We have actively resisted soliciting formal, ongoing, incentivized crowdfunding support for so long — the entire 24 year legacy of this website, to be exact! But it’s time.
Who We Are
We are a relic of an ancient, bygone era: Kanzenshuu is a “just a fansite.” But what does that even mean, exactly? Well, it means we do everything ourselves. The people who code the site are the same ones writing the guides are the same ones translating interviews are the same ones writing news are the same ones recording the podcast, etc. etc. etc.
There is no corporate ownership. There is no managerial meddling. There is no content mandate or quotas to fill. We are an incredibly small, ragtag group of long-time friends working on a crazy side-project together.
This also means there is no backing. We pay our own bills. No-one has ever stepped in, nor would we ever allow anyone, to take control and steward this site in any way other than how we want to do it, in control of it the entire way, forever and ever.
We do what we do because we love it and we don’t want to (or know how to) do anything else. We believe raw information, well-sourced documentation, and a deep wealth of contextualized history is important, coming from people who care deeply about the franchise itself.
We come from an era before the concepts of “influencers” and “content creators” existed. We put the Kanzenshuu name above ourselves and all else, because we think it stands for something. We believe in what we’ve built. We know you believe in it, too. We see our name out there everywhere, to the point that so many folks don’t actually know what “the kaizeshuu” are, but they sure know they’re supposed to trust them! That’s a heck of a brand problem to have!
Acknowledging Past Initiatives
Many of you have made (occasionally even quite large!) one-time or recurring donations through services like PayPal over the years. These have been so incredibly appreciated, and have allowed us to upgrade audio equipment, reimburse large shipments from Japan, and so on and so forth.
We have run advertisements on our forum for a number of years now, too. We were completely surprised when the overwhelming feedback to us asking if that would be OK was: “are you crazy? Of course it’s OK!” Even then, we still felt weird about it, and have always turned off ads for all registered users, and do not run ads in the “Fan Works” sub-section. We have never adjusted (or even requested adjustments to) any content that runs in violation of the ad policies; we just let them automatically deactivate. It just wouldn’t feel right to us to do otherwise. As a result of these decisions, however, it means that these ads do little to cover our full costs.
(Related to that: you’ve probably noticed that the actual website itself doesn’t have ads or any kind of sponsorships. Neither does the podcast. Neither will the wiki. This is all by design and choice. We truly believe information should be free, clean, and readily-accessible.)
We have actively resisted direct crowdfunding. It never felt right to us, and to be quite candid, it still feels a little weird. We don’t like talking about money. We’ve already guaranteed you so many times that Kanzenshuu isn’t going anywhere, so why make it complicated?
Looking Ahead
I started “VegettoEX’s Ultimate DBZ Links Page” in January 1998. Without getting too deep in the math, let’s just say that’s a fair bit over half of my lifetime that I have been working on this site. I am in a different place in my life today than I was back then. We all are.
It takes a lot to keep Kanzenshuu online these days. Money is a non-insignificant part of that. We run a pretty tight ship around here, but when you consider the scope of the site and everything we do (website, forum, podcast, wiki…) plus all of the associated things that go along with maintaining those… woof, it’s a lot. And there’s still so much more we want to do! On top of that, who knows what kinds of cool things we’ll be able to do in another decade or two?!
So many of you have wanted to help over the years. You’ve broken through! OK — let’s do this!
But let’s also keep it simple.
Patreon
With Kanzenshuu continuing forward forever as a non-corporate fansite, and acknowledging that we have a lot on our plates, we want this to be easy — yet worthwhile! — for everyone. We are not going to over-promise, get distracted, and lose sight of the mission here. We want to keep doing what we’re doing, make it a little easier on ourselves, and give you all the opportunity to help.
That said, we are launching a Patreon support campaign with two monthly options:
- $1 Tier: At this level you show your support for Kanzenshuu, and get a sweet “Patreon Supporter” forum rank.
- $5 Tier: At this level you show your support for Kanzenshuu, get a sweet “Patreon Supporter” forum rank, and get access to our Discord server.
We gave these tiers a lot of thought, and have whittled and revised them down over years of consideration. Again, we want this to be simple. We subscribe to a number of Patreons ourselves, and these tiers feel right in line with a lot of the other fairly standard base offerings out there for other websites/podcasts/etc.
Discord in particular feels like a natural extension. We purposefully (and by design) keep “off-topic” material off of our forum; this is a way for some of us to shoot the breeze in a different, casual sort of way as a true community. The full Kanzenshuu family already uses Discord every day as a working project management and discussion area anyway, so why not extend that to the folks who care and believe in us the most? We can get a lot done by talking together!
We want to keep exclusion to a minimum, and not create additional work that would distract us from the real mission. It’s certainly always up for further consideration and discussion, but we think these two tiers work really well right now.
Where Will This Money Go?
We truly are keeping this as simple as possible: our number one priority is to cover our regular “keeping the lights on” costs. That’s it. We’re not paying ourselves, we’re not taking any residuals, and we’re not setting anything aside for anyone. This is about the site, not us.
If we happen to miraculously make it to a level where the operating costs are covered, the next costs to cover would be the regular purchase/shipping costs. This would be to cover things like the ongoing monthly magazines and the other items we purchase as reference material.
If by a second miracle we make it to a level beyond that… well, we’ll talk again if that happens.
Thank You!
We have a lot in store for you this year and beyond, and continue to be so appreciative of your support. Whether you have been with us since the AOL web space and chat room days, you discovered us through the podcast, or just wanted to look up what the heck those darn “kazenshuus” are, thank you very much!
