History of RRDi Registrations

[Guide]

For fifteen years (2006 thru 2020) we encouraged free registrations which required at the very minimum an email address to become a RRDi member. We had over 1000 registrations which included contact information, i.e., names, phone numbers and mailing addresses who were designated VOTING MEMBERS. Then in July 2017 we allowed NON VOTING members to register with JUST AN EMAIL address and this decreased our membership slightly but did notice that more chose this registration over including their contact information! We now had over 500 non voting registrations compared to over 1000 who did give us contact information. From this we discerned that privacy is a paramount issue with rosaceans.

From April 2006 thru June 2017 members were required to give us names, mailing addresses and phone numbers to be a voting member of the RRDi which is a total of 135 months and we registered 1056 members (average 7.8 registrations/month). From July 2017 thru January 2021 (43 months) we allowed NON VOTING members to just register an email address with out names, addresses, or phone numbers and this period we decreased our registrations  (333 registrations) slightly to an average of 7.7 registrations/month. So this may or may not have helped at all. Then in February 2021 we did something dramatic. We closed off most of our website to just members only and allowed GUESTS to view just a small percentage of our website requiring guests to REGISTER (with just an email address) to view the vast majority of our rosacea content categorized in logical forums. We noticed an increase in registrations dramatically.

So for one year (February 2021 thru January 2022) we increased our registrations by 262 which is an average of 21.8 registrations/month! However, membership during this period was free! Most only registered with just an email address or used the Sign in with Apple registration.

Then in February 2022 we required initially a subscription fee of $1 to access the member forum and discovered that PayPal gets 51 cents processing fee and the RRDi only received 49 cents. We decided immediately to increase the subscription to a minimum of $2/month (allowing discount subscriptions at $1/month for three or more months). Registrations decreased significantly to only four paid subscriptions during this period (February thru April).

We do waive the subscription fees for certain volunteers. However, not everyone wants to volunteer. We have noticed that most guests are not willing to pay for a subscription to view our rosacea data.

Google Sheet on History of RRDi Registrations

The current cost of keeping this website going along with keeping up with non profit registrations in two states, etc., and all other expenses is about $1200/year. That is because we don't have salaries or pay private contractors or having board members, or any other members take 60% of the donations (learn more). Everyone here at the RRDi are volunteers in the true sense, no paid salaries like so many other non profit organizations do. We need a core of about 100 members who are willing to pay $1/month for an entire year by subscribing for our 12/month subscription which would keep it going. 

We are keeping a record in our financial report of the registered subscription members user names if you scroll down to our 2022 Financial Report to the subheading "Donations." All subscriptions are tax deductible. If we can get 100 subscribers donating at least $1/month we could probably keep the RRDi going. Any thoughts on any of this?  If you think you can do a better way to keep this non profit patient advocacy grassroots organization going, all you gotta do is reply to this post and post your thoughts, critique, comment or complaint.