Found a pretty good solution for those UK crunchers without a CC. Looked into the NBS one, forget it, the charges are too high. Noticed my wifes bank among the list.

So later today, will be applying to Lloyds TSB bank for one of their Travel Cards, they do 2, Euros & US Dollars. There is a card application fee of £7.50 but there is no monthly fees to use it. All foreign transactions have a charge of 2.75% & this sure beats Western Union's charge.

All the others have a monthly fee to use & a fairly high Card application fee.
Once the card is loaded, it takes 2 working days before that amount can be used.

Great, now I can make those regular monthly donations as promised. September's will follow as soon as I receive card.

Edit - A great advantage is that you can set your own maximum loading - I'm setting mine at £50.00($100) & should you experience CNP or any other CC fraud, they won't have any luck as ALL transactions have to be authorised & if card has insufficient funds, it is invalidated.

Excellent information. You are to be commended for your diligence and spending your own personal time to find a solution for this ongoing problem. Thank You!

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Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....

Excellent information. You are to be commended for your diligence and spending your own personal time to find a solution for this ongoing problem. Thank You!

Thanks, but it's not I that should be commended, but Ned Ludd for reminding me about those cards, as to be honest, I'd completely forgotten about them.

Also, you are to be COMMENDED for returning this subject to the front & this time around succeeding tremendously. Well Done Sir.

Let's all keep these ideas flowing.............

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I would donate more if I knew for sure ALL the money went to Seti. When I donate I get a bunch of junk that does cost money that I don't want. It makes me feel as though I am donating to Berkeley and not seti, I don't want to donate to Berkeley as they do too many things I don't believe in.

Realize that UC Berkeley is the landlord, mind you landlord that pays the phone bill, the electricity, water, heat and A/C. Even if you donated directly to SETI, some of your funds would end up with UC Berkeley because SETI does have to pay rent. Of course you could check out the hardware donation thread and send equipment. Hard for UC to take a slice off a computer as landlord.

UC also has the IRS letter that allows you, if you are in the US anyway, to write your donation off you income taxes. That means they are also paying a lawyer and an accountant to do things for SETI. I don't know who pays for the observing time on the dish, but I don't think SETI is paying for it by itself.

Now if you have a big enough bone to pick with UC, then perhaps you shouldn't even be crunching because after all is said and done BOINC belongs to UC not SETI or any of the other projects using it.

Gary

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The answer is no. Each 501c is not only govered by the IRS, but more closely by the individual states too.

Yet there might be a workaround, but it would take time for me to put it together and of course a lawyer/s would have to review it.

Let me know, if I should persue it, since I have a little experience in running a 501c.

I'm pretty sure SETI could get in to:
http://www.escrip.com/
especially with the UC connection.

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To answer a question posted earlier. Astropulse is a funded project.

Huh? Astropulse is funded, Seti@home is not? How can Astropulse ride piggyback on unfunded servers & resources ? Seems backwards to me.

I smell rotten fish...

Afterthought: Let's get some cash from Astropulse...

No, can't do that. I saw elsewhere in the thread that the US can't fund SETI, but it can fund looking for pulses from black holes. Officially Astropulse isn't looking only SETI, but will find it if it is out there using wide band com. So it can get US funding, but SETI can't because SETI isn't looking for anything else.

The smell you sense is congress, the opposite of progress.

With all the talk about credit cards I surprised no one has mentioned a SETI affinity credit card.

Gary

Hi Guys, just returned from town. What's the matter with financial institutions these days? Don't they want MONEY?

The bank don't deal with the pre-paid cards at the branches, it has to be done online. No problems, so I thought, apply for one online - no chance, to get one you NEED A CREDIT CARD!

As far as I'm concerned, it's one crazy mixed up world!!!

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With all the talk about credit cards I surprised no one has mentioned a SETI affinity credit card.

Gary

I think that would be a great idea to look into.....

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

One prepaid CC winging it's way to me shortly. Got really miffed with Lloyds TSB, decided to check online again.

Virgin Money do a prepaid CC for an Initial Fee of £9.95, no monthly fees & 2.95% on all transactions.

Received confirmation & card should arrive by 26th. Will have to load card & then register it, so I hope I can get it done before the end of the month.

Have checked out the site & think that it's worth it for those other crunchers here in the UK without CC's to apply for one. It only takes a couple of minutes to apply.

Virgin Money

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UPDATE: I summarized and sent all the info to Eric Korpela. I apologize for the delay but Monday had some unexpected medical appointments I needed to attend to.

Hope to hear back from him shortly.

Any other thoughts??

Is it time for another fundraising drive?

