James R Gordon

Members who post without photo - like Jackie Ow- are well aware of the rules of this forum. I am fed up with such flouting of our rules. Such members will no longer have the right to post. They should contact me when they have attached a true image of themselves and I will return their posting rights. James Gordon Owner of Site

AS of now I will be responsible for all new applicants. Anyone who wishes to join the forum must have been verified by me. James Gordon Owner of site

I support Sandys fundraising drive. One thing experience has taught me is the EF needs is reliable fundraising. The quicker members begin to raise funds for the EF the better. I urge members to ignore my donation system in preferencce to Sandy's. His system is now the EF future donation system. The EF needs funds to exist and I urge members to start donating at Education Forum Fundraiser James

Sandy, I did contact Invision today about your system They responded as follows. As mentioned in previous correspondance, we do not provide direct banking payments. We provide only the facility to pay via card at the present time. You would add your new card to 'My Details>Cards' within your client area, and remove any that are already present. Any payments required would automatically be taken from that card I believe that your system does not offer a debit card and therefore is not acceptable to Invision. James.

Sandy, I have had a look at your link. I have no problems with your system - which has big advantages over mine - picking up at the end of November. How are you making payment to Invision. The EF will go black if Invision do not receive their payment by December 4th. 2022. I have lost your bank details. Please send me them again and I will forward them to Invision for their approval. James.

The donations so far raised see the EF funded though to the end of November. After November we do not have sufficient money to pay the EF subscription. I understood that Sandy was creating a separate system that had the distinct advantage of not requiring the cost to transfer funds from $ into £. This is a significant advantage in Sandy’s system because there would not be a loss of funds transferring $ into £ as well as the weakness of the £ in the UK. Although the subscription to Invision is $70 it now cost me $82 to pay the subscription from the UK. I am happy to continue to make the Invision subscription but because of the economic conditions in the UK it is now more expensive if I am to do it. A rough calculation suggests that from December 2022 to December 2023 would require us to raise around $1.000. It is up to members. If members want me to continue making the payments until December next year it will require a donation of $1, 000. There is $20 still remaining in the donation fund. James.

At present we have sufficient funds to see us through to November. We will need a donation drive to get us through December and later. Kathy suggested that we might want to begin that drive around October so that this time we get ourselves ahead of the game. I think that is a good idea. One issue I believe the forum needs to be aware of is that though Invision only charge us $70 it is now costing us around $90 to pay the $70 bill. That is due to the fall in the value of the £. The more the £ falls the more expensive that $70 cost is. James

Bill, Your name has been brought to my attention a number of times before. Best not to insult researchers of the quality of Vince. James

Unless I have ,made an error:- 25 members donated. That means aside from those 4 who did not donate $5 - 21 members donated $5. James.

Chris, Total of $353: 99 donated One member donated $50 One member donated $10 Two members donated $100 Everyone else donated $5 James.

Nick, It is not clear to me what new link Ron is referring to but there already is a link for donations. Post this link above and it ought to take you to where you can donate - if you are happy to do so. https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/clients/donations/ Alternatively hover your mouse over the tab STORE and you will quickly reveal "Donations" I can assure you the link works because we have already taken considerable donations thid psdy week. Thank you for your interest. James

Thanks Sandy that is very interesting. The admin team are already thinking this way. That said the present system appears to work. Through the present donation drive we have collected just under $300. Twenty seven people have participated and two members donated $100 each. Had it not been stipulated that donations be $5 the sum might well have been larger. Essentially I read this to suggest that we already have a working model and maybe we should stay with that - at least for the present. James.

Jonathan, That is correct. Further I and the admin tean have the sole contract with Invision for the EF. While that is the case no other individual/s would be able to create an agreement with Invision regarding the EF while we have the contract with Invision. Only the admin team have the contract with Invision. James.

On August 1st I initiated this thread. The burden of being responsible to Invision had got me down. I was asked by Ty Carpenter did my statement mean I was open to someone else taking ownership of the forum. I answered Yes and pointed out the financial obligations that would result. As well as being exhausted and depressed at that point, I also misunderstood Ty’s question. If my answer on the 1st - as well as subsequent comments - have allowed members to believe that new ownership of the EF is now a possibility I have to make clear that is not going to happen. I have no intention of resigning and I bitterly regret that my responses have given rise to such speculation. The ownership of the EF will remain with the present admin team. James

Ron, I have agreed to keep to myself the findings of the donations to date. I have agreed I will make that public on Thursday. Your gestimate about the sum collected so far is in the right neck of the woods. You astutely commented on the on the impact of the $100 donations. They do impact on the total so far. Again you highlight the issue of the number of members donating. That is my overriding concern. In 2019 [ the year of the last major donation drive ] we had a much larger active membership. The August 2022 active membership is much reduced and that has an impact on the total of monies that can be raised and what is needed from the present membership to raise the requirement not just for the coming year - but for every year after that. That - in my mind Ron - was your most astute and troubling current issue raised. James.

