Financial Report 2025

Well, would you look at that. Another year has come and gone, which means it's time once again to dust off the suit, polish the spreadsheet, and welcome you back to The Bank of DFTBA.club's annual report.

The spreadsheet below has all the fine details, but the headline is the same as ever: a small, voluntarily user-funded Mastodon server is still working out. Donations covered most of the bills, I covered the rest, and the lights stayed on. Quiet success, which honestly is the best kind for a Mastodon admin.

A few things worth pointing out from this year's numbers:

Donations were remarkably stable. Patrons contributed $1,038.86 across the year — within a few dollars of last year. From January through September, monthly gross donations sat in a tight band between roughly $86 and $89. In October we dipped down to about $81 and stayed there through year-end. A couple of folks rotating off Patreon is the most likely explanation, and that's totally fine — people's budgets change, and I appreciate every month anyone chooses to support the server.

Patreon's cut got slightly better. Last year I noted that fees ate about 15% of donations. This year it's closer to 14.2% — a small but real improvement. Same caveat as before: not great, but having Patreon handle the billing and send me a 1099-K each year is worth something.

My out-of-pocket donation is up. In 2023 I covered an average of about $5.45/month. This year that number is closer to $13.73/month, totaling $164.80 for the year. Two things drove that. First, the storage upgrade I previewed in last year's report (the bump to 300gb that I called out as "always a rising cost") brought hosting to $88/month and stayed there all year. Second, while donations held roughly steady, expenses did not — so the gap widened. That total monthly donation is rought about my upper limit with the economy in the state it's in gestures broadly. If anyone out there that isn't currently donating could pitch in a few dollars to help I would appreciate it. If my monthly cost creeps up any higher I may have to consider my options. I have to consider my family finances, after all.

Hosting was boring, which is the goal. $48 for the 8gb Linode, $30 for the 300gb storage volume, $10 for backups, every month, no surprises. The 8gb of RAM continues to be roughly the right size.

The amounts below do not include one-time or annual fees like domain renewals.

As always, if you have any questions, you know where to find me. Email works too.

Thanks for another year. dftba.

-- nomadgeek

Note: so I could compare year over year I left $13.50 of Apple Fees off this report. This was also an expense paid by me. I'll include that next year.