I'm writing this to announce a shift by Sindome, the game, away from the social club, run by the Sindome Corporation. We will be winding down that non-profit social club over the coming year. We will also, starting today (December 12th, 2020), be shifting the way Sindome supports membership. Starting today donations will be made to a new nonprofit-- Withmore Hope Inc. This c3 non-profit has a mission of providing & supporting accessible text-based online games.
This expanded mission, that goes beyond keeping the lights on for Sindome, allows the new corporation to support the text-based online community as a whole. Withmore Hope Inc. will support Sindome as a primary project of this new corporation in much the same way that the Sindome Corporation has these past several years. And in return Sindome will thank those that offer a donation with a thank you for their support of the Withmore Hope Inc. mission, by granting a membership & the same (or very similar) thank you gifts of membership pads of varying lengths based on donation.
The process to start a new non-profit with a different organizing mission and structure started over the summer after a long talk I had with a player which included feedback around better ways to organize.
I registered a PO Box for the corporation in August. We formed the corporation in August in Massachusetts and submitted our application for c3 non-profit status a few weeks later. We were approved by the IRS in November and received our determination letter. We have since registered with TechSoup, itself a non-profit organization which connects nonprofits to companies that are offering discounted or free services to qualified nonprofit organizations.
This week we received confirmation that we were eligible to receive services from a variety of companies such as Slack, at discounted or free rates, after sending TechSoup a letter of clarification about our mission and projects. This is great news and means Withmore Hope Inc will be able to utilize non-profit licenses for a variety of things which end up being free or at a lower cost.
The directors of the new non-profit currently meet on a bi-weekly schedule, though we may meet less often as time goes on, and the group consists of Johnny, myself, and Glitch. Since we have organized, we have secured a bank account, validated our corporate bylaws, registered WithmoreHope.org which we plan to set up with information about our non-profit mission as well as the programs we offer and the games & services we support, and of course, we have discussed a variety of topics around how we can best fulfill our mission.
While Sindome has agreed it will continue to offer a membership benefit to any who donate to Withmore Hope Inc., the Directors of Withmore Hope Inc. think it is important that we support the larger text-based gaming community. This means looking beyond Sindome specifically. One big way to do this is to offer some manner of financial support to games, services, and developers that we reckon support our mission. This could be a one-time donation/gift to a game, or a recurring payment we make through PayPal or Patreon to individuals doing work which coincides with our mission. Those games/individuals will be under no obligation to offer any thank yous or gifts for our support.
What does this mean to existing Club Members? Nothing much changes. Your benefit for your donation to the Sindome Corp will remain and that will not change. However, if you wish to re-up your membership, you'll be agreeing to donate to Withmore Hope Inc, which is a c3 non-profit that has a mission of providing & supporting accessible text-based online games. Any donation you make will be used to further that mission, and not, as it was previously, to support the perpetuation of the Sindome Corporation's social club.
Overall, the Directors of Withmore Hope Inc. think that being able to provide support to a greater audience, one that exists outside of the 'domed walls of Withmore' will be of benefit to all, and we hope you agree.
We have updated the Sindome website as of today. The terms & conditions, privacy policy, donation verbiage, and membership agreement as well as other text changed to accommodate what I have outlined above. These are however, relatively minor changes, that keep the overall structure of these documents intact. Your rights and your responsibilities will not be changed greatly.
We will also be updating the PayPal used for donations to be that of the new Corporation. Withmore Hope Inc., will have an automated system that relays donation information to Sindome systems so that in cases where donations are made by someone registered on Sindome, they will automatically (where possible) have their donation applied in the same way we do now.
Thank you all for your support of Sindome, and for any future support you provide to Withmore Hope Inc. in executing its mission. We look forward to seeing what 2021 brings!
The Withmore Hope Inc. Directors (Slither, Johnny, Glitch)
