Should we start a donation fund (cash pool) for the 2021 Old Lumens Self built challange? Money will be split between winners.

You can see the archived poll results on the Wayback Machine:

Should we start a donation fund (cash pool) for the 2021 Old Lumens Self built challange? Money will be split between winners. - Off-topic Chatter - BudgetLightForum.com

Hey folks i am wondering how every one feels about having a cash pool for the BLF old lumens challenge 2021? I am in charge of finding sponsors which i will still do, (Shout out to any one that wants to sponsors the challenge message me). I was thinking if we could pool money together just between us BLF members that would open the challenge up to more people potentially. Plus then we don’t rely on sponsors so much ( i had Gearbest never give me a prize).

I know its a hard time right now with Rona, so i am just throwing the idea out in the open.

I voted no because of myself, I’m not too concerned about prizes. I do like the concept of a contest though, so with judging and winners. But if I win expensive stuff or a Sofirn C01 I’m happy all the same.

As I mentioned in pinkpanda’s thread, I am not sure if I will be in the contest this year.
However, I voted NO. Main reason is similar to what djozz mentioned, I really don’t care for the prizes (although they are welcome), I like the modding adventure.
In the last years I had the chance to select and win “high-end” flashlights and ended up choosing materials for more modding. But even if I didn’t had those, I wouldn’t bother with the prize.

So, I vote NO for that.

I also want to thank you, EDSG for your effotts putting this together this year :beer:

This is great that you and MtnDon are stepping up, thanks EDSG :beer:

As far as pooling money, my guess is most of the people who follow and comment on the build threads tend to be the other contestants. So any funding would likely come from those same people. I don’t think that’s a liability the contestants should wear.

Voted no because the OL contest is about flashlights and not about money. I guess we have enough reliable sponsors.

Thank you, ESDG, for organizing the OL contest this year.

What is an old lumens self built challenge? I can’t be the only one that does not know.



Old Lumens BLF Contest Archive 2013 - 2020 | BudgetLightForum.com

We can also have some people donate a light as prize. I think a lot of us have some very nice unused lights laying around.

Don’t take this the wrong way - I’m not having a dig at you, or your idea, but…
Exactly how and why would offering cash ‘open the challenge up to more people potentially’ I don’t see how? In what way is the current lack of cash prizes stopping anyone entering?
If people genuinely want to enter they will, and to my knowledge no ‘winners’ have ever been charged postage - so it makes no sense to me - if people won’t enter because they don’t like the flashlight prizes, and will only enter if cash is offered, well, maybe they shouldn’t be entering anyway as that isn’t really the ethos of the whole thing - after all for most winner’s of the past it’s more for the kudos than the prize (which is a lovely extra layer of icing on top of course).
Ultimately for me, this is a flashlight contest for people interested in flashlights who usually frequent this forum (not all obviously), and I can’t see any winner not entering because the prizes are flashlights, or related items.

I guess you are thinking maybe the winner might not want a flashlight at all - well, maybe it’s worth asking the prize donors if they might offer a voucher code? that way the winner could theoretically have at least a bit of choice of what they choose? I mean BG for example (should they donate) could in theory give say 3 voucher codes - $20, $40 and $60 ( values are just to get the point across lol) I would imagine most donors will sell other items too. That would no doubt be welcome if the winner wanted to add cash to that voucher and buy something more costly.
Good luck to you both and thank you very much for taking up the running of it - it is appreciated by everyone. :+1:

No, unless it is for charity purposes or helping fellow members to ease their financial burden due to unforeseen circumstances.

This is mainly to make the competition completely independent and a BLF exclusive, we have had businesses not pay up when people have gone to claim a prize, this happen to me personally and to other members and it happen in last competition also (people still have not received prizes). By doing it this way we eliminate the need for sponsors.
Bigger better prizes could possibly attract more competition.

Not everyone has money to enter, you might break parts and waste parts along the way so the money could encourage some builders, not every one on here is from a first world nation, people maybe out of work because of Covid and so on.

If some of the sponsors refrain from sending the awards the community should know about it. The solution is to deprive them of the right to support subsequent competitions



I don't think the parts' cost prevent people from taking part in the competition.
On recent years, some competitors build some wonderful lights out of very cheap components.
Eventually the final light worth a lot more than the cost of components and I am sure that if anyone is interested he will be able to sell it and cover the cost of components.

Speaking for myself, I don't really care about the prizes I am just have a lot of fun building my project and the competition just help me finish it on time :)
I don't really care about the cost of the prize. Since I don't need torches I always take the headlamps which are a lot cheaper than other prizes and I happy to get some new light even if it does not expensive.

P.S. please make sure to have some headlamps as prize this year too ;)

Unless the prizes / sponsorship was really enough to fund someone to work on a light, I don’t think it helps. And if it’s to fund development, it shouldn’t be a prize, they have to get the money even if they don’twin the contest. A small flashlight or something like that is more in the spirit than a little bit of cash.

I’d be interested in seeing a fund to buy flashlights for reviewers to examine. This should result in teardown reviews with pictures of the internals, without the need to put the light back together. I usually don’t like the reviews where the manufacturer sent the light, since those end up being like advertisements for the light. Member funding gets rid of this conflict of interest, and the unwillingness of people to buy a light just to take it apart. Particularly, there should be no expectation that these reviews be favorable or unfavorable. The goal would be details.

Yea i thought about something similar a fund to buy LEDs and test them the data is so valuable, So many new LEDs are out i just bought a XHP70.3, XHP50.3 HI, and some Cree XPP to test but i lack the equipment and space to test the LEDs proper. Id be happy to donate some money to that fund :smiley: