How To Donate to Exilian

[Glaurung]

As we've said elsewhere, Exilian is a non-profit organisation, supported entirely by donations. Running the forum and other parts of the website costs us real money (at the time of writing, about GBP 5.50 / EUR 6.30 / USD 7.70 per month). In addition, we aim to support creative projects, by our own members and others, and this often involves advertising or other real-world expenses. So we would very much appreciate more donations.

Here are the ways you can donate to us:

UK bank transfers
mainly for people with UK bank accounts
- For one-off donations, you can transfer money from your bank account to Exilian's - see details below.
- For regular donations (e.g. so much at the start of each month), you can set up a "standing order" with your bank - a bit like a direct debit, this is an instruction to them to transfer a fixed amount at the same time every month. You can usually do this online, again using the bank details below.

Exilian changed banks as of December 2021. Our new UK bank details are:
- sort code: 60-04-41
- account no.: 12861081
- account name: Exilian
If you need details for an international transfer (IBAN or SWIFT number), please message me.

If you want to go old-school, you can also write a cheque (or check, if you prefer), payable to "Exilian", and send it to Exilian, 6 Ainsworth Court, Cambridge, CB1 2PA.

People outside the UK can also send money to UK bank accounts, using various reference numbers to identify them. However, there will almost always be currency conversion charges, and often other transfer charges too. For international transfers from EU countries, these should be quite reasonable; from outside the EU they're often prohibitively expensive. We can probably accept cheques in currencies other than UK pounds, but much of their value is likely to be eaten up by currency conversion charges.

PayPal
We have a PayPal account, linked to e-mail address sakellarios@exilian.co.uk - you can search for this from your own PayPal account and send us money that way.

One thing to watch out for: the currency on that PayPal account is UK pounds (a.k.a. sterling) - if you send an amount in another currency, there will be a conversion charge, deducted from the amount we receive. As far as I know, you can specify an amount in UK pounds, in which case PayPal will charge you for the conversion.

Stripe
We have a Stripe account, linked to e-mail address sakellarios@exilian.co.uk - hopefully you can search for this from your own account and send us money that way.

Liberapay
This is another payment website, intended specifically for recurring donations to individuals and organisations. If you want to donate this way, please go to our Liberapay donation page, and follow the instructions. If you don't already have an account with them, you will need to transfer some money to them first, which might then be quarantined for a period as an anti-laundering measure. Note that after being kicked out by their previous payment provider in 2019, they are now using mainstream providers PayPal and Stripe; currently Exilian is set up for both of these. At the moment it's not clear whether Liberapay via PayPal or Stripe offers anything better than PayPal or Stripe on its own.

[comrade_general]

Lol a "cheque". I don't know why but that just tickles me.

[Tusky]

They were going to phase them out by 2018, at one stage. I think some of the more curmudgeonly MP's stopped it.

[comrade_general]

Oh. I was referring to the olde style of spelling since we use "check" here in the states. I'm old though so using them isn't such a shocker to me lol.

[Jubal]

Basically we can accept your hard earned (or lazily earned we're not picky) money in lots of ways We've been testing the liberapay account and that seems to be working now (though we've not tried withdrawing from it yet - we can only withdraw from that a month after money goes in, to make sure we're not money-laundering or something).

[Glaurung]

Liberapay is now fully tested: we've been able to withdraw money from it, at a reasonable exchange rate (converting euros to pounds sterling) and without conversion charges. I've updated the opening post accordingly.

[Glaurung]

Update time again: Liberapay is working again, now using PayPal and Stripe. I've linked our Liberapay account to our PayPal account, so we should now be able to accept donations by both methods, and I've updated the opening post accordingly. I'm hoping to get a Stripe account functional soon, but this depends on finding a human being at Stripe who understands what the legal framework for UK unincorporated associations is, and particularly the fact that we don't have a company registration number or a tax identity.

[dubsartur]

I hope they can find an alternative.  Payment processors are behind a lot of dark and ugly things in publishing and the Internet.  I agree that currently, Liberapay don't seem to offer much over a monthly Paypal or Stripe payment, but some people are boycotting Patreon for reasons so I have one just in case.

The thing with Stripe sounds frustrating, I hear that sales tax can be a pain for online stores.

[Glaurung]

Update time.

1. Stripe
We now have a working Stripe account, and in fact have had for over a year - apologies for not publicising it earlier. It's linked to our Liberapay account as well.

2. Bank account
Our bank, HSBC, have decided to start charging us (and many other small organisations) £5 per month to keep our account open. Given our usual donation rates, I think this is unaffordable, and I see no reason to seek more donations just to pay off a multi-billion-worth multinational corporation. Consequently I am looking to switch banks ASAP, and have deleted the bank details in the OP pending getting the new account up and running properly.

[Glaurung]

Update time again.

Bank account
The new account has been opened, so I've added the details in the OP.

Other changes
I've added an entry for our Stripe account, and done various other minor edits to bring the content up to date.