PEERS 2012 Annual Report
Making a Difference in Our World
I want to express my heartfelt thanks for your amazing website where we can get the good, the bad, and the ugly all in one place. Your passion and devotion for getting at the truth as well as balancing it with spiritual understandings is most appreciated as well as hard to find elsewhere. I want to acknowledge your positive influence and your loving kindness to your website subscribers. Please find enclosed a donation to the cause.
~~ Pam C. regarding WantToKnow.info on Nov. 19, 2012
PEERS (Public Education and Empowerment Resource Service) was officially incorporated in early 2006 as a nonprofit umbrella organization for the 12 websites now under its management. As of the end of 2012, PEERS has been providing inspiration and education free of charge to many millions of interested people around the globe for seven years. We continue to touch countless people's hearts and make a difference in our world in a most meaningful way.
Interest in most of our websites and our two email lists grew at a healthy pace in the past year. PEERS websites received a total volume for 2012 of over 3.2 million visits and 5.0 million page views, an overall increase of around 11% over the previous year. And the number of subscribers to our WantToKnow.info email list grew to well over 11,000. Our two email lists combined now have more than 13,500 subscribers from more than 140 countries.
"I am shocked you don't have a million subscribers. The information you send is always very interesting and well documented."
~~ Rudy A., Jan. 1, 2012
Thanks largely to the excellent fund-raising advice of a supporter in Hungary, the total amount of contributions in 2012 increased by 42% over the previous year. The total number of donors increased by 20% to over 500, while the number of supporters giving monthly contributions jumped by an impressive 68% to 96. And thanks to all of this wonderful support, PEERS income for the year was nearly $9,700 more than expenses.
The empowering work of PEERS is educating and inspiring ever more people around the world. Hundreds of people sent messages expressing gratitude for our work this year.
"I'm an 18 year old trying to grapple with the prevalent ignorance of this age. I have tears of gratitude in my eyes. I just wanted to say thank you for all the work all of you have done. I feel like I've stumbled across a treasure chest."
~~ Hussein in the U.K. on the PEERS websites, July 14, 2012
"Whenever I take the icy plunge for 'truth' in the ocean of this existence, I find that after the initial shock of not knowing which way is up and with the amount of information *almost* as staggering and bewildering as the myriad different perspectives ... your site always appears to me to be the deep, dark-blue calm beneath the battering and breaking waves." ~~ Dino in Brooklyn, NY on WantToKnow.info, Dec. 18. 2012
"Wow, what a ride!!! This course has opened my eyes to so many things and changed my life all for the better. It has provided me with insights into the nature of reality and strategies for dealing with the challenges that arise in life and for fulfilling my purpose in life (being of service to others). THANK YOU!!!"
~~ Allison A., August 15, 2012 on the Transformation Course
The Personal Growth Courses
The average number of registered people journeying through one of our four empowering online courses at any time continues to hover around 100, though many of these don't finish. Only 22 registered participants completed one of our courses last year, up slightly from 20 last year. Yet registration is not required to take a course, and we calculate from emails and website statistics that over 200 unregistered individuals completed one or more of the courses. Almost every registered participant who has completed a course continues to give glowing reviews.
"This was the most powerful, awareness-expanding experience I've ever had. I am at a lack of words. The course brought tears to my eyes filled of love, joy and gratitude. It helped me bring out my inner core and revisit the shadows I pushed away. It has already been manifesting a beautiful love and gratitude into my life that will be with me always. From my ever increasing awareness, thank you and I love you."
~~ Thomas A., on completing the Insight Course, April 1, 2012
"This course was perfect for what I needed. I'm no longer fearful. And I've dropped several addictions that had been contributing to my malaise, including coffee, wine and TV. Sharing sacred love has been a fabulous experience, giving me some healing of past hurts and helping me to enjoy my work (teaching college composition classes) much more. I feel much lighter having completed this course than I did before starting."
~~ Betsy B. on completing the Transformation Course, May 12, 2012
All four of our courses provide a rich variety of deeply inspiring and educational materials. Even though not many are taking them now, we are hopeful that these heart and mind expanding courses may become more popular at some point. Those who complete one of the courses can join in the many engaging conversations with the 235 caring individuals who are now members of our beautiful and increasingly popular community networking portal, the Gathering Spot.
Other PEERS Websites
Compared with 2011, our most popular website, WantToKnow.info, experienced an increase of 17% in the number of visits, with over 2.3 million visits to the site in 2011. That's an average of over 6,000 visits a day! On the 11th anniversary of 9/11, we even broke our one-day record with nearly 66,000 visits in one day.
Visits to the Web of Love website decreased 16% to 234,000 visits or about 650 a day. Visits to our personalgrowthcourses.net website filled with fascinating and inspiring videos increased 8% to nearly 330,000 for the year or around 900 a day. Overall, we had over 3.2 million visits to the websites and 5.0 million page views. That's an impressive average of over 8,000 visits and 14,000 page views per day. We are excited that PEERS continues to reach an ever larger audience.
We made several important additions to the ever-growing WantToKnow.info (WTK) website this year. Several of these were thanks to the awesome help of volunteer William Van Vechten, who loves our work. As he knows how to code, William put together both a banking corruption information center and a truth videos webpage we've been wanting for a long time. We also added 11 great new topics to our news article index page. And we now have over 5,000 highly revealing news article summaries in our excellent news database.
