Donations
BirminghamIU is almost entirely financed by personal voluntary donations from the founder members as we don’t even charge for club membership. The members of BirminghamIU put in many hours of our spare time into the group which includes the upkeep of this website and all other services. All our services are provided totally free of charge, this is because we are passionate about investigating the paranormal and we thoroughly enjoy what we do. We are not classed as or registered as a business and therefore remain officially a private group / club set-up amongst friends. None of our clients are ever asked to donate and voluntary donations are never even mentioned when we provide any of our free services. We are already extremely grateful to any person who comes forward to report possible paranormal activity as it provides us with interesting work and sometimes new locations to investigate. Donating is always completely voluntary in every way and whether anyone specifically donates or not will not effect the high level of service we provide to any of our clients.
What are costs involved in running a voluntary paranormal research group / club?
Our funds are critical for us maintain and buy vital scientific equipment for using on paranormal investigations. It also costs us money for website hosting along with other Internet costs including domain name charges, ISP costs, software licences and PC equipment. Although we try our best to investigate mainly free locations we still have to pay travel expenses. Some locations such as hotels and many other places charge for investigations, if we had more funding we’d be able to investigate more locations and would ultimately be able to invite other people to join us in future. Even though we are officially a voluntary members club that has been created amongst friends, we have still been advised to purchase public liability insurance which is again entirely financed by members.
Where does the money go from donations?
All money from donations would go towards the upkeep of this website, our equipment and other expenses as detailed above. We will always remain a totally non profit organisation as every penny donated would go directly into the upkeep of the club. Donations would help us to continue providing a good service along with collecting some amazing evidence towards the ultimate goal of one day proving the existence of paranormal activity.
How much is the donation going to cost me?
The donation is a whatever you are prepared to donate, we would be extremely grateful for any donation what-so-ever no matter how small, but remember this is entirely voluntary and no-one is expected to donate no matter what.
If you do decide to donate to BirminghamIU, then as a founder member and on behalf of all our other members, I thank you ever so much for supporting us.
Many Thanks,
Paul
BirminghamIU
Donations / Extra Revenue Received to Date
Unlike many other paranormal groups / clubs, we will always be completely upfront about any donations / extra revenue we receive although we will obviously keep names and / or other information totally confidential unless the person donating specifically states otherwise in writing.
As of the 20/04/09 we haven’t received any voluntary donations of yet, so have been totally financed by members. Also we haven’t received anything from Google Adsense advertising revenue which is also counted as a donations as so far we haven’t managed to reach the threshold for a minimum payout which is currently $100 (£67.60 at the time of writing minus foreign exchange charges). If and when this changes we will update.