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UPDATE: I summarized and sent all the info to Eric Korpela. I apologize for the delay but Monday had some unexpected medical appointments I needed to attend to.

Hope to hear back from him shortly.

Any other thoughts??

Is it time for another fundraising drive?

Not sure it is time yet. Maybe time to line up some people or companies to do a challenge though. Always works better when donations can be multiplied.

I haven't come up with any new ideas, but I thought it was worthwhile to keep this topic up towards the top. Instead of being about to go to page 2.

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I haven't come up with any new ideas, but I thought it was worthwhile to keep this topic up towards the top. Instead of being about to go to page 2.

Nice one. Don't know whether the following is sensible............

How about 2 special donation drives, Individual & company.

The company that donates the most being given free advertising on the main seti page for a year & the individual that donates the most in a year given a unique gift from the project.

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I haven't come up with any new ideas, but I thought it was worthwhile to keep this topic up towards the top. Instead of being about to go to page 2.

Nice one. Don't know whether the following is sensible............

How about 2 special donation drives, Individual & company.

The company that donates the most being given free advertising on the main seti page for a year & the individual that donates the most in a year given a unique gift from the project.

Wonderful idea, but the University strictly regulates advertising on University properties -- like the SETI@Home web site.

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Would that also include the boinc program? Couldn't we put something for the top company in the seti graphic?

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I haven't come up with any new ideas, but I thought it was worthwhile to keep this topic up towards the top. Instead of being about to go to page 2.

Nice one. Don't know whether the following is sensible............

How about 2 special donation drives, Individual & company.

The company that donates the most being given free advertising on the main seti page for a year & the individual that donates the most in a year given a unique gift from the project.

Wonderful idea, but the University strictly regulates advertising on University properties -- like the SETI@Home web site.

I thought it might be that. However, what about providing a sponsored link page showing the companies that donate & on that page provide links to each company? Surely, that can't be construed as advertising?

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Would that also include the boinc program? Couldn't we put something for the top company in the seti graphic?

IANAL, but yes, I believe it would.

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I thought it might be that. However, what about providing a sponsored link page showing the companies that donate & on that page provide links to each company? Surely, that can't be construed as advertising?

They can acknowledge donors, but there are limits. It doesn't provide a whole lot of value in the same way actual "advertising" would.

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I thought it might be that. However, what about providing a sponsored link page showing the companies that donate & on that page provide links to each company? Surely, that can't be construed as advertising?

They can acknowledge donors, but there are limits. It doesn't provide a whole lot of value in the same way actual "advertising" would.

Thanks Ned. Oh well, have to get my brain cells thinking again. ;)

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Hello fellow crunchers.

I read this whole thread and now I want to give my opinion, too.

Most crunchers don´t only have SETI attached in their BOINC Client, but one ore more other projects. If SETI can´t produce enough work for all the processing power out there, it´s NOT a problem, the clients will do other projects.

I´m correct, that - for example:
http://boincstats.com/stats/user_graph.php?pr=sah&id=585873
is NOT a Seti-Stats Page, but a page somebody set up to use Stat-Data from SETI - and of EVERY other project run on the boinc Client?

If you know what computing hours on a supercomuter would cost - you get an idea how much all the users already donate to the project!
If someone decides to make a finanical donation on top of that, then that really earns my respect and should be gladly accepted as bonus.
To even think about getting a anual fee from us crunchers, or a payage for the statistics, that are - in my opinion - some kind af "reward" for the done work and help to the project and a steady motivation to continue, is a really bad idea.

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Now I have some suggestions what we could do to really help the project.
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Some really good (imho) ideas already surfaced in this post:

-Make a calender with a universe related theme (eventually one month with a picture of a seti Classic WU with fancy spikes and gaussians -- one month with pictures of the working staff, or the eqipment of the project) -- and others shown planets or something related.

-Sell unique SETI-merchandise like caps and shirts (eventually with an autogramm of the staff on it?) - eventually done through a partnership with a company - something like ThinkGeek.com that sells the stuff with the seti logo and pays/donates 1$ or so for every item sold.

-If the project need hardware, make it a money-donation theme. For example:
20 Harddisks 1TB (2000€), 10 SATA Controllers (100€) uswusw.
You would get a summary of money that is needed to push the project forward. -- in this example it would be 2100€ (+ the money that goes to Berkley -- so in reality ~3000€ ore more would be needed in this case...ok, it´s just an example).
The donators would have a goal, how much money is needed - and they would see the direct effect where the money did go -- after a new server boots up and starts to show himself an the server-stats page.


Regards, KyleFL

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