Another important addition thanks to our tech wiz Andrey's capable assistance is a great WTK readers forum where any of our readers can post articles and leave comments on any post there. Though it's off to a slow start with about 70 members and 160 topics posted at the end of the year, we're hopeful that this section will blossom and bring lots of interest in addition to presenting some useful information. Next year, we hope to make it possible for any who sign up to comment on regular WTK pages. This could substantially increase interest in the site.
We continue to get lots of supportive and grateful feedback on our websites, email lists, and online courses. Here is a further sampling of the many wonderful emails of support we received this year.
"This course is amazing and has definitely changed my life. The trees are greener, the colours of butterflies are stronger, sounds are more sharp and clear. For the first time in my life I can sing without going off tune. My eyesight has improved, and I can stay calm and not react when someone is rude or insults me. The discoveries I have made about myself are too numerous to count. I don't earn a lot of money, but have set up a monthly donation. This is probably the most important donation I have ever made, as I feel the course has changed my life. Thank you so much. I feel your love and send sacred love to you all." ~~ Julie W. on the Transformation Course, July 11, 2012
"Thanks for everything you've done and continue to do via this site as well as the others associated with this one. I swear -- stumbling into your site here by way of the 9/11 timeline has done more to educate and enlighten and inspire me in the last 6 months than the previous 19 years of schooling ever did. So thank you." ~~ Bill R. on WantToKnow.info, Dec. 18, 2012
"What a genuinely fantastic job you are doing to help bring about the much-needed change in people's awareness as to what's really going on in this world. Having first "awoken" about 3 years ago, I have consumed so much information on different subjects from many different sources, but NONE compares to the concise, accurate, dedicated, and professional quality of your website. It's extremely well presented, verifiable, honest, and it's genuinely a service to mankind. You may consider me a disciple doing all I can to help spread the word. Please, please, please keep up the good work and just maybe we can evolve triumphant in a brighter, more enlightened and loving world." ~~ Joe O. on WantToKnow.info, Feb 19, 2012
PEERS Finances
PEERS had a total income of $57,346 in 2011, an awesome 42% increase from 2011. All but 6% of this came in the form of donations from generous supporters. The number of individuals making monthly contributions also increased a dramatic 68% from 57 in 2011 to 96 this year, while the number of caring individuals who made one or more donations during the year increased by an impressive 20% to 504. While many other nonprofits are still struggling financially, PEERS is most thankful to have such strong support.
Our total expenses for the year were $47,651, up 19% from 2011. This was due largely to a 12% increase in compensation to Executive Director Fred Burks and to the additional taxes PEERS must pay, as Fred was hired on as a full-time employee this year at a rate of $27,000 per year. Even with this increase in expenses, PEERS ended up $9,695 in the black for the year of 2012. As a result, we are quite pleasantly surprised that PEERS now has $32,123 in total equity.
Our two major expenses last year were $26,500 to Fred for his continued excellent management of PEERS, and $13,100 for Tod's quality weekly news summaries. Another $1,740 went to our web wizard Andrey for his brilliant and highly useful technical support. The remaining $6,311 went to pay Internet expenses, PayPal fees, government taxes and fees, insurance, and more for running the websites and nonprofit organization.
To see the QuickBooks form listing profit and loss figures for PEERS in 2012, click here. For profit and loss since inception, click here. For our balance sheet as of the end of 2012, click here.
The statements at the above links were prepared without official audit of our books and records, though they have been carefully reviewed by Executive Director Fred Burks and were examined and certified by Treasurer John Lumiere-Wins. PEERS ended the year with liabilities of $1,758 resulting from taxes not due until January 2013. All donations were unrestricted. We had a net gain for 2012 of $9,695. We are extremely grateful to all of our caring contributors who so generously supported us, especially in these challenging times.
Transforming Our World Together With You
Our world is rapidly changing and transforming with each passing year. People are waking up around the globe and wanting to make a difference. The banking scandals, populist movements around the world, and much more have opened the eyes of many people to deeper, previously hidden levels of what is happening in our world. And people all over seem to be awakening to deeper spiritual realities and to our common humanity. It's an exciting time to be alive!
We believe that PEERS is at the forefront of a grand movement to transform our world into a more caring and loving place for all people to live. Thanks so much to all involved with PEERS for your invaluable support in this most noble endeavor. We enter the year 2013 full of excitement at the possibilities of ever greater transformation of our world through our work and the work of our supporters and so many others who are coming together for the betterment of all in our world.
"I have been subscribing to your Peers list for some time now and always enjoy the tone of what you post. I resonate with how you look squarely and deeply at realities behind the carefully created, manipulative, superficial, appearances in our human world, yet simultaneously you show and champion the positive creative movement coming through human expression. I will continue to send you heartfuls of love and prayers of thankfulness for who you are, and for what you are doing."
~~ John L. in Canada on WantToKnow.info, June 11, 2012
Note: To read other messages of deep appreciation for our work, click here and here. And we'd be thrilled if you are inspired to make a donation to support our work. To do so, please click here.
PEERS 2012 Annual Report
Compiled and Written By
Fred Burks
PEERS Executive Director
The PEERS empowerment network
"Dedicated to the greatest good of all who share our beautiful world"
