As an anti-social and rather flighty cognition researcher I'm afraid that I am very short on the time, expertise, or leadership and personnel coordination skills necessary to aide this organization in any meaningful capacity beyond the occasional proposal of random ideas, but I thank you very much for your offer, though I must decline it is nonetheless an honor to be offered a position within your illustrious and merry band (and in writing this I am not attempting to disingenuously play the anti-cultist "I am not worthy of this honor" card from the
Munchkin Cthulhu boardgame).
In the case of my specific suggestions above I feel that collecting "tags" or posting high-fidelity episodes under a single official "Escape Artists" Youtube account (afforded important posting privileges by Youtube after introductory correspondence) would likely be better suited to a large, scalable workforce of sweatshop-wage employees given the sheer size of the information-load involved:
http://www.salon.com/2006/07/24/turks_3/https://www.mturk.com/mturk/Attractive for the ability of MTurk workers to listen and be entertained while doing mindless image-related work. Cutting the EA podcasts into small "episode blocks" with careful instructions and then paying 5 cents per episode best properly tagged or first uploaded to Youtube sequentially (then posting a new block) would likely supersede the abilities or efficiencies of hiring a call-center in India or Malaysia to do the entire archive very quickly with a lump single payment (although many modern Silicon Valley corporations prefer this method given the abundant and surprising technological and linguistic proficiencies available through this route).
Likewise one could attempt to harness the listeners to volunteer for this work to save more money, but so soon after a funding drive this risks seeming needy and demanding- which could theoretically be supplanted by making the task into a raffle contest for a stuffed EA "undead unicorn astronaut?" mascot, or a personnel portrait from "The Word Whore", or the exclusive right to demand a full-cast 45 minute production of ANY work (even
50 Shades of Grey), or other such nonsense, although of course on the other hand the response or interest by listeners might be insufficient, and the assignment of tasks though the forums or email could quickly spiral into an organizational clusterfrack, also at the same time discarding the possibility of the first two options permanently increasing the size of the listener-base.
One could offer this work while doing fundraisers or hypothetical Kickstarters as an alternative for "those who would like to help out but have no monetary resources to do so", but this carries many of the same risks of disinterest as the previous scenario, and could also backfire in becoming too popular an option over collecting the money that EA needs, a figurative parallel to
The Israeli Childcare Experiment.
If a talented programmer could write a quick "script macro" to automatically transfer episodes from saved audio-engineering files or the website programming into proper Youtube format, that could perhaps cut costs and time significantly, although I assume that this is an unreasonable assumption of available assets.
Lastly one could rely solely on the existing members of the forum, but while this could be the best qualitative insurance of automatic, implicit respect for the subject material, manpower shortages in tagging or uploadership might drag the true fans involved into the realms of Sisyphean madness for years of grinding hardship while distracting from the progression other important facets of the brand (like giving thoughtful story feedback, or assisting with editing or production, or outreach to new listeners, or feeling like they need to continue to be financial donors, etc.)
Those with deeper insight into the community or the finances might hold different opinions on this subject through a superior perceptual vantage-point, but I felt that you might benefit from my recommendation as some food for thought (hopefully).
Thank you for all of the stories.