[Foundation-l] Directed donations

Mon Jun 20 04:18:54 UTC 2005

>> (daniwo59 at aol.com)
>> I therefore suggest that donors have the possibility of earmarking their  
>> donation....

> (mav)
> Hm. This type of thing locks up funds and makes running organizations much
> more difficult than necessary, IMO.

Designing an organization is much like designing software: it's a big
mistake not to listen to your users, and it's a bigger mistake to do
exactly what they tell you.  In other words, your customers are
generally expressing a genuine need, but their ideas about how to
provide that need are often bad.  That's to be expected--they're not
designers, you are.  It's your job to figure out a better way to
provide their need than the one they thought of.

What the users are saying here is that they hate dumping money into
a black hole with no idea how it will be used.  And they're right--
the traditional way charities are run makes that a big problem, but
the proposed solution (earmarking) doesn't solve the problem, it
just complicates managing the foundation.

The better solution is simple: total transparency.  It's something
we've always been pretty good at, and that we are uniquely suited to
provide.  We should simply guarantee that every penny we spend for
any reason is listed on reports that we publish to the world
frequently and archive indefinitely.  Anyone who wants to know how
his money will be spent can just look to see how our money /has been/
spent; if he likes that, he can donate.  If he doesn't, he can tell
us why and suggest how me might improve.  But in either case, he
has total control, and /informed/ control, and in a way that doesn't
interfere with our management needs.

-- 
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>