Finances 2026

Table of Contents

• 2026 In Review
• 2026 Expenses
• 2027
  • Objective and Priorities
  • Budget

2026 In Review

Before diving into goals and objective for the 2025 Composuary, I wanted to spend some time reviewing the previous year's stated objectives and outlining how things went.

Headwinds

Over the last year, I have been working my way toward completing my diploma and the coursework necessary to achieve that goal has been prohibitive to accomplishing many of the goals and targets as laid out this time last year. Principally, the limitations on my time have come at the expense of me being able to participate in this event that I organize and run, and the ability for the gala to be a major event. With that context in mind, here is a review of the previous year's objectives and a note on how things have gone.

Get 20 active participants

This year, there was a major swell of people joining the Composuary server following some select posts on Reddit and the traditional person-to-person promotion that I typically do throughout the year (28 total members) but many of those members didn't end up producing any works. The actual participation numbers as compared to last year are as follows

(updates to 2026 numbers pending full close-out of for the season)

So, while Composuary did grow this year, it is shy of the 20 being targeted.

Automate the Event

Giant goose-egg on this one. This event required more manual intervention compared to last year. This led to several days having prompts launch hours early/late as I juggled my schedule while trying to maintain the project. This will tie in with the "Rebuild the Webiste" section below.

Improve Social Media Presence

The social media presence of Composuary has not meaningfully improved. There were small wins through grassroots organizing as other posted and shared the event on their socials, but Composuary itself is still a ghost on the internet. The Objective and Priorities section below will aim to lay out a better plan for this, but this is a weakness of mine. I have yet to come up with a strategic vision for social media presence because I am personally inept on these types of tools.

Back Archive Year 1

Some progress has been made on this. I've pulled together the old audio assets and cleaned up the files so they can be stitched into an album, but ran into budget issues to commission the album art. This is something I'm still aiming to tackle in the upcoming year and (hopefully) once I have a job again instead of paying tuition, I'll be able to splurge and better finance this entire project.

Rebuild the Website

Currently, the website is built using a static generator called mdBook. This has worked great for getting the project started, but as time goes on and I expand what the website shows/offers, I've been hard wiring in a bunch of HTML, CSS, and Javascript. May aim this year, beyond just replacing the actual website itself, was to relocate the site to a different platform. Unfortunately, the cost of changing hosting provider prevented this from being tackled this year as money has gotten tighter. I'm looking to fix this issue once I have a stble 9-to-5 again and can put money back into this project.

Expenses

2027

Objectives and Priorities

While I'll be finishing my University program and will have a bit more time on my hands, the next year is still going to be a challenge. Job hunting, likely moving, starting up as a board member for a local nonprofit, all of these will be meaningful time sinks and there are additional problems facing this project in the coming year. Assuming that job hunting goes well and I begin making a salary yet again, I'll be able to devote more money to this project which will help to deal with a number of problems that have been plaguing the event up to now.

1. Build a new site: While this was a stated target from last year, little was accomplished to make this happen. This has become a pretty high priority task going forward for a few reasons.

   1. The project has been a bit stymied in its growth due to a lack of internet presence. While I will still struggle with social media, making this project into an online forum is likely to improve visibility.
   2. Discord's recent swing to face scanning/spying for the purposes of meeting age verification requirements is a harbinger of things to come. I have an increasing distrust for the company and think it wont' be long before it become more problematic to have it be the sole host of the interactive portion of this event.
   3. I desperately want to stop giving money to Amazon (even if it is just $1-$2 a month).

   Due to these factors, not only will a big push this year be to update the site to something more attractive, it will be my aim to convert the site itself into a forum. Hopefully, the face lift will give a better first impression to would be composers.

2. Back Archive Years 1 and 4: This portion of the project remains the the same as before. Having enough financing to achieve this goal is the main struggle.

3. Break Even on Expenses: This is ambitious, but I'd like the project to be financially self sustaining. Up to now, Composuary has had $0 of revenue. It is my aim this year to find ways for the event to at least partially cover its own existence.

Budget

With the goals above, the projected budget for next is as follows. Tranche 0 is the bare minimum budget to keep the project going as it has to this point and is fully funded directly by myself. All the additional improvements specified above will only be possible if more financing becomes available. Either from me becoming an employee again or external donations/purchases of merchandise.