Now How Much Will You Pay?

There have been some rumblings of late about the proposal formally known as the UP, now the UPC. I've thought about posting on it, but Pinakidion has been doing a good job at keeping up with it. Alan has a great essay on it up now too. Mostly I prefer to ignore it lately.

This past week however, was the big leaders shindig, the International Leadership Conference. There was a lot of UPC activity. There's still a push to get the rest of the churches who haven't signed to get with the program and ratify the dumb thing.

But the thing that got my attention was a report on the delegate meeting at a new site that I just learned about, ICOC Hot News. The site is run by Mike Taliaferro & Justin Renton. Mike wrote the report on the delegate meeting. This is what got my attention.

Disciples Today is asking each first world church to give $6 per member per year to help maintain and expand our web presence. All agreed that Disciples Today needs to be a website without subscription fees. Of course, the delegates have no authority to tax anyone. They will simply appeal to the local congregations for support.

I like the fact that they at least agree that they can't tax us, that's nice. I also like that they think that Disciples Today shouldn't have subscription fees. Both come right after asking for $6/member to run DT.

For our 120 member church, that's $720 per year to DT. That's over 10 times what I spend on salguod.net, and I bet it's many times what our church spends on its web site.

Lets do a little math. Mission Memo reports an estimated 2006 ICOC membership of around 88,500 and that 38% are in the USA. That means about 33,600 folks in the US. Assuming that they are only asking USA churches (they are likely asking all 1st world, a higher number) for $6 that means they are asking for $201,700 per year for DT.

That's absolutely nuts. That's over 2,000 times the cost of running salguod.net. No reason at all that it should cost so much. I would guess it should cost a hundredth of that amount. Where in the world are they going to spend $200 grand? Salaries? How many full time folks do they need and at what salary? Someone tell me that I interpreted this wrong.

The bigger question to me is didn't any of the delegates have a calculator? Did this proposal just go through unquestioned? I have no idea, but Mike reports it rather nonchalantly as if it was perfectly reasonable.

Not to mention that DT is not the best designed site. When I was a member, I found it hard to navigate and a little buggy. The connections feature (one of the reasons I actually joined) was disappointing as there weren't many folks on it and it actually was an additional cost to connect with the few that were there. If they are going to command the kind of money that they have been ($40 per year membership fee now for first world individuals) or collect from churches at the rate they are proposing, they need to seriously update the site.

I've got an idea. I'll do it for half that amount. That's right Cooperating Churches, give me a mere $100,000 per year and I'll run DT. What a bargain.
I guess I've got something to talk to the board about now.

24 Comments

Hi Doug,

That's a really good observation. It seems they must be planning to pay some full time salaries to maintain the site, and maybe even some developers. I'm not convinced a full time staff is needed. Maybe they need to get some competing proposals.

Roger published a budget back when he first started DT. It was a lot of money (I want to say it was close to 400K but I really don't remember). Lots of $$ alloted to whatever website development. A lot of money for Roger as well. I wouldn't hold out that the new budget has anything to do with hiring any developers. The only fulltime salary currently is Roger's (and maybe Marcia gets something too?)

I think any church considering this needs to see a line item budget.

ttk

$400K?!? Hey,my offer of $100K is sounding better and better, isn't it?

I was really hoping that I had somehow gotten this all wrong and someone was going to come in and point out the shifted decimal point. :-D

I've long understood, or at least assumed, that the high cost of DT was largely because of Roger's salary. I also assumed that the software package they're using is overkill and too expensive. Even if both are true, this is still a pile of money.

I was wondering if they're assuming that only a portion of those asked are actually going to give. So maybe they think they need $50K, but only expect 25% of the churches to actually give waht they request. So instead of requesting a buck and a half per member, they multiply it times 4 to bring in what they want.

If that's the case, I'd rather they were just upfront. Tell us you need $45K for sallaries and $5K for technology. Then see who comes up with cash to support it.

I absolutely agree with the line item thing. Where's the money going?

so here's a quiz for you Doug......who are your delegates? Do you know who they are? Do you know which 'circle of churches' you're congregation is in? Maybe you could talk to them - they might have more information.

ttk

Because of past history I'm suspicious whenever they ask for money.

