About

November 13th, 2009 Leave a comment Go to comments

Welcome to our blog. If you are a first time visitor we want to thank you for taking the time to visit Fundsnet Services and our blog. If you have been with us for several months or years, thank you for your loyalty and support.

I always wanted to write about what it is we do on a daily basis and provide an insight to those who wonder about the person that maintains Fundsnet Services and what do they seek to accomplish. Allow me to provide some details about Fundsnet Services, myself, my goals and a little bit about my family.

Fundsnet Services was created in 1996 to provide a free resource to organizations seeking funding for the programs they provide their community. I decided to create the site after working as executive director for a small community-based organization in northeast Connecticut. At that particular point in time there were very few web sites that provided this information – you could count them with one finger. To give you a better idea of what was available, the Foundation Center had just secured funding from the Ford Foundation to create their web site. We know this because we spoke with a Ford Foundation programs manager who liked the project we had in mind (Fundsnet Services), but informed me that they had just provided funding to the Foundation Center to basically provide the same information. The only difference is that we do not charge our visitors for what we offer, whereas the Foundation Center charges a fee for certain information they provide. So we decided to do the best with what we had, and understanding that we would win no prizes for site design but at least we would make an effort to help.

My background includes roughly ten (10) years working in the non-profit sector. First as director of social services for a Latino community-based organization in Boston’s South End, then as executive director for a Latino community-based organization in northeaster Connecticut. I always told myself that in if you work in the non-profit sector you better like what you are doing (helping people) because you will never be rich.

After my stint in the non-profit sector I entered the private sector and worked as Ecommerce Manager for two multi-million dollar companies here in Connecticut. Besides the usual duties of an ecommerce manager (new customer acquisition and increased sales), I excelled at optimizing web site pages so that they would appear among the top three (3) natural results (non-paid) in the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft – i.e. Bing). Optimizing a page to me has always been a challenge – matching my skills against the competition and search engines. If you wonder what optimizing a web site is, is working with the code behind all those pretty pages you see on the web and working on the content on the pages.

On July of this year (2009) I finally decided to take early retirement and dedicate most of my time to improving the sites that I manage and watch my kids grow.

During the past few years I have maintained several sites to keep us busy and out of trouble (as the saying goes).

Fundsnet Services is the flagship site and the one we invest the most time. To give you a better idea, we usually are up and on the computer by 5:00 a.m. every day – including weekends, and usually get off the computer by 7:00 p.m. Basically I held a full-time job while at the same time maintained the web sites.

Web site = Money?
Most people are under the misconception that having a web site equals making lots of money.. Nothing can be farther from the truth. In Fundsnet Services we do not generate too much in terms of revenue. As an example we only receive a commission on sales made from visitors going from us to a merchant and buying merchandise. The commission is roughly 5% on an average not including shipping cost. So if you purchase an item for $50.00 our share is $2.50. Items purchased from Amazon through us usually generate 6% of the purchase price not including shipping. You will notice we have Google Ads throughout the site. Every time a visitor “clicks” on one of the Google links we receive $0.20 on an average. If you purchase a fundraising product we usually receive 3% of the total cost. So if you asks us if we will become rich our answer is “I do not think so”. Most of the revenue we receive goes towards the costs associated with maintaining the sites (hosting, etc.) and contributing the electric and phone bills. So with this in mind we invite you to either buy or click on the Google Ads if you have interest in what the advertiser is promoting. This helps us with the free services we provide.

Personal stuff
As I mentioned above, I just turned 62 years old and opted for early retirement. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico and speak English and Spanish (hola) fluently. I am a Vietnam veteran having served with the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta during 1967 – 1968. Yes, people born in Puerto Rico are US Citizens at birth, we cannot vote in presidential elections but can be drafted and go to war (just in case you wondered).

I am presently married to Joanne (Polish/Russian descendant) and we have two small children – John Andres (9 years old) and Gabriel (7 years old). This is my second marriage and I have four (4) other children from my first marriage – Tony (40 yrs old), Marcos (34 yrs old), Sara Isabel (30 yrs old) and Carlos (28 yrs old). Carlos is totally disabled and we were never able to find out if it was because of agent orange or because of Cerebral Palsy. I also have a daughter – Chelsea Lee -  from a relationship I had several years ago (I was single at the time). Chelsea just turned 17 years old and resides in Massachusetts.


Left to right: John Andres, Joanne, yours truly and Chelsea
taken in Puerto Rico in 2007 on my 60th birthday

At a later time I will discussed John Andres’ Asperger syndrome and how we are working with him to help him function better in school and with his friends.

Has anyone heard from Stanley Jones from Norfolk, Virginia??

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