I'll put my donation in the box once I hear back from Paul.
Paul answered, see PC Haring above.
Let's all breathe a minute.
Igorken is not looking to invest $10k. People that want to invest don't ask those questions through forum posts and if they did, I wouldn't want to do business with them.
Let's also understand that there is an implied insult in just asking. We're saying, "We perform this service for you like the guy on the corner with his guitar. If you consider that worth a tip, drop it in the case. If not, keep walking and we apologize for having bothered you." What's done with the money is irrelevant. The donation is a way of saying, "you already gave me this gift, that has value to me and I want to return the favor." Sure he could show you his financials, but it's an intrusion that ends up being a waste of time for him because in the end, nothing revealed in there changes the value of the gift already given.
And eytanz is a little wrong with his analogy too. Personally, I hope you do take the actual cost of an item into consideration when you purchase it and I hope you do reject it if your estimated value is not equal to or higher than the price. I don't have Comcast because the value of their service is far less than their asking price. If more people shopped that way, we would all pay much less. But I digress...
THE DIFFERENCE is that in any regular commerce situation, you are putting the money up front for a commodity you have not received and will not realize the actual value of until your money is already gone. We're giving you the apple and reminding you there is a tip jar, the proceeds of which we use to be able to bring you more free apples tomorrow.
All that said, if it puts your mind at ease at all, half of the staff is paid, half is volunteer. The ones that are paid earn enough to purchase one or two lunches for themselves every week at a modest restaurant. The rest goes into overhead. There are no rich folks here. If you created a company to do what we do, to cover your cost to an audience of <100k would be $3-$4 per episode. We're hoping you'll consider giving us $.07 per episode, and if you can't or won't we'll still give them to you as long as we can.
There is no extravagant spending, and for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post, there will be no consolidation of the shows. We stand or fall together on the quality and value of our free product.