Donors' FAQ

U-Sophia (https://www.U-Sophia.com) is on-line revival of the salons littéraire of yesteryears; it’s where artists and thinkers meet with their audience, spectators and readers in the intimacy of their home. U-Sophia is online, free to use for any purpose, and offers a constant contact to whatever is happening in the universe of arts and culture. U-Sophia channels it’s activities along three main arteries: a. on-line encounters, b. on-line stores for all that is happening in art and culture world-wide – the concerts, the theatre galas, museum openings, new books, new films, you can buy your tickets right here at U-Sophia c. Life on-U-Sophia is our creative outlet for the creator within each and every one of our U-Sophers, offering a gallery to share your work with other as well as workshops and master classes. Our mission is to empower a global volunteer community to collect and develop the world's knowledge and to make it available to everyone for free, for any purpose. We aim to reach-out for individuals and groups who feel committed to establsihing a global group of curious minds, and to provide to that group a constant flow of knowledge, unique on-line encounters and a dedicated space to share their thoughts and creativity.

Money you donate will serve to realize our projects (see: What are U-Sophia’s projects?), improve our technology and to hire and pay the salaries to a small staff of researchers and editors.

U-Sophia uses technology which is not geared specifically to our particular needs. We have launched a project to improve and adapt the technology we are using now to our needs.

U-Sophia launches and maintain special personal pages to every guest we host. We need a small staff of researches, to contact more guests and to maintain the pages of those guests.

U-Sophia's organigram is divided into three program departments: technology (website operations, software development and adaptation); guests and community (public outreach, identification and invitation of more guests, U-Sophers' relations and community programs as well as, fundraising), and global development (supporting chapter programs and growing U-Sophia worldwide community). The remainder of our staff will work in management, finance, and administration, which includes legal protection of our work. Your support also pays for servers, bandwidth, and Internet hosting that allow us to keep U-Sophia's projects running and growing. If you donate to a local chapter in your geography, your donation supports both U-Sophia' on-line outlet, as well as the creation and support of local U-Sophia chapters in your language and your country.

U-Sophia’s goal is to revive the salons littéraire of yesteryear, becoming the venue of choice for meetings between creative artists, performers and thinkers and their audience, spectators and readers.

We're serious about this vision. In its three months of existence, more than 1500 unique visitors visited our site, and more than 300 people attended our meetings. Our meetings are now available on your mobile device and other forms. We aspire to reach every curious mind and all significant creative artists, performers and thinkers, and allow for scintillating encounters. U-Sophia aims to go from a place where minds meet on-line, to a place where all curious minds meet on-line.

We need the support of an intense community-driven planning process, to achieve the ambitious plans we have set forth for 2011-2015. These five-year targets include increasing U-Sophia's global reach to 20 million people and to sign representation contract with 150 of the world’s leading art and culture venues (festivals, concert halls, museums etc,). We shall further enhance our collaboration with outstanding culture leaders, and the publishing enterprises that make their work available (a publisher of musical and literary works, universities’ presses etc.). U-Sophia will establish awards for excellence to be distributed to outstanding works that appear for the first time in “Life on U-Sophia). We aim to constantly increase the number of articles in WikiSophia to 500 thousands and render it the leading glossary of practical terms, as defined by our U-Sophers. We're also setting out to dramatically increase and diversify participation, and to measure and improve quality of all U-Sophia content.

U-Sophia is not a traditional organization. It's a global movement. The core of the work will be done by thousands of volunteers worldwide. This volunteer community is supported by a network of organizations, with U-Sophia  at its center, working in partnership with geographically focused local chapters in many countries. It's our volunteer community that enables us to accomplish so much with so little.