We recently crossed the first anniversary for many of us on Lemmy and the Fediverse, and we are thrilled to announce an important milestone: we have started a new registered not-for-profit organization! The organization is registered as ‘Federated Open Communications Canada’, and we will go by ‘Fedecan’ in our day-to-day operations.
Over the past few months, we have been working behind the scenes on the necessary paperwork, bylaws, and other administrative tasks to get the organization rolling. Thanks to the invaluable feedback from our previous check-in, we decided to take the leap and register federally, which will allow us to operate across Canada more easily. For more details, you can check out the FAQs on our new website.
Resuming Donations
With this important step completed, we are now ready to resume accepting donations. We have set up several donation options to accommodate different preferences on convenience and fees. Our first priority is to reimburse those who have been covering server and other costs, and to set up regular financial updates. We are open to adding more donation options, so please let us know if there is an option you prefer.
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Donation Page: (fedecan.ca/donate)
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Alternate Donation page without embedded elements: (fedecan.ca/donate-private)
Our current costs
- Server hosting - $150/month
- Domains registrations - $50/year
- Non profit requirements - $500 one time
Our Next Steps:
- Reimburse individuals who have covered server and operational costs and to set up more regular financial updates
- Collaboratively creating guides and learning resources about Lemmy and the Fediverse (ex. how things work, data/privacy details, and best practices for moderating or running instances, etc.) + translations
- Exploring other platforms to run. Some that are on our radar include Sublinks, Pixelfed, and Matrix
- Developing logos, colours, and other branding details based on ideas from the community
What we want to know:
- Do you have any questions, comments, or concerns? This will also help us expand our FAQs
- Which other platforms would you like us to explore?
- Do you prefer any other donation method?
We want to help build a better online experience for everyone, and that requires an organization with a strong foundation. This should be the first step in that process.
Thank you for everything so far, and we look forward to seeing you around! 🥳
The Fedecan Team
Congratulations folks!
I wish I could donate now, but I broke my foot and I’m off work because of it so I don’t have any income. Thank you for all your hard work to provide this service to Canadians and other people from around the world!
Don’t feel bad, take care of yourself first!
Give only if you can. If enough of us who can give do give, we should be able cover the current costs and provide some buffer.
From each according to his ability, etc
No worries at all, hope you have a speedy recovery! The idea is that people can contribute what they can, when they can, and that should be enough to keep the service free and accessible to everyone :)
Yay for future potential pixelfed!
Sponsored monthly! Way to go everyone, this is awesome. Contributing feels like something good I can do in the face of a whole lot of bad in the world rn, and I’m grateful this instance exists and is so well supported. 🫡 🙏
@otter this is amazing!
Great news. I use this site far more than I used Netflix before I cancelled that service so I consider a monthly donation money well spent.
This is it right here.
I don’t know if I’m missing it somewhere, but many banks now let folks set up recurring interac e-transfers. Just set a monthly $5 with my bank.
Thank you, we’ll see about including that information on the donation page.
Maybe we can link to the guides for some common banks so that people know what the process will be like for them
$20 on the way. Thanks for the work you folks are doing. I greatly appreciate it.
Have my little 5$ donation on github sponsors. It was just a one timer, but i will see if i can do more next time :) and just a question can someone contribute to the guides and learning resources? Because i would like to contribute there if i can.
Totally! We set up the website with collaboration in mind so that anyone can help write the guides + iteratively improve upon them. This should ease the workload and allow everyone to weigh in on the best way to present the information. The website supports internationalization, so we can have the guides in different languages too.
I’ll make another post here later to get feedback on the planned structure / contribution process. I can tag you in that post if you would like :)
Yes would definitly like to contribute and even help translate it to german if its wanted. And you probably noticed it already but i made already a pr about a guide
Yes I see it now!
I’ll check about getting that merged in, thank you so much :)
Thanks a lot! If it isnt in your style that you imagined of the page, please let me know i will try to adjust to it then :)
No problem, I imagine we will try to add content first and then improve the style and organization over time
Just wanted to say thanks to everyone involved in formalizing this. Really helps to know that lemmy.ca will be support and stable for a while to come. I really also love the census you did. Would love to see that continue. I’ve signed up to support monthly through GitHub.
