Anime Herald Financial Report For Fiscal Quarter 1, 2024 (Ending 6/30/2023)

Introduction

As part of our efforts to maintain full transparency within our operation, it has been decided that every quarter, the chief officer of Anime Herald, LLC must compile a quarterly report detailing our financial results. This document will outline our finances, as well as our performance over Quarter 1 of our 2023 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2023.

Current Finances

As of June 30, 2023, Anime Herald had $2,319.45 in reserve capital. Of this, $800 is set aside for articles commissioned, and $800 is earmarked for editors to work on them.

Income

Anime Herald reported a total of $947.19 in income over the first fiscal quarter.

• Patreon: $931.21
• Ko-fi: $2.22
• Interest: 7.76
• TeePublic (Merchandise): $6.00

Our most significant income source remains Patreon, which brings in average monthly revenues of $310.40 per month.

Expenses

Invoices

Our primary driver of costs came from invoices paid out to writers and team editors for articles. For the first quarter, Samantha waived her $50 monthly salary to bank funds for upcoming infrastructure costs.

For the quarter, Anime Herald posted $825.00 in invoice payments, which were paid out via the Anime Herald bank account.

Infrastructure

Our second largest cost came from infrastructure payments, which include web hosting, domain names, and services that are required to operate in a modern environment like backups and server management.

The cost breakdown is as follows:

• Web Hosting: $162.49

This was not paid for using the Anime Herald bank account; rather, it was paid using chief officer Samantha Ferreira’s personal funds.

Our costs increased in June, as we had to migrate Anime Herald to a new hardware instance, due to our Linux installation reaching End of Life status. The additional cost came from maintaining the second instance while we performed the migration.

Tooling

Our total tooling costs for Quarter 1 2023 were as follows:

• Google Workspaces: $138.66

In total, we paid $138.66 for tooling.

Due to a change in the debit card number for Anime Herald's account, this quarter's and Quarter 2's payments were paid using chief officer Samantha Ferreira’s personal funds. This will be rectified in Quarter 3.

Miscellaneous Expenses

Anime Herald, LLC recorded two major “miscellaneous” expenses over the course of fiscal 2022. In June, Anime Herald made a $180.77 one-time donation to The Trevor Project.

Otherwise, the organization paid a fee of $0.52 on all of our PayPal payments received, which totaled $1.56. The PayPal costs were taken directly on payment receipt as a service fee.

Total miscellaneous costs for the year totaled $182.33

Totals

For the first quarter of Fiscal 2023, Anime Herald, LLC saw $1,308.48 in total costs. Of these, $825 were paid for directly, using Anime Herald’s accounts. $483.48 were paid using Samantha’s personal funds.

Against earnings of $947.19, Anime Herald recorded a total loss of $361.29, this is an adjusted monthly shortfall of $120.43.

To break even under our current parameters, Anime Herald must raise $436.16 per month after fees and taxes are deducted by Patreon. As such, we are keeping our current break-even goal at $500 USD, which will afford us $63.84 per month as a buffer.

Challenges

As of now, earning funds through merchandise remains a challenge, as it requires a combination of the following:

• Buy-in of artwork
• Graphic design work to properly composite
• Rendering of fees to Teepublic

While we do see merchandise as a viable and inherently valuable avenue for us, we are still planning to re-evaluate how we want to handle this once we complete our ongoing rebranding process.

Expected Upcoming Costs

Our domain name is scheduled to renew in Quarter 2 and will carry an estimated cost of $44.34 USD.

Furthermore, we will be entering the final phase of our rebranding. To do so, we have begun working with the design firm Hand Designed, who has also done design work for Anime Feminist and Glass Reflection, to redesign the Anime Herald website. They are a skilled duo who have particular expertise in crafting accessible, efficient, and attractive website designs.

Moreover, the team is composed of veterans within the anime space. Hand Designed’s designer, Katy Castillo, is the editor-in-chief, founder, and owner of major anime site Yatta-Tachi. Their developer, Chris Brailsford, is Yatta-Tachi’s Head of Operations.

We previously worked with Katy to design our current logo, and again to aid with compositing on our launch lineup of merchandise. We have a positive working relationship, and full confidence that they will continue to be invaluable partners as we move into Anime Herald’s next phase.

The costs associated with the redesign will appear on three financial reports: Q2 2023, our annual report, and our Q1 2024 report