Ron, Though I am in danger of irritating Chris, that is a fairly good descriptio of the current situation. Your comment on the number of donors is a comment worth highlighting as indeed is the idea of repetative donations. If - and I do not say it will happen - we breach the current bandwidth and are placed by Invision into the $120 bandwidth then we are in a different ball game. Looking - tonight - at the broadband chart Invision provide we are much safer and are now no longer in danger of being bumped up. James

Sabdy, As I explained to you my paypal account is a collection account. It was Invision who said the monthy subscription could be linked and the monthly payment could be taken from that account. I never linked my paypal account I linked the bank account. James

Sandy, I am not sure that “the transfer is unrelated to business and therefore there are no taxes involved.“ That may be your view, I am not sure the IRS will see it that way. We rent this site from a commercial bussiness and we collect monies in order pay a subscription to that same business You say when a forum members send a donation to the forum owner's PayPal account, they should mark it as a "Personal" transfer because they are not buying anything from that person. But is it personal? The funds being raised are in order to pay a business its rent. Will the IRS see a point of interest in members labeling funds as personal when those same funds are specifically to pay the business from whom we rent this sit??? James.

Sandy, The references to the Paypal account was not the central point of my post. You announced to the forum that the new paypal would be desinated one for contributing funds to friends and family. Although I do not know all the details of US financial laws, I questioned that if the paypal account is a means to collect funds to pay a commercial organisation bills - and indeed we would link that account with that very commercial organisation whose bills we are paying - I am curious why the authorities would not question how such an account could be defined simply as a means to raise money for friends and family. James

Sandy said: “There is a new IRS rule (for 2022) that requires PayPal to notify the IRS if an account has collected more than $600 during the tax year. That's the bad news. The good news is that rule only applies to payments for goods and services that you are selling. When you send money to a PayPal account, you need to specify whether the money is for the purchase of goods and services, or if it is a personal payment to a family member or friend. The latter would be used in our case. In fact, it is common practice for a person who paid for dinner to ask friends to reimburse him through his PayPal account. “ Sandy I have nowhere near the understanding of IRS regulations as you do. If we are to use the Paypal account to collect monies to pay for a service - and the subscription is paying for a service from Invision. We are monthly paying Invision the cost of hosting the EF site - then I am puzzled how that would qualify as personal payment to family member or friend. You know the code far better than I. But the function of this account appears to run against what I imagine is implied in the meaning of personal payment to a family member or friend. By the way the jump from $70 to $120 is all about bandwidth: the number of users on line and posting and searching. As pointed out we are coming close to the $120 bandwidth. James

Yes there is a Paypal avvount attached to the EF, The account linked to Invision is actually a bank account. I use the paypal account as a collection account. No the name on the account foes not need to be the same. What is required is to link the new Paypal account with Invision. James

Chris, I am not sure I agree. But lets leave discussion until Friday August 12th. James

Sean, It is not Crazy. If permisable it is something we shou;d look into. James

Gil, I understand your point. It does have merit. I feel this is am issue for the mebership not the admin team. James

Jean Paul Ceulemans said I would, no matter what and in the future, review the current contract. I still find this contract rather expensive and insecure. 1) An entity on a tight budget looses all control in not knowing how much will be charged each month. I mean, in this contract it's either 70 or 120 their going to take, and there is nothing we can do about it.... One can only budget the WCS (120) and hope for the best ? No good to me... Invision have been in touch about purchasing Creator. As I recollect it is a cheaper option. It is a single yearly cost and we would only pay $1068. What is not clear is whether internet usage by members still applies. The two prices that have affected us is the 100 users per two days for which we are charged $ 70 per month or next stage which involves us $120 per month. And there are higher rates. Because our membership has reduced I am not convinced increased internet usage will affect our monthly costs. Jean Paul Ceulemans said 2) There is the user limit on posting media. There are ways around that, MOST other forums don't do it like this, they prefer doing it by using Postimages or another service alike. Yes, I agree, that will take a little more time posting a picture (10 seconds max....), but you do not have to worry about maxima... It seems THIS forum doesn't allow it in it's current form, I have tried it, but it doesn't work, I'll do some more testing because it is strange, could be I'm doing something wrong ! I’ll look into that and see if it can be further increased.