I think your point is good and their price is outrageous. It just seems like throwing away money when it's not that much to do it per year and your probably have several hundred, if not thousands, of geeks in the ICOC that would volunteer and love to create it and keep it up.

And, by my last recollection you could build 18 third world orphanages for $200,000. Where is their heart?

Doug
If it is that concerning to you I would encourage you to go directly to the source. Bob

You know, you're ahead of me. I was going to say something similar.

icochotnews.com is $6/year domain. It runs on Drupal which is free. In a week it has more than DToday does. Pair it with missionmemo.com and you have everything you need.

Bob: The source no longer exists. The group that decided this disbanded. Now the only contact is the editor of DToday.

In any case, I don't see DToday being subsidized by a lot of churches anyway.

Doug: Part of DToday's expense is using Exigo Office for everything. It's not free (like MT4 or Wordpress or Drupal) and it offers everything for HR, email, content management, and a lot more. The advantage of it over Joomla or Drupal configured to the same specs is that Exigo is hosted by Exigo, nothing to install, no hardware requirements, etc. The disadvantage is that it's not free. Frankly, it's also not very good software.

I cannot find cost information, but it costs thousands according to the marketing literature.

Still, I'll undercut you by half. I'll run it all for 50K a year.

I'm thinking that Bob meant I should try to contact Roger, or at least DT. There's some validity in that, get the skinny from the horse's mouth so to speak. I may send a note out to see if I can find out what they are thinking. I have emailed them in the past about their high subscription costs, but didn't get a response.

It leads me to clarify my intent here. My intent is not to question Roger's motives nor anyone else's involved. I think that Roger believes that in order to run DT effectively, he needs a staff. I think he believes that it requires that kind of money to do it. I simply think he's wrong. I suspect that he feels that DT is more than a web site, it's a ministry to keep churches connected or something. If he has such a passion and can rally people behind it, good for him. It's not something I'd want to support though. And that's more than just a web site.

Mainly I wanted to shed some light on this cost in relation to my limited experience developing a web site. I have no experience developing and running a site that would see the kind of traffic that a good DT will see. Maybe I'm grossly underestimating that. I also wanted to question if anyone else did the math on this and questioned the high cost. There's nothing in that article that indicates that. The implied opinion is that DT's request is not unreasonable.

Pink - I agree with you on Exigo. I tried to look into it a while back and didn't get far. I emailed the company for some general costs and never got a response. I searched the web and didn't find much info on Exigo at all. It seems overkill for just building a web site and my impression is the same as yours, it's not very good.

I have a hunch that there may some old school ICOC behavior going on here. A friend of someone works at Exigo and in a casual conversation about DT says, "You know, what we make can do your web site." So that's what they go with without much research. That's pure speculation, I have nothing to back that up other than past history and hunch that it might explain why this odd software choice was made.

I just sent this to DT:
Hello,

I read about Disciples Today's request of the delegates at the ILC for a funding commitment:

"Disciples Today is asking each first world church and others who can to give $6 per member per year to help maintain and expand our web presence and videos."

I did some quick math and was surprised by the results. If my calculations are correct, you are asking for an excess of $200,000 to run DT. I wrote about it on my blog, expressing my confusion as to why DT would need so much each year. One of the commenters suggested I contact you directly for an explanation, which was excellent advice and is why I'm writing.

Are my estimates correct or am I misinterpreting your request? If it is correct, why does DT cost so much to run? My own blog, which admittedly does not see as much traffic as DT, only costs me about $100 per year, including web space, domain registration, software and bandwidth. The software I use (Moveable Type) is capable of running a large site like DT (it's the same that powers sites like BoingBoing) and costs less than $150 (one time) for a 20 user non-profit license and a fully managed dedicated server (their best plan) at my web host is $220 per month. Seems to me that the direct cost of running DT should be well under $5,000, why the request for upwards of $200,000?

As a member of a small church that has agreed to the UPC, I'm interested in this as my church is being asked to send an amount to DT (120-ish members * $6ea = $720) every year that may exceed what we spend on our own web site. It is certainly possible that I am missing something in my analysis, which is why I'm writing. I'd like to hear from you why DT needs this level of support.

I'm going to include this email in with my original analysis & commentary on my blog. With your permission, I'd like to print your response as well.

