I just thought I'd sum up the stuff that's been discussed so far.

The consensus seems to be that many of us DO want:

(1)for Dick to do more if he can;
(2) for Dick to work on the 'Cat full time if it can be financed in a way that feels good to everybody; and
(3) for Dick to consider writing The Book.

We DON'T want a charge for Mudcat membership, posting, e-mail or personal messages.

We DO want an easy, ongoing way to make donations.

We MIGHT want:,
(1) Auctions of donated stuff;
(2) Sale of donated stuff'
(3) Benefit concerts etc for the Mudcat;
(4) Automated monthly deduction of pledged donations; and
(5) Free membership but also "supporting" memberships, with levels of donation/support, and a premium (t-shirt, iron-on transfer, or wonderful donated handcrafted thingy) for certain levels of donation.

Did I leave anything out?

kat, in one post you said: " Forgot to say: if you figure a conservative 10% (370) of the 3700 listed giving $10 per month =$ 120/year X 370 = $ 11,100.00 " My trusty, rusty calculator says it would come to $44,000.00. If ONLY 84 PEOPLE contributed $10 a month, we would have the $10,000. But $10 a month is an awful lot of money for most of us. Still it's a starting place for discussion. I had in mind more like $3 a month. That would take 278 donating members. Still a lot actually. Hmmm .

Annap, Dick is already marketing his considerable talents in the real world. That's why he doesn't have as much time for the Mudcat as he'd like. He's willing to take a substantial drop in income to do the work he loves best.

The thing that scares me most -- I expected more folks to contribute their own points of view to this thread. Do you suppose the only people who would support the Mudcat at this level are the ones who've been posting to this thread?