Support The Tally Room

The Tally Room is run entirely in my spare time – I don’t have any backers, and I need to fit it in around my day work.

Your financial support allows me to produce detailed and informative guides to each major election in Australia and New Zealand.

In 2014, The Tally Room covered the New Zealand general election, state elections in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, an unprecedented Senate by-election in Western Australia and eight local by-elections in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

To keep doing this in the future, I need your support. This money will allow me to devote time specifically to working on The Tally Room, and adding more information for interested readers.

Become a regular financial supporter

Give a one-off donation

What do I get in return for giving?

You help ensure that The Tally Room has the capacity to continue to function throughout 2014, and you will see this blog improve in quality. I am hoping down the track to be able to offer rewards for those who give money, but at the moment I don’t have the resources to do this.

I have considered restricting access to parts of the website, including the election guide, to those who pay for a subscription, but I don’t think this is the best option at this time.

When can I cancel my regular financial support?

You can cancel your support at any time – however I am relying on regular donations to give me a sense of how much income I can expect to receive. This gives me a sense of how much time I can devote to this website rather than finding other work.

What will you do with my money if I donate?

Firstly, I use this financial support to pay for the costs of keeping the website on the internet, including hosting costs and domain registration. Hosting costs increase at election time due to large amounts of traffic.

Beyond this amount, I plan to use these costs to allow me to devote more of my time to the website when I would otherwise need to look for more work. This year I have spent most of my spare time on weekends and weeknights working on this website, and it’s getting harder to sustain.

If I had another day or two a week devoted to the blog, I would be looking to complete election guides earlier and add features such as:

• More charts showing election data;
• Producing more Google Earth maps showing additional redistribution maps;
• Immediately responding to electoral news events such as the release of new electoral boundaries.

Down the track I would look to write more on the front page of the blog as well as other features such as a podcast, and also producing a more carefully-curated subscribers’ email.