Background

RPG Research is a 100% unpaid volunteer-run organization. No one at the company is paid at any level, including the Board of Directors, Founder, later Co-Founders, etc. All donation money is used to provide the research, content, and community programs to the world.

Since we have taken on the significant expenses of opening up the RPG Community Center, working toward opening the RPG Museum, etc., as plannd, our monthly operating expenses have increased 10-fold from our previous virtual model.

We need a bare minimum of $4,000/month to keep allowing people to enter the community center, provide training to volunteers, broadcast live-streaming over the Internet, etc. This money pays for rent, insurance, electricity, licensing, etc. to allow people to have the insurance that allows us to let the public view our website content, to allow people to participate in our community programs, for volunteers to be trained or even to be volunteers.

We do not receive any taxpayer/government funds.

We are 100% dependent on donations from individuals, companies, and private foundations or private grants.

As part of the process toward more stable fundraising to make sure the bills are paid consistently, and so we don't periodically go into panic mode (typical life cycle of the non-profit world of course), we have discussed for years going to a commonly implemented membership non-profit model, and as of February 15th, 2023, the Board of Directors votes to support starting the process of conversion to a membership non-profit model.

When we incorporated as a 501(c)3 non-profit charity, we did so without any memberships in our model, this is a specific type of non-profit charity filing with the state and federal government agencies. We had always planned to add membership some time down the road, but we had a lot of infrastructure and other things to work out before we felt we could take on the added administrative overhead of membership management.

Now our infrastructure has improved enough we can now basically take what we've been doing through Patreon.com/rpgresearch for many years, and incorporate it into the whole company's offerings to the public.

What Does This Mean To You?

For the vast majority of the public, this makes very little to no direct difference to you and your experience.

For all of our hands-on community programs, we already require, for insurance reasons (among others), every participant to fill out paperwork, sign disclaimers, and sign in and out every time the come and go from the community center.

The same for our 100% unpaid volunteer-run staff.

We already tracked volunteer hours, and had a "badge" system based on the ROY-G-BIV colors of the rainbow, in addition to training levels, and now we will be extending these to participants and donors.

For participation in any of our hands-on programs, you must be a registered member. This helps us with insurance liability concerns, and can provide some perks to members that wouldn't be available otherwise. This is free. Most users will just be free members. Some may choose to donate, and this can provide some added perks over time.

All current Patreon donors will be, with their permission, added to our internal membership system, so they can get the additional perks added. This means they will continue to get their existing Patreon benefits PLUS the additional benefits we're providing internally. We will include all past Patreon supporters (with their permission) in this, so they can get their previous donations (even if they are no longer donating), included in their cumulative donor level perks.

As always, our website content will always end up free and open to the public as much as we are legally allowed, but we will get better at replicating our Patreon approach throughout all of our services. Our Patreon approach has been that we stream live and freely to the public, but then the higher quality local recordings or improved edits are first uploaded to our Patreon Supporters, as a thank you for their donations, a week or more before making them freely available to the public, sometimes months depending on volunteer staff availability.

We will be extending this approach to all content on all of our sites, services, conventions, publications, etc. Those who donate will get early access a day or more before the general public release. But everything will (eventually) be freely available (as much as legally allowed).

Also, we'll be tracking donor accumulations, will provide increasing perks over time, including discounts on the (few rare) paid events we run, such as our special public workshops or conventions. They can start getting 10% off the tickets, all the way up, eventually to 100% off as their donations continue. We haven't finalized the numbers or rewards yet AT ALL, but below is an early draft of what we're working on solidifying (and we welcome everyone's input).

Sneak Peak of A Rough Draft of What This Will Look Like

We want to this to be a fun benefit to everyone, not a burden, and a more organized way for us to say "thank you for your support" more consistently and effectively than we have been able to do with our previous non-membership approach.

The following is a very early rough draft, that is not by any means finalized. Everything shown here will likely undergo significant, if not total, changes as we get closer to actually implementing in the coming weeks/months.

We welcome your input. Thank you so much for your support!

Our current Volunteer Badge System

Currently our volunteer staff, all have badges, sign-in-and-out, and track their training accomplishment "unlocks" and overall training levels.

The volunteers hours are shown using the rainbow ROYGBIV scale as per: https://old12-0122.rpgresearch.com/roygbiv

We are going to offer this to all of our program participants as well.

Proposed Revised Membership System

We will have 3 variations on the badges to denote the different types of engagement:

1. Participant
2. Volunteer
3. Donor

And a badge design that can clearly indicate in a glance all three at once for those that are all three.

We are still working on the design, but here are some early drafts to check out.

CUMULATIVE DONOR LEVELS (all donor levels are also member levels)

Member level 0 = Free member, non-voting, non-donor. Black border. Everyone gets this for free. It allows access to most of our programs and content freely. All participants, staff, volunteers, start at this level automatically.

Member level 1 = Donor Level 1 donating at least $5+/month, Red border up to $99 total donations. 10% off select events.

Member level 2 = Cumulative donated total $100-$499, orange. 25% off select events

Member level 3 = Cumulative donated total $500-$999, yellow. 35% off select events

Member level 4 = Cumulative donated total $1,000 - $4,999, green. 50% off select events

Member Level 5 = Cumulative donated total $5,000 - $19,999, blue. 75% off select events

The above includes donations from all sources that we are aware of. So if we know you donated via Patreon, Discord, and a special event, or through monthly membership donations directly into our system, all will count toward your member level. This is lifetime member benefit (non-transferable).

We are also looking at how to tie in volunteer hours to correlate in some way as member levels advancement too, we're still working out those details.

Voting Benefits Donors: Members Voting (not Board of Directors):

Member Level 6 = Cumulative donated total $20,000 - $49,999, indigo. 100% off select events. Membership voting member (note this is a membership voter, not advisory board or board of directors vote).

Member Level 7 = Cumulative donated total $50,000 – $99,999. purple. 100% off select events. Voting member (note this is a membership voter, not advisory board or board of directors vote)

Membership and Advisory Board Voting:

Member Level 8 = $100,000 - $499,999 Bronze Donor. Membership voting member, & advisory board voting member.

Member Level 9 = $500,000 - $999,999 Silver Donor. & voting member and advisory board voting member.

Membership, Advisory, and Board of Directors Voting:

Member Level 10 = $1,000,000+ Gold donor. Voting member, and voting board member. *

* Level 10 donors have “naming rights” options (as approved by Board of Directors) as well.

What a Combined Badge of Participant, Volunteer, & Donor Might Look Like

If someone has rankings in all three areas: participation, volunteering, and donating, the badge might look something like this:

Still working on this, but will post updates as we get closer to full implementation.

Thank you for your support!

Donate today! www.rpgresearch.com/donate