Generous Donation

[Swift]

I wanted to let the community know that a donor who wishes to remain anonymous has made a donation so that we can double the size of our server for the next 3 years.

[mkline55]

Thanks to all the donors.

[Moose]

Huh. Well thanks, oh anonymous one.

[Hlafordlaes]

Thanks!

[Cougar]

Thanks to all the donors.

Exactly. And especially the major donor. Appreciated by many, I'm sure.

[Buttercup]

Thank you!

[LookingSkyward]

Anonymous one, our thanks.


best,
dave

[geonuc]

Awesome.

[MarkB]

Thanks Anon,

Have our glorious overlords stepped in to say thanks yet?

[Nick Theodorakis]

Add my "thanks" to the chorus.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

thank to all out donairs, sorry donors.

[danscope]

Many thanks to our anonymous benefactor and friend. The one has provided for the many.

[Arneb]

Many thanks from me as well.

[Solfe]

Thank you very much.

[Tobin Dax]

That's quite a donation. Thanks to you, major donor, and to everyone else who donated as well.

[Trebuchet]

Thanks to all donors and I hope this helps turn things around.

[jfribrg]

I for one welcome our Anonomous Overlord.

Thank you.

[Noclevername]

Thanks, donors. BIG THANKS, big donor.

[publiusr]

Thank you to our secret santa.

[geonuc]

We may be in need of another generous donation if what Pamela Gay tweeted is true: NASA has dropped sponsorship of CQ (and other ventures).

[Gillianren]

Would that mean we'd get our colour scheme back?

[NEOWatcher]

We may be in need of another generous donation if what Pamela Gay tweeted is true: NASA has dropped sponsorship of CQ (and other ventures).

It's a good thing she has the information in a tweet instead of actually explaining it on CQ or it's forum... Certainly the update since your post about the upcomming eclipse is more important to us.

Ok; that may be a bit unfair. She may be writing a real response for us as we speak.
It's one of the reasons that I hate twitter. Get people all riled up with a short scary note without any explanation.

[tusenfem]

i have not heard anything yet ...

[Trebuchet]

We may be in need of another generous donation if what Pamela Gay tweeted is true: NASA has dropped sponsorship of CQ (and other ventures).

Or how about multiple smaller donations?

Since I went to look it up, here's the tweet in question:
https://twitter.com/starstryder/stat...42288164495361

[NoisyAstronomer]

Hey there, I see the tweet in question and can hopefully give it some context.

The program is the NASA ROSES EPOESS grant call. (ROSES = Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences, and EPOESS is a subset of that, the Opportunities in Education and Public Outreach for Earth and Space Science.) That's generally a grant call for education and public outreach type projects that use data from NASA missions. It was an EPOESS grant that kicked off CosmoQuest and has funded it for the last almost three years. That grant runs out at the end of the December. The EPOESS grant call was officially cancelled in the last few days because of the way that education and public outreach funding within NASA is being restructured. This is a result of the initial attempt to merge all federal science education programs that at first, had no role for NASA and was later changed, amid much outcry, to include NASA. This means we can't apply for new funding under that specific grant to keep CosmoQuest going. We hoped to do so for the 2013 grant call... but it was cancelled among the restructuring chaos. The 2014 grant call was postponed... and is now officially cancelled as NASA works internally to reorganize its education and outreach efforts.

NASA isn't pulling any funding; we got all the money we asked for. We just have to seek new sources of funds since this one is no more. Although the official cancellation of EPOESS is sad news, it's not a surprise either, which is why Pamela has been typing her fingers off proposing through other grant calls and why we've been working to get private donations via social media and the Hangoutathons of the last two years. EPOESS was great because it was such a good fit for our mission, now we and other NASA-related outreach projects have to search elsewhere (and have been already for some time). I'm not as fully plugged into the inner workings of NASA, so I can't honestly tell you where it's going, but through other grant calls and continued support from users, CosmoQuest can keep going.

I hope that allays any fears of a sudden drop in funding, but lets you know that we do really, really, super appreciate any support you have given or could give in the future. Multiple small donations have been driving us up until now, but that doesn't rule out the awesomeness that a bigger corporate sponsor or hugely generous donor would bring.

Thanks, all.

[Gillianren]

Is it possible to see the financial paperwork? Because we've gotten a lot of conflicting information about funding since the takeover.

[OnePlus]

Is it possible to see the financial paperwork? Because we've gotten a lot of conflicting information about funding since the takeover.

Does the paperwork need to be consistent?

[geonuc]

Hey there, I see the tweet in question and can hopefully give it some context.....

Thanks for the clarification.

[Trebuchet]

My recollection is that there was a paperwork kerfuffle a couple of years ago that caused CQ to lose it's 503(c) tax exempt status. Before making a contribution, I'd like to have it confirmed that that's been corrected so that contributions are deductible. Can anyone confirm that? I can't find it on the website.

(A tad later...)

OK, I went and found this:

*Please Note: Our provisional non-profit status for Astrosphere from when we formed is under review. The IRS has cashed our processing check, but nearly a year later we’re still waiting to hear if we get to keep our non-profit status. This means we have no idea if your donation is tax deductible in the USA. We hope this message can be replaced with a “YES! 501(c)(3) status in place,” but we want to be upfront about our status.

I don't know how long ago that was. An update would be VERY helpful. Especially for me, since I deducted a contribution last year and am wondering if I should file an ammended return.

[NoisyAstronomer]

My recollection is that there was a paperwork kerfuffle a couple of years ago that caused CQ to lose it's 503(c) tax exempt status. Before making a contribution, I'd like to have it confirmed that that's been corrected so that contributions are deductible. Can anyone confirm that? I can't find it on the website.

(A tad later...)

OK, I went and found this:


I don't know how long ago that was. An update would be VERY helpful. Especially for me, since I deducted a contribution last year and am wondering if I should file an ammended return.

I've asked, and Astrosphere still does not have confirmation of 501(c)(3) status.

Since CosmoQuest is a University program, donations to it go through the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Foundation, and is 501(c)(3): http://www.siue.edu/give/faqs.shtml

Pamela can provide financials if given specifics. She adds, "Bottom line, our budget is about $400,000 a year and most of that goes to salary, I am the lowest paid person (going part time to reserve money for others.)"

I've asked Pamela to comment on this thread once she's home (driving from distant Apple store!)

I'll add that I'm currently PT on CosmoQuest now as well, the rest of my time on teaching and other outreach projects with the university. But it's nearing the end of my post-doc term anyway!