Paying the bills

[tim5055]

I've said this before, but it's time to repeat it. We are now beginning the "busy" season here at TFP. What many of you don't know is that TFP is not a huge company or supported by a huge company - We are staffed by volunteers, period. While it may seem that way, the liquid chlorine "industry" isn't funding us.

If you look around there are no advertisements on TFP. We have a pool care system that is centered on keeping your pool as "Trouble Free" as possible without digging into your wallet. Accepting ads would cause a conflict that we would be uncomfortable with.

So, where am I going with this rambling treatise?

I'm glad you have found our information helpful and have saved money over the pool store and their sales, please consider making a donation to TFP.
TFP is registered as an IRS 501 (c) (3) charity and donation are what keep the electrons flowing. Check with your tax professional as your donation may be tax deductible in your situation.

These donations are what keeps TFP free of Ads and allows us to continue to turn away money from companies who don't fit into the TFP system.



Another way to support TFP is through the Amazon Smile donation program. When you shop on AmazonSmile, the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible products to the charitable organization of your choice. As a 501 (c) (3) charity TFP can receive these donations. Click this link to select TFP as your Amazon Smile recipient.

Thanks for taking a moment to read this.......

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Thanks Tim!! Well said and a timely reminder. I will immediately go and binge-shop on AmazonSmile....

 

[cfherrman]

I'll probably donate in the summer when I'm supposed to have more money, tax man keeps asking me to donate to charities.

 

[tim5055]

I'll probably donate in the summer when I'm supposed to have more money, tax man keeps asking me to donate to charities.

Thanks for thinking of us!

I'm just waiting on word from my CPA as to how big a check I will be writing to our Uncle in DC.

 

[CJadamec]

Direct donations are the best way to help keep the servers running and ad free. The people who keep TFP running take pride in being able to turn down the multiple requests they get every year to do paid product promotions on this site. Member donations are the only way they are able to keep this site free of commercial influence. Everything you read here is contributed by volunteers.

Another great way to help is Amazon smile. If you shop a lot on Amazon using Amazon smile is a great way to help TFP. Amazon smile donates a small part of your qualifying purchases directly to TFP without you doing anything more than the shopping you normally do.

 

[Leebo]

In years long ago TFP was hosted on a personal server in a basement in somebody's house. Had this person suffered a sudden illness or had their house caught fire TFP would have lost all their data. About 4 years ago TFP migrated the data from this personal server to a server farm where it's housed with thousands of other sites. The site is backed up daily and monitored 24/7/365. The issue we still had though is I personally now had a good bit of files necessary for TFP to run being used from my personal computer. Again, if my house suddenly caught fire TFP would be missing multiple items that it now is very dependent on. This winter Rebecca and I took a hard look and started thinking more in the mindset that TFP is a company not a hobby. We both worked with a few tech companies to purchase both some hardware and software to remove all the data from my computer and make it where it's accessible to both of us anywhere we go. We now have multiple backups of almost everything TFP uses. All of this however has cost us some money. Not a lot, but some. In addition to removing some major files from my personal computer TFP has moved our entire website to a larger server as we were just about maxed out on our old one. While we’re still sorting some small bugs out there this change has left TFP with some extra room to grow in the future and should give our users faster load times. While this change didn’t add a ton of extra cost to our monthly bill it did add a small bit.

While Tim covered two ways you can support TFP I'd like to share another two that helps. One way is to download the PoolMath App and give us a positive review. The download is free on iOS and Android and gives you the same core feature as the website. By giving the App a good review it's slowly starting to expose more users outside of the website to TFP and our ways. If you hate the App please, email me with suggestions. While we're not moving at rocket pace we are still working on the App behind the scenes. It also offers for a fee the ability to save your test results and will soon have the ability to track chemical additions in the future. A good portion of the paid subscriptions comes right back to TFP to help fund our website just like donations and Amazon Smile does. Lastly there's the Pool School eBook on iBook's and Amazon. This book is a copy of Pool School found here on the website that is priced at market minimum (free on iOS while Amazon requires us to charge something) and is full of information. Download the book as well and review it. Also share it with your neighbor who despite attempting everything the pool store is telling him still has a cloudy pool. It's goal is to expose more users to TFPC that's not using the website and hopefully they too will find the same enjoyment that each of you already do.

I greatly thank each of you for any support you can offer. TFP is slowly changing the way users care for their pools and so much of that is because of your efforts. I thank each of you and hope you enjoy your pool as much as I enjoy this forum!!