Ask Slashdot: With Grants Drying Up, How Is a Tech Non-Profit To Survive? 178
helios17 writes "Non-Profits like this have traditionally gotten started from the money grants provide. Most grants award vehicles, computers, and even pay for organization rental and utility costs. The problem fledgling and even established non-profits are encountering is the dwindling number of grants allowing for Operating or General Support costs. What good is a vehicle received via grant if you can't afford to put fuel in it? With the number of Operating or General Support grants shrinking and those available funds competed for heavily, should we be looking on line for help? Can efforts like this be a better way to approach it?"
Re:Kickstarter. (Score:5, Informative)
"Kickstarter cannot be used to raise money for causes, whether it's the Red Cross or a scholarship, or for "fund my life" projects, like tuition or bills."
Welp, so much for that idea.
Capital versus Operating expenses - Capital Wins (Score:4, Informative)
I worked for The Seattle Foundation [seattlefoundation.org] for a while (a while ago) and they serve as sort-of an intermediary between people wanting to donate and non-profits seeking funding. Donors vastly prefer to fund capital acquisitions over operating costs - it's just sexier and feels cooler to people who think in terms of growing things (money, power) by default. "Hey, I got them this new truck," sounds better than "I paid for gas and an oil change for this old truck they've had for a decade." You will find donors who believe in a cause and fund both, but they also want to have the freedom to say no and not be taken for granted.
I have to wonder if some of this is the changing values of our population and culture.
Re:Try the private sector. (Score:2, Informative)
If you want to maintain the 'gravy train', then become a religion. You get all the benefits of being a business (scaling from a small business to a multi-national corporation), and you get massive tax breaks, lack of governmental oversight, immunity to many laws where Industrial Relations or Health and Safety are concerned, and the ability to seek legal action against anyone who says your goals aren't good for the community.
What I am really trying to say here is, until Religions lose their special exemptions with regards to money, people and property - the gravy train still exists. It's just only for the very special few. Mostly those who don't need it.
Re:More important: Why are they drying up? (Score:5, Informative)
lol leftist faggot, why not hand over the world to china
And thus we see the right wing eating its own. Jane Q. Public is one of Slashdot's most reliably conservative posters--but one post that deviates from orthodoxy, and out come the McCarthyite claws. Kind of like how Grover Norquist was accused of being a secret Muslim the other day.
I'll be over here cheering from the sidelines.
Re:Wellcome to the world of non-profits! (Score:5, Informative)
Non-profit does not mean you can't make money. In fact, as long as you follow the rules for organization, reporting, etc. you can make money hand over fist. Think about how every private school in the US is able to function and some grow quite fat off of those tuition dollars. If you have a tech-based non-profit that (for example) provides computer programming education to disadvantaged youth, or provides systems and education for the elderly, there's nothing to stop you from doing consulting, selling spare parts, or charging for other services as long as those proceeds are plowed right back into the organization to feed your key mission.
Too many people think that non-profit means you aren't a normal business. You are! You simply have convinced the government that it is in the public's best interest to let you exist free of the burden of taxes.
Re:Get a government job (Score:4, Informative)
You never hear about the government laying people off unless they misbehave, and government salaries and benefits are way higher than the private sector.
Can I move to your planet? It sounds like a good place to get a job.