Good things come to those who support the Dance Gypsy

The Dance Gypsy is dedicated to the belief that our information should be available to all dancers whether they provide support or not. And also to the belief that all events should be listed whether their organizers provide support or not, However we can — and do — offer a few extra favors for those who support us; our way of saying “Thank you!” Generally these favors simply make your search a little easier and faster; but some can even save you money.At present, these favors include:

Searching tools:
- The Dance Gypsy home page can include a short–form linked list of the dances in your default search. (No need to actually do a search.)
- You may bookmark specific search results. Thus you can select various searches from your browser’s bookmark list.
- Donors have more search options, including “advanced search” (find by state or key word), or fast single–day searches.
- You may save your default search so that whenever you go to the search pages, that default appears first. You may submit it directly or make modifications before submitting.
Access and display
- If you have a webpage (associated with your donation), you may include live links to specific search results directly from your own website (or even embedded within your site). For example if you run a dance in Wonderland, you might include all similar dances within 50 miles of your own event.
- Donors will not be subjected to external ads (the ones that appear to come from other sources and may not have much to do with dancing). Including these ads is the other action that slows down our performance.
- Maps are optional (maps are one of the two slowest items in generating the Dance Gypsy event or performer lists). Skipping the maps will greatly improve your result speed.
- There are no longer any fund drives for anyone. No one seemed to like those. But there are periodic requests for funding. Current donors are also exempt from these.
- Your name (and perhaps a link) is included on our supporter pages.
- If you are a performer (e.g. musician or caller), your name will always be highlighted wherever it appears in the Dance Gypsy listings.
- If you are a dance organization, your events can be highlighted.
Savings
- As a donor you are eligible for a discount on any ads or other items or services you purchase from the Dance Gypsy.
And last but not least: there is that wonderful feeling that you are helping to support the Dance Gypsy’s efforts to deliver information to the dance community.

So take the time right now (while you are thinking about it) and give the Dance Gypsy a little support.

How much should I contribute?

Seriously, You may contribute any amount you wish. In the past year, we have gratefully received donations from as little as $5 to over $200. The median for that year was about $25. For us it is far more important to get support from more users of the services than to get a small subset of them to contribute a lot.

Or perhaps you would like to know how much we need to keep delivering info. that is harder to answer. The bottom line is that in 7 of the last 10 years we have lost money. So simple answer is we need a lot more. Another way to look at that is that we desperately need new software. Our development software is now 6 years old — and becoming increasingly incompatible with newer operating systems and browsers. We have not replaced it because of the cost. So what? Development is slower because of the problems with old software — and every minute dealing with those problems is a minute taken from delivering the latest information to you. With greater support we can deliver more service.