May I ask if/how the dollar/euro exchange rate is taken into account?
Especially since (as of lately) 1€ = 1.5$ (1.48 at the moment).
And, if fundraising takes about 1 year, there is reasonable exchange rate risk involed (at least if a significant amount of donations is in euro’s) right?
In this case: (for example) if a large part of the donations are in euro’s, and they are not yet exchaged for dollars, the euro’s of januari/june are worth more than 110% in dollars now.
If the exchange rate would have declined, the reverse would have been true.
It is almost impossible to keep the right ‘value’ up-to-date (unless euro donations are exchanged immediately for the (at that moment) current rate, especially if payments have to be made monthly, but nevertheless can make a big difference. For example: the $1248 were equivalent to about €945 at the beginning of this year and are equivalent to €843 today (I know, since the money in my pokeraccount ($) is worth 10% less … ).
So I wonder, any exchange rate specialism/hedging involed here?
I generally use the rate 1.2 to convert, but lately I use 1.3 or 1.35, since paypal also takes off a fee, and the exchange rate of paypal is a bit less than the official one.
So if someone donates in euro’s, i convert that into dollars immediately, to calculate. If you donate in euro’s through paypal, it stays in my account as euros, until I have to make a payment. At that time, paypal converts it to dollars. But right now my paypal account is empty and the money comes from my bank account, through paypal.
I pay the hosting per month. But it is easier to have a fundraiser for a whole year instead of doing one for every month.
If you are the PM that donated recently, (thank you ) I used 1.35 as exchange rate I made a calculation error, that’s why it may seem that you donated less, but I discovered I made a small error in the calculation, before it would all add up to $1240, while it has to add up to $1248.
Thanks for the quick and clear response.
It appeared to me as if you had some kind of system in which you would wait for the last moment to convert everything, which is kind of unpredictable (esp. over the course of a year) . But now I get it.
And thank you for an informative and useful website/forum.
There you go Q a Hungie should be in your account right about now… well acutlly once the currency rips it to shreads it will be more like…60? anyway, thank you for this site Q. Happy Dreaming for 2008
hi lord syn If you use paypal you will automatically get an option to donate dollar or euros. If you select to donate euro’s paypal will handle the conversion automatically
I dont’ want to give donors special priveleges, since other people help out too, and just because you are able to help out money wise shouldnt’ be a reason for extra priveleges. I also don’t want to create an atmosphere here that people can buy their way into things.
thanks for those suggestions about e-gold and paybaycash, i’ll check them out. I’m now locking this topic since it is old and I don’t want to see it bumped every time