As you may know, The Shepherd's Fold is a 'Not For Profit' venture and as such relies on the generosity of others to continue to offer our services ad-free and unencumbered by pop-ups, membership fees, etc.

However, we are hitting a wall in that we can no longer maintain the site for free. Rather than fill up the entire site with advertising and donataion requests, we have opted instead to create a page specifically for advertising. In this way, we can almost 100% maintain the ad-free status of the message boards and other pages allowing you, the member, to view ads, buy products via affiliate programs, or make donations in a setting that is under YOUR control. YOU have the option to view these ads if and when you choose to.

This decision has not been made lightly. 'Not for Profit' is different than 'Non-Profit' in that we can not avail ourselves of tax write-offs, grants, etc. We can make money, but under the moral structure of Not Fof Profit ideology, we shouldn't be making a living at it. Even with exceptional sales numbers, I don't see us being in any kind of position to even make back what we've put into it even up until now for a long time.

To give you an idea of the numbers involved, my business has, since mid-2004, donated a large amount of time and money to this site. The approximate breakdown up to January 1, 2007 is as follows:

• Domain name registration: $30.00 USD
• Web site hosting/Domain name hosting: $300.00 USD
• Labour, graphics and web development and upkeep (LOW approximation): $3600.00
• Legal fees (writing contracts, investigating suspicious activity, etc): $360.00

• Domain name registration: $15.00 USD
• Web site hosting/Domain name hosting (due to increases in bandwidth usage): $252.00 USD
• Labour, graphics and web development and upkeep (LOW approximation): $3024.00 USD

Keep in mind the above numbers don't take into account the volunteering of the moderators, administrators, etc. who have given countless hours to keep this site up and running. In short, in order to break even this year, the site would have to generate $3291.00 USD in revenue.

Donations received this year to date: $100.00

Our goal in regards to revenue is to remain 'Not For Profit'. However, in the event that we make more money than it costs us, we will implement some sort of sytem to return any such profits to the volunteers and members. This may be in the form of donations to charity, gifts or giveaways to members, appreciation gifts to volunteers, or anything else we can think of. We'll let you know if we ever get to that point.

Well, the short answer is that we enjoy it. The long answer is that I was approached by Jasper and another woman some years ago to create a site where Christians of all denominations could speak freely without fear of being ostracized by the administration because they weren't of the 'correct' denomination. They envisioned a message board where people could basically say, "Hey, I believe in Christ, so I'm a Christian" without having to defend themselves either from the membership, or from the administration. I believed this was a worthwhile cause and stepped up to provide the infrastructure. (Although admittedly I had no intention of becoming so deeply involved!) I guess we were right. I've run message boards since 1994, and I can honestly say that this has been the most calm, had the least amount of conflicts, and been the most spiritually-guided sites I have ever seen. I'm proud to be part of it, and it would be a shame to see it fall by the wayside.

There are four ways you can help TSF:

• 1. Most important, be a member of the site. Join the forum and enjoy yourself!
• 2. Donate your time. Volunteer!
• 3. Sponsor the site. A regular monthly donation will get your name/logo/link listed in our Sponsor section below. Other placement of your message around the site is negotiable, but the message board will remain ad-free.
• 4. Donate funds. On that note, we are asking for your help. Please, do not feel at all obligated, but any donations via the PayPal link below would be greatly appreciated.

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Volunteer

The Shepherd's Fold is always looking for volunteers. We are always looking for good message board moderators, writers, web authors and many other skillsets. If you think you have something to offer, anything really, and want to become part of a close-knit team of friends who enjoy providing others with a place to gather, contact us! We've been looking for you!

Currently we are looking for:
Writers: We want to have an expanded site including static articles, regular contributing columnists, and fresh, relevant content. The possibility of an e-zine or newsletter is not out of reach.
Editors: To edit/post articles written by writers. Must have working knowledge of basic HTML tags. (ie: look at this page's source code, it's kept quite simple.)

Please contact Brian via Private Message on the message boards for details.

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Contact

You can contact the administrators of this site on the forums.

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Sponsors