Please consider a non tax deductible contribution to our website.
Our service to the Reading Fire Department and the City of Reading community goes far beyond this website. We are proud to have contributed to the many good will endeavors undertaken by our membership. Some of the contributions we have made this year include:
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The Muscular Dystrophy Association
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The IAFF Burn foundation
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Reading Firefighters Hockey Team
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The Reading Hospital and Medical Center
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The Michael H. Wise II Memorial Foundation
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The Officer Scott A. Wertz Memorial Berks County Scholarship Fund
and other interests. Furthermore, we have contributed to countless other endeavors over the years by advertising events and special projects of just about anyone that asked.
In 2006, after ending 2005 with additional server costs attributed to bandwidth overages, we moved to a new dedicated server. It was more than we needed but provided quicker response to the site as well as an excess of storage to house the 1.5 gigabytes of web space our website currently takes up. We also took care of the bandwidth problem, no overages mean no outages. Along with our new RAM capacities, this helps accommodate server activity when multiple visitors are viewing our thousands of photographs or watching our videos. But the increase in storage and bandwidth come at a large increase in server costs, about six hundred percent.
What we do to earn funds to operate is spend countless hours working on our website and many other sites connected to the Readingpafire.com name like our MySpace page and our Forum site. We offer a firestore so members can keep track of and get the best deals on current items for auction at ebay and numerous fire safety pages so the public can learn about preventing fires. Along with processing the many photos and video we attempt to write quality articles associated with events, activities and the calls our members respond to.
Along with our many contributors of materials, you see their names in the write-ups and photo accolades, our administrator contributes financially as well as working to see that the website is kept up to date. For the first few years of our website, prior to advertising, many of the funds to operate came from our administrator's pocket.
Also, many setbacks during the past year and a half has caused our funds to deplete more rapidly. Aside from the server costs and splurging on a new banner, we are still working off a deficit from our lost camera (damaged at one of our events) and necessary computer upgrades on the machine we use to build the site.
Yes we do sell Advertising space on our website, however, revenue from these ads is down significantly this year and putting more advertising blocks on our website would further distract from the content in our opinion. So, we are turning to our members and the general public to assist us in keeping our website running and help us to keep funding the many activities and charities that our membership is involved in.
Thank you for considering this request,
Readingpafire.com
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