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I'm not advocating that anybody that participates here be shamed for not contributing monetarily. On the other hand, these seemingly non-stop Freepathons are starting to make this website look like PBS. I'm almost expecting to see Jerry Lewis show up here!

Just thinking out loud here, I know that the Freepathons happen each quarter and the current quarterly target to keep the bills paid is $88,000. Divide that among the active Freepers and it might not add up to very much at all.

I have no idea how many Freepers post/lurk here on a regular basis but let's say that number is 5,000. So $88,000 divided by 5,000 equals $17.60 - a quarter. Or just over $5 a month.

Now I'm thinking $5 a month is affordable for most people who use this site.

So my gentle suggestion to the powers that be at Free Republic would be to allow a quarterly recurring donation so that people can donate quarterly - which will be timed with each Freepathon. Currently, the donation options are only "one time" and "monthly". I'm thinking the monthly option might be a bit too much for some people. But a quarterly option would allow them to contribute to each Freepathon automatically and they even if they only give $5 a quarter ($20 a year), it will definitely help drive that number and end the Freepathons a lot quicker.

Lastly, I have a suggestion to make the screen names of all recurring donators appear on this forum in red. Reason for that is to give recognition in the forum for who do make a regular recurring contribution - no matter how small (but we might want to establish a $5 minimum). As soon as the recurring contributions stop, the screen name goes back to black.

Another reason for this is so that people can see right away if their automated donations stop because a credit card number expired or something. Once you set up a recurring payment, it's easy to forget about it and not realize when it stops due to your credit card expiring or renewing with a different number.

I also think many people would do that $5 donation, if just to see their screen name turn red.

Maybe it's a dumb idea and maybe some will take offense to it because they will see it as "shaming" but there you go. I'm just trying to help the cause here, because it is concerning to me that it now takes nearly the full three months to get the quarterly goal - which means we are now in perpetual Freepathon mode.