Well, if a trusted member of the community made the stuff and kept only enough proceeds for new materials, but donated the rest of the money that would work out for everyone.
Well, not really.
First of all, I doubt we have any trusted veterans here who just happen to work in the t-shirt business. Secondly, having merchandise would almost certainly lead to less donations.
Lets say there are $100 worth of donations per month (just a random number, reality is probably less). Almost all of those $100 go directly to Zanz, with PayPal taking a cut. But if we had t-shirts as well, some of those people who would have otherwise donated, will now buy t-shirts instead. But the problem with t-shirts is that it costs a lot to produce them, so the net revenue that goes to Elements development is much much less. And if we do what you suggest and let someone sell those shirts, then donate the money, that would mean that
both the production costs and PayPal's cut would be subtracted from the net revenue.
I don't know the exact numbers, but I would imagine that if a t-shirt costs $15, it would takes at least $10 to produce that t-shirt. Lets go with that guesstimate.
$100 Donations =
$91 net revenue$55 Donations + $45 t-shirts =
$65 net revenueThose numbers are just guessing, but the principle still applies.
Now one could of course argue that having merchandise wouldn't affect donations at all, and the same people who buy t-shirts, would also donate like they did before. I personally don't believe in that because most people have limited amounts of cash to use on online stuff so they have to make a choice. And every time they choose t-short over donation, that means less money for development.
It might work as some kind of a limited time offer, where Zanz sells 100 t-shirts and that's it. This way it would have less impact on the donations and also increase the value of the t-shirts because they are rare and awesome
