Thought I should pass this on to my lists. Ruth ------- 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 [email protected]