Social Media Breakfast | Singapore

We collected $162 from Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 7 and we want to thank everyone who dropped some money into our CD spindle case. If you have a look at our open ledgeryou might notice that essentially, we’ve never had a positive balance (and we’re still at -$14) but your efforts to help us get down from the negative hundreds is really appreciated.

What do we use the money for?
Great question and you deserve to know what your hard earned money goes to (especially since it’s not tax-deductable!). In the early days of SMB, we spent money on stationery. People loved the idea of “tagging” each other during the sessions, but the cost per person was expensive and a lot of it went to waste. As such, we’ve reduced the tagging to a simple name tag, but even then, stationery costs money.

In 2009, we’ve been very lucky to have Samsung, Tangs and Lenovo sponsor our F&B. However, for the first four SMBs, we shelled out $500 each time and are still trying to cover these costs entirely.

Why do we need more money?
We need more money because we’d like to keep some extra in the bank for when we need more stationery, might need to pay for F&B or anything like that. If we ever do bring in someone from overseas, we need money for that too. In other words, this is really a “rainy day” fund and we will collect just enough to keep us running, but it will never be an extravagant amount. When SMB started, half of us didn’t have jobs and were still in school. We need to rely on those who are working to keep this going.

Does any money to go the organisers or sponsors?
Not a cent. The organisers (Claudia, Dorothy and myself) are not in this for the money and none of this money will ever come to us. In fact most of us are personally running a deficit from financing this out of our own pockets. The money will replenish our personal spendings, but we will never claim more than we spend and we will never make a profit out of it.

In the same vein, we don’t agree to venue partners that want us to rent our space. The donations we get are very precious to us and we’d sooner hold SMB on a picnic mat at the Botanical Gardens with potluck for free than pay a venue the hard earned money of the community just for the “privilege” of using their hallowed space.

I really hope this answers any questions you might have had about donations and SMB. If you found value in this event and would like to keep us running, do drop something into our little CD spindle the next time you see us!

Do join our Facebook Fan Page to get notified of future events!

If you have questions feel free to post them in the comments or contact me directly: uniquefrequency AT gmail DOT com