Funding Goal Achieved: Thank You!

Posted on March 9, 2010 by | Posted in about LibriVox, For Volunteers, News | Comments: 11 Comments on Funding Goal Achieved: Thank You!

Dear LibriVox supporters, friends, volunteers:

Two weeks ago we sent out a request for donations towards a $20,000 fundraising campaign. We outlined why on this post (with a number of questions answered in the comments thread). You responded with generosity, and we can now close down our campaign.

So:

Thank you!

We got to our target so quickly it warms our hearts. Not only did people donate, but this campaign also allowed many many people to express their appreciation for all the hard and wonderful work done by LibriVox volunteers.

We won’t have to talk about money again for a few years. Instead, we’ll get back to working hard to fulfill our mission, which is:

To make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet.

So: Thank you again.

For those curious:

Campaign Details:

We raised $23,000 from 433 donors, in 13 days, averaging $1,769 in donations from 33 people every day. We had a couple of big donors, who gave a few thousand dollars each, and many more smaller donations which all add up to: everything we asked for. Thank you again.

LibriVox Details:

This money will help support our efforts, which so far have resulted in the following:
* 3773: Total number of projects
* 3227: Number of completed projects
* 470: Number of completed non-English projects
* 31: Total number of languages
* 28: Number of languages with a completed work
* 1498: Number of completed solo projects
* 3549: Number of readers
* 3347: …who have completed something

Total recorded time: 66472509 seconds, or 2 years, 38 days, 20 hours, 57 minutes, and 37 seconds. Total of 66978 sections.

Have I said thank you? Well: thank you again! Oh, and a very special thank-you to our friends and supporters at the Internet Archive, especially Jacques and Brewster, who managed the donations for us so that we didn’t have to worry about setting up paypal accounts and all the rest.

And now, back to making free, public domain audiobooks.

All the best,

Hugh McGuire.

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11 comments

  1. Graham says:

    Congratulations on meeting your goal! I donated because I check librivox everyday and am embarassed that I haven’t donated my time as well. Thanks to everyone for all your hard work and celebration of books, especially books that deserve to be better known. Trawling through librivox isn’t just a chance to find a recording of something you know, but a chance to find out about books you wouldn’t have known about otherwise. In my day job teaching political theory, I often cite librivox as a wonderful example of an online global community that makes individual initiative possible without hierarchy, so thanks for that too.

  2. hugh says:

    Thanks Graham – funny you should say that. LibriVox came very explicitly out of thinking I was doing about using the web for (good) anarchist organizing … and it was an experiment in applying these ideals/methods, successfully implemented in software dev, to a non-software problem. wikipedia of course blazed the trail, but what’s interesting is how sustained and focused our efforts are: there is a beginning, middle, end to each of our books, unlike a wikipedia article, which is open ended; and further, there are very specific things that need to get done to have an publishable audiobook at the end.

    though i guess it should be said that there are hierarchies of a kind have been established, with rules and regulations and various kinds of mostly-benevolent, and entirely necessary “bureaucracy”.

    still the approach has always been:
    -establish a clear goal
    -define certain clear perameters
    -and then more or less let people do as they please

    i used to call it anarchy with an iron fist, though things are very different now that LV is so established, with so embedded culture and “ways of doing things” … and i guess we are far more rigid now than we used to be.

  3. Lucy_k_p says:

    Wonderful. Thank you everyone for your donations and kind comments.

  4. Congratulations, Librivoxians!

  5. Matt Stiltner says:

    Is there a way that we can donate now? I have only recently learned of the Librivox project through Learnoutloud.com.

    I’m fascinated by the concept, and it was literally something I wanted to try for myself. Reading books, and recording them in audio format, so those with sight impairment can enjoy the works of the past, and hopefully more recently.

    If you could please respond and/or e-mail on how besides recording, I could donate a small amount of money to the project.

    Thanks again, and keep up the good work, everyone involved, from volunteers to the people behind the scenes. Excellent project, that deserves every bit of praise it gets.

  6. Mina Milad Aziz says:

    really thank you v.much to your friends, supporters, the donations managers, the idea creater and everyone work hard in this project.

  7. LibriVox Admin Team says:

    @Matt Stiltner

    We get most of our texts from Project Gutenberg, and the Internet Archive hosts our audio files (for free!). Many texts on Project Gutenberg are transcribed by volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders.

    So we should be delighted if you would consider supporting one of these organisations, which all help us in one way or another to produce more and more audio recordings: Project Gutenberg
    Internet Archive
    Distributed Proofreaders Foundation.

    Thank you!

  8. leila says:

    I am delighted you reached your goal so rapidly! So many people in your organization work so hard-I love seeing good work rewarded.
    I also appreciate your sharing your “accounting” with the public. If all the organizations/politics of the world were so clear and clean this would be a much better world. Thank you for modeling behavior I can be inspired by!

  9. emijrp says:

    Hi. This project is amazing. I have just know about it. Congratulations and keep up the good work. Regards.

  10. Simon says:

    This site has been of enormous benefit to my mother who is nearly blind. The local library’s talking book range was almost exhausted until we found a machine that plays mp3s. Librivox’s range is so vast, and much broader and deeper than most audiobook titles, with everything from ‘Pericle’s Funeral Oration’ to ‘Mystery Collections’. What’s more, its wonderful hearing the different accents from all around the world. God Bless Librivox!

  11. LibriVoxer says:

    Thank you, Simon! We are always so pleased to hear of listeners who enjoy our recordings. I will post your comment in the forum.

    If there is anyone you would like to thank at any point, there is a ‘Thank a Reader’ page on the Wiki HERE and we should love to hear from you.

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