
give yet, but if you value the site, and haven't donated in the past, please
consider it this year.
Last summer we surveyed you guys to see what you thought would be the best
way to keep this site going. Of the three choices - subscription, ad-supported,
or a PBS-style fundraiser, the latter was by far the most popular choice.
After a lot of input from you guys, we came up with these donation
suggestions (links are through PayPal):
Some of you had also suggested specific levels of giving, so
we added
those as well:
For those of you who would prefer to send a check, you can send it to this
address:
| Duke Basketball Report 5310 South Alston Avenue, Suite 210 Durham, North Carolina 27713 |
We've always enjoyed having an open site, because to us, that's what the Web
should be about. Unfortunately, though, running the site isn't free, and there's
no way we can pay for it ourselves - the volume is simply too high. Our ability
to continue it depends directly on the support we get from you guys, and unlike
PBS, we get no subsidy. You guys are it!
We get a lot of e-mail thanking us for doing DBR, and we'd just like to
reverse that briefly and tell you how much it has meant to us. We've tried
to contact everyone who has donated to thank you personally, but in some cases,
the donations were either anonymous or the e-mails were not valid. If you
didn't hear from us, that's most likely why, and we're sorry we couldn't reach
you to thank you for being there. Please get in touch so that we may thank
you and also update our records.
We have
made some amazing friends through this site, and we have an awful lot for which to be
grateful. The generosity of spirit and the many kindnesses are things
we can only hope to fractionally return. Thanks again for
everything, guys. It means more than you'll ever know. We hope we can keep
it going for years to come.