I’m going to brain-dump some suggestions that come to mind for the future:
- I really like how OpenCollective.com makes it easy to see the incoming and outgoing transactions for a fund. You’ve setup up a bunch of payment options already, so I don’t want to add to that burden, but it would be cool to see a similar kind of reporting for Fedecan – it doesn’t have to be super sophisticated, heck even a CSV transaction log would do. It would be useful for transparency, but also so that the community can ensure Fedecan’s expenses are comfortably paid for.
- My dream is that the Fediverse provides viable alternatives to big tech’s social platforms, and the first thing that comes to mind is how Facebook and its various services are the default for so many people. Facebook’ Social Graph, Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Facebook Marketplace and Instagram come to mind. If Fedecan can work towards providing a stable alternative to even one of those, it would be an effort worth supporting.
- Currently the only other Fediverse services I use are Mastodon through social.coop, and BookWyrm through Bookrastinaing. I’d love to see Fedecan build or support essential services like that.
- This is leaving the Fediverse scope, but I recently learned about an initiative from India where they’re tackling monopolies like Uber by building services that don’t take commission. NammaYatri.in is one example. They use the Beckn protocol and India’s ONDC stack. In the very long term, I wonder if Fedecan could support those kinds of initiatives, to setup alternatives with healthier incentives baked in.
Re: open collective, we looked at it but it seemed limited for Canadians. I liked that aspect of it too, so I’m working on a grafana dashboard for us to try and do something similar.
I really also love the census you did. Would love to see that continue
I have notes for next year’s version :)
It would be useful for transparency, but also so that the community can ensure Fedecan’s expenses are comfortably paid for
This is good feedback! I know the team is working on improving this, and while it might take some time to streamline the process, that sounds like a solid plan
how Facebook and its various services are the default for so many people. Facebook’ Social Graph, Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Facebook Marketplace and Instagram come to mind. If Fedecan can work towards providing a stable alternative to even one of those, it would be an effort worth supporting.
Yep, I still have my account for local groups that don’t exist elsewhere. It would be amazing to be able to migrate them elsewhere. I haven’t explored in some time, but when I was looking around last year the private group / facebook-esque platforms had some work to do. As more people move to the fediverse, I’m hoping there’s more momentum to get that work done.
Pixelfed as an alternative to Instagram is strong now. There is also Mobilizon for events, which I’ll have to explore some more
and BookWyrm through Bookrastinaing. I’d love to see Fedecan build or support essential services like that.
Since I’m not as familiar with BookWyrm yet, would it be helpful to have an additional instance for it?
In the very long term, I wonder if Fedecan could support those kinds of initiatives, to setup alternatives with healthier incentives baked in.
I didn’t know about NammaYatri.in, it sounds cool! Even if we don’t end up supporting it directly, I expect such projects to find a good home here without the influence of shareholders/profit
Thanks for the response! I think Pixelfed would be a great addition, since it will probably be popular. I’m not so sure about BookWyrm. Its network is fairly healthy, and it’s usually used as an alternative to Amazon’s Goodreads, but it maybe one that is worth surveying the community about.
Looking forward to Fedecan’s future!
I shall donate as soon as I’m back at my computer where I have my banking stuff! I have just two questions for Otter:
- Do you have a favorite rock?
- Do you have a favorite kind of fish?
Much thanks!
Just the other day, I was thinking about how nice it would be for the team behind lemmy.ca to expand into other Fediverse services. I’m glad to see it’s on the roadmap. The future is looking brighter for non-corporate social media in Canada.
We’re excited too :)
I was thinking about how nice it would be for the team behind lemmy.ca to expand into other Fediverse services
Did you have any particular service that you might us to focus on?
Did you have any particular service that you might us to focus on?
Also not the persons you replied to but I am very interested in [email protected] (so much so, I started the community) which is a kind of Goodreads, IMDb, etc, etc replacement - basically all those sites that used to be great and have been bought out by big companies (mainly Amazon in the two named cases).
Not the person you replied to, but what about Mastodon?
We haven’t made any final decisions yet, but right now I think a lot of us already use https://mstdn.ca alongside Lemmy.
It might be a duplicated effort to spin up another mastodon, whereas we could focus our attention on new platforms + support the existing Canadian mastodon instance in other ways
Congratulations! I will put in a little donation this weekend.
Donating a monthly $5 through Github Hopefully you get some more to fill the money requirement.
Subscribed monthly.
