We know what you’re thinking: not another Giving Tuesday blog post. Believe us, we wish we didn’t have to add our voice to this week’s chorus, but here we are.
Knowledge Commons needs the support of our users more than ever to keep our services open and available to everyone. Over the past several months, we’ve shared the challenges we’ve faced, including federal grant terminations and downtime due to uninvited AI scrapers. Yet, along with these setbacks, we’ve also experienced several wonderful developments, including the addition of the University of Oregon and Utrecht University as a member institutions and a massive influx of new users who have left other platforms to join us in sharing knowledge freely and openly. Our team remains optimistic about the future of the web as a space for nonprofit, academic-run publishing, and we would love for you to join us in ensuring that the over 60,000+ users who have discovered Knowledge Commons are able to help sustain our team’s work into the future.
To get a better understanding of what you’re supporting by contributing to us on Giving Tuesday, here is a brief snapshot:
- Maintaining our Mastodon server, hcommons.social, costs approximately $3000 a year, or $250 a month. If 10 users contribute $25 dollars a month, it ensures that the 2,532 community members who have found our server can continue to make connections with other users.
- AWS hosting of Knowledge Commons and KCWorks costs approximately $7500 a month. If 300 users contribute $25 a month for one year, it ensures that the over 60,000+ users of our platform can continue to use profiles, groups, sites, and KCWorks repository.
- If 300 users contribute $50 a month for one year, you’re also helping pay the salary of a team member, the people who are “behind the scenes” working to improve the Commons.
By donating to Knowledge Commons, you are directly helping our team keep doing our work. We have several major upgrades to the Commons and KCWorks on our roadmap, and we need your support in order to bring these projects to life. When you donate to us, you’re also giving back in a way that goes beyond our team and platform. You’re supporting the thousands of students, teachers, researchers, and scholars across the globe who have entrusted their work to the Commons, including hundreds of independent scholars who are not affiliated with any institution.
How do I get involved?
If you’d like to financially support the Commons, you can make a one-off or monthly individual contribution on our Crowdpower page. We understand that not everyone can contribute financially, but there are also other ways you can help too! Consider:
- Uploading to KCWorks and sharing your work on social media
- Encouraging colleagues to create an account and explore resources
- Tell your librarians and the folks in your teaching and learning communities about how important the Commons is to you
- Talk to your department chair, library, or institutional stakeholders about supporting us. We offer several tiers of membership for both small and large institutions to get involved!
If you choose to make a gift through Michigan State University, you must specify that your gift is for Knowledge Commons to ensure that it reaches us. In the coming weeks, we’ll be providing more fundraising updates, including more specific information for institutions and organizations that would like to get involved in shaping the future of an open internet.