I thought the listmembers might like to see this. Dave > > > > I am wondering who or what institution supports ROOTSWEB? > > Are they attached to a university? It obviously is a huge venture > > that someone is underwriting currently. I assume any donation we > > would make would be on top of the commitment of the main sponsoring > > org. > > Thanks for any clarification. I probably missed these facts > > in previous communiques. > RootsWeb has *no* "main sponsoring org". No university, no > government agency, no gensoc, no business, nobody but *you*. > > We are *entirely* supported by voluntary contributions. > > Our hardware and bandwidth budget for the last year was in the > neighborhood of $60,000, of which about two-thirds were individual > contributions and the rest came out of Karen and Brian's pockets. > Apple Computer also donated a server to RootsWeb, which augments the > other 4 main servers we've bought. > > Karen and I have also donated our time as system administrators, as > did the other RootsWeb folks. > > Next year's costs will be well over $100,000 and possibly as high as > $200,000, depending on whether we have the resources to start buying > datasets and uploading them for everyone to freely use. > > RootsWeb wouldn't have happened without the support of the Internet > genealogical community, and we need continued support if we're going > to keep expanding the services that are available to the community. > > Thanks to everyone who is helping us make this happen! -B > > > [ BTW, please feel free to redistribute this to your lists. It > worries me that folks don't realize that their contributions are > are the *only* thing that keeps RootsWeb alive. ] > > > -- > Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L > RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/ > P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 leverich@rootsweb.com >