I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you,

Doug Schaefer
www.salguod.net

I'll let you know when adn if I get a response. If I recieve permission, I'll post it here.

Well, I got my response.

Email bounced, "Recipient address rejected: No such domain at this location". I tried all 7 of the published addresses that I found on DT, same result.

Sigh.

"Email bounced, "Recipient address rejected: No such domain at this location". I tried all 7 of the published addresses that I found on DT, same result."

see...that's why they need money. FYI - my hubby's on the board here in SA and MT did give them some type of budget from Roger along with some talking points re what Roger and Marcia are responsible for. I think (haven't seen the budget) their salaries are part of whatever $$ figure.

That's good, hopefully our evangelist came back with the same.

FWIF - I don't mind their salaries being in there, I just would want full disclosure that that is the case. Saying we need $X to run and maintain a web site but not disclosing that 75% is for salaries feels a little misleading.

If they feel DT needs a full time staff of X people, make the case as to why.

Are you serious about doing it for $100k/yr before Laura tells our BOD about your offer?

Sure, but before you hand me 100 grand, you should know that Pink said he'd do it for 50. Of course, my DT will be more than twice as good as Pink's, so I'm the better bargain. :-D

Or you could just let these guys do it:
www.faithhighway.com

we're revamping our website in SA using these guys. I understand the costs are very minimal.

We're re-doing the site here in ABQ using faithhighway (or someone like them) also. I've actually *seen* the numbers, since we had to approve it, but only remember that they were quite reasonable.

It's basically done - we're just waiting for our upcoming Singles Shindig (y'all should send some SA folks) next month since the registration is on our current site.

This actually looks like an interesting business opportunity. What should we call our little church web services company?

Alan,
How about "Co-operative Web Design, Inc."

ttk

I like it! Just wait till you see the click-through EULA on this baby!

fwiw the 2006 990 is available on guidestar for KNN (which is DT) along with, for comparison, the 2006 990 of The Christian Chronicle.

I'll be camping with my son's Boy Scout troop at White Sands and will miss the BOD meeting where HWW and KNN are voted on here in ABQ. I did tell our elders (one of whom is BOD prez) that I prefer local charities to HWW and that I am very uncomfortable supporting DT. Laura and I give as much to local charities as we do to GACC.

Now that I got that out of the way, Roger and Marsha's compensation doesn't really strike me as outlandish. If there's an issue, it's their lack of qualifications and the poor quality and decision making that, to me, are hallmarks of his tenure running KNN and DT.

OTOH, I *prefer* CC to DT and CC seems able to do more with less than DT.

Oh, here's my interpretation of that outlandish prenup^H^H^H^H^H^H severance agreement: Roger doesn't trust the DT BOD not to just up and fire him one day when they're in a bad mood.

fyi - MT discussed DT w/the church today. Said that during the delegate meetings it was strongly expressed that we are probably the only church group where you have to 'pay' to find out info re the church (i leaned over to hubby and said the iccdf is free and I find out stuff way before it's announced) and that DT shouldn't be subscription driven. And that DT asked that churches contribute $6/member/year to DT to keep it going. That DT is looking to make enhancements, etc to make the site better. Mike said that the board agreed to this. However, Mike also asked Roger to 'turn off' the subscription for anyone in SA. Roger said something like he has to check if that's possible because apparently a decision to just make DT 'free' hasn't been firmly decided by the DT board. So Mike told us that he told Roger if the decision is made to keep DT a 'subscription' site we would have to reconsider our contribution to DT as a church.

I thought that was a move in a good direction.

fyi - there's an article on www.icochotnews.com re making DT subscription free.



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  • fyi - there's an article on www.icochotnews.com re making DT subscription free....

  • fyi - MT discussed DT w/the church today. Said that during the delegate meetings it was strongly expressed that we are probably the only church group where you have to 'pay' to find out info re the church (i leaned over...

  • I'll be camping with my son's Boy Scout troop at White Sands and will miss the BOD meeting where HWW and KNN are voted on here in ABQ. I did tell our elders (one of whom is BOD prez) that I prefer local charities to HWW ...

  • fwiw the 2006 990 is available on guidestar for KNN (which is DT) along with, for comparison, the 2006 990 of The Christian Chronicle. ...

  • I like it! Just wait till you see the click-through EULA on this baby! ...

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