Last one was from @leahRH on 11th Feb. 

You got mine didn’t you ?
Dave
 

I did, that was a few days before the 11th.  I just mentioned when the last one was. I've found if there's a couple of donations, especially if people mention how much they donated, others tend to then think "that's the forum covered for a while" and any thoughts of donating drift away until we're left in the red again. It's always good to get a few quid in the pot because that covers us for what's historically often months between donations, they seem to come in waves.

We've a lot of new members recently though for some reason so hopefully this place picks up again and finds its feet, just need regular activity, new posts, interaction etc. 

We've never had sponsors as such because that implies like on other forums that because they're paying, nobody is allowed to bad-mouth their products or service if it's crap, and it's an open forum with free speech never impeded.

We've had plenty of companies in the distant past pay a small fee per month, they've been referred to as advertisers. So they got a board of their own, and an account with their company name, logo etc and could freely advertise their products and services on their own board, and contribute on the forum in general so long as it's not clearly just peddling their stuff on every post, that's what their dedicated board is for. But they dried up and so it ended up going in the bin.

I've no problem with what you're suggesting, so long as everyone's clear they're donating to a forum to help keep it running, and in turn we allow them to freely advertise. They'd get no special treatment and aren't "buying" anything. They use the donate button like anyone else.

Just trying to maintain the forum's values, it seems to be the main thing people like about it here.