I am writing to ask for your help making the WordPress for Toastmasters project a long-term success, which is something I can’t do alone.

See the Support This Project page for suggestions on how to help by placing an advertisement, making a donation, or contributing professionally by making the software, design, and documentation/tutorials better.

Funding is starting to become an issue for toastmost.org, the site where I invite people to create a club website for free.

If your club has a toastmost.org website, it’s safe: I’m not going to kick anyone off of the service. However, if I am going to continue to allow more clubs to sign up for it, I do need to figure out how to make it financially self sustaining. If we could raise $2,000 by the end of the year, the project would be in good shape.

The toastmost.org site has the advantage of allowing people to take advantage of the software without becoming experts on how to set up and configure web hosting. Working with more clubs and people with varying degrees of tech savvy also forces me to work harder at making the software itself easier to use. (I think it’s getting there). The clubs that have set up their own independent websites benefit, too.

Nobody Asked Me To Do This

Nobody asked me to create this service, but I saw it as the only way to allow the software to reach beyond a limited audience of Toastmasters who are also techies. What I call WordPress for Toastmasters was originally a set of one-off hacks for my own home club, but I got enough interest from friends in Toastmasters that I decided to find ways to share it.

Like a dot-com entrepreneur, I figured the first challenge was to prove I could generate an audience for this approach to managing a club website. I would worry about the money later.

Later is coming. Servers cost money, and soon I’ll need a bigger server or multiple servers to support the application. There are other commercial services I would like to invest in that would allow these websites to perform better, even for people on the other side of the world, or for improving the delivery of notification emails like password resets and role signup reminders. Possibly a nonprofit foundation should be established to manage the money, but setting up a foundation costs money also.

Worst Case Scenario

Worst case, I might close toastmost.org to new signups and continue to support it for clubs with existing websites. The open source software would continue to be available to clubs with the budget to set up their own websites, and districts or other organizations who embrace this approach could potentially set up their own multi-club websites on the toastmost.org model.

In that case, toastmost.org would become a demonstration project that proved the value of running a club website on WordPress, with Toastmasters-specific enhancements. I don’t see that as a bad outcome, but it’s not the best I would hope for.

Best Case Scenario

In a perfect world, someone reading this or someone I’m introduced to by someone reading this would pay $2,000 to be the exclusive sponsor of all the toastmost.org websites (there is a spot for an ad in the sidebar of each site) for the next year. Or a few companies, individuals, or clubs, pay the equivalent in smaller donations or advertisements.

Alternatively, I make a profitable business connection through one of you that makes me so fabulously wealthy the cost of this project becomes insignificant.

There may be other better than best case scenarios that I’m not even imagining. Part of what I’m asking for is that you help me imagine ways for this project to live up to its potential.

Thanks,

David F. Carr, versatile and inventive writer, editor, and web consultant
Author, Social Collaboration for Dummies

See my work on Forbes, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook
david@carrcommunications.com
(954) 757-5827 (rolls over to mobile if no answer)