Update: We've located a "Contribute" button on the OpenMPE website that connects with the group's PayPal account. Benefactors can type in any amount at the PayPal site to make a donation. Subscription invoices for Invent3K are another matter.

OpenMPE's curator for its website Tracy Johnson sent a note that defines the level of detail the volunteers work on this month. A favicon -- the little graphic that appears in a browser bar next to a site's address -- has been added for openmpe.com. The graphic is a picture of the owl that the 3000 homesteaders used back in the middle of the previous decade for the "Who Knew?" campaign to celebrate the 3000. Senior Software Specialist Rick Gilligan at CASE created a handsome shirt with the logo for an effort back in the early years that followed HP's exit announcement.

That tiny favicon pops up in the bar now, but there's no evidence yet on the website of the PayPal account that will accept contributions, or $99 membership fees for Invent3K accounts. We'd hope that an automated method to accept micro-contributions -- those of under $99, for example -- would become more prominent for a group that's trying to raise $50,000 to survive.

As of today, there's no deadline for raising that money, because aside from legal expenses and a fee to prepare its taxes, a modest director insurance premium, and electricity for hosting 3000s, the group has few other regular costs to meet. It owes its director Keith Wadsworth $5,000 for a loan. Conference call expenses have been donated by MB Foster for years, and now Abtech has started to pick up that tab. The servers dishing up Invent3K, classic tech papers, CSL programs and the like have been donated by Client Systems; there were costs to ship these, of course. But all of the above is now in place. From an outsider's perspective, it looks like there are no ongoing expenses that will go unpaid if a lot less than $50,000 gets raised.