Why does RYL need Donations?

RYL is a completely free to use, non-profit organisation that, without question, does a great deal of good. We are totally against charging for any services we provide, and splashing ads all over the site to fund its existence - and we aim to keep it that way. According to Alexa, the leading website ranking site, RYL is the largest and most visited of all the Self Harm communities on the internet. That is quite something to boast - but without any government funding or grants of any sort, RYL has continued to deliver its service free, for eight years. Our goals are to continually evolve the site and what it provides, and to secure further reliability and performance as we carry on growing in the future. We need the help of those visitors and members who have gained from the site to do this.


Aren't you a Charity?

We are not yet a registered charity, solely due to the unsustainable load of the admin work required (RYL has no paid staff whatsoever). We do, however, plan on becoming a Community Interest Company later this year, which is very like a charity in its requirements, but which demands less paperwork. Becoming a full-blown Registered Charity will then be our goal.


Where do my donations go? Someone's pocket?

Oh no. You can be assured that EVERY penny and cent donated to RYL (and a lot more besides!) goes directly back into the running, maintenance and improvement of the site and community. Everyone who donates will be personally thanked and will normally be told presisely where their donation is being used.


How much does RYL cost to run? What needs paying for?

Our main monthly costs are the server fee's (rental in one of the world's top datacenters - Canary Wharf, London) and bandwidth. RYL serves millions of pages a week to both regular members and a vast number of people who come browsing for information. Keeping such a busy site available 24/7/365 costs us around £300 per month ($600). A couple of years ago a successful spell of ads raised enough money for £10,000 worth of server and software. This has meant much more reliablity, as well as vastly reduced monthly costs. Most months, various things such as software licenses, upgrades, bracelet supplies (for running the free bracelet scheme) etc will require around £100 (we regularly get discounts from kind companies when buying things). On top of that, we have to try to raise enough to afford spare parts for the server, in case the worst should happen. The systems have been designed (very well) to resist failure, and remain functional even if faults occur. This has helped us achieve near 100% uptime in the past year. We will also eventually need to replace the hard drives and, as RYL grows and the pressure on resources becomes ever greater, we need to plan for extra servers to take the load. In total, RYL's base  costs are around £400 per month, and that is with a lot of penny saving. We ideally need to make double that to assure we can plan for the future.


How can I help?

There are many ways you can become part of something amazing and help make sure it remains here for those who need it. You can buy stuff from our Shop or eBay auctions, you can get sponsored to do something fun by doing some fundraising, or you can make either a one-time or ongoing contribution by becoming an RYL Sponsor.