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?"
Kickstarter. (Score:3, Interesting)
Lobbying is obsolete.
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Lobbying is obsolete.
Not if you're a politician, in fact it's very lucrative. All you gotta do is dump all the your voting constituents.
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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.
Re:Kickstarter. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kickstarter. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then replace Kickstarter with Indiegogo. They allow pitching for this and for nonprofits [indiegogo.com] in particular.
I just understood "kickstarter" in title as "crowdfunding", like "google it" for "search the internet" or "xerox" for "photocopier".
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Indiegogo.com doesn't curate. A couple managed to crowdsource/fun a baby last year via indiegogo.
More important: Why are they drying up? (Score:5, Insightful)
So where is all the damned money going???
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(The money got spent on War, mostly.)
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"(The money got spent on War, mostly.)"
Very possibly. Which pisses me off to no end.
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"(The money got spent on War, mostly.)"
Very possibly. Which pisses me off to no end.
But how is that possible given that the US has withdrawn from Iraq and military operations appear to be winding down? Drone strikes are on the increase, but I thought these were significantly cheaper than boots on the ground deployments.
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.
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Yeah, because Anon. Coward trolls are well-known for their strict adherence to political dogma.
Re:More important: Why are they drying up? (Score:5, Insightful)
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and provide full medical care
One of those things is not like the other. There's only so much you can eat. And only so many places you can live. But "full medical care" is a bottomless pit of need compared to those other two.
There's no way that the US or the world as a whole can provide "full medical care" for a single person, much less the entire population of the US. That's because no matter how much you spend or how much resources you commit, the person dies in the end. So why should we spend so much money on a service that is gua
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So, you're in favor of it so long as you can make a profit.
Nevermind that it's the profit motive that drives the obscene cost of healthcare in the USA. Why should we fix the actual problem, anyway?
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So, you're in favor of it so long as you can make a profit.
I find that when others are telling me what to think, they tend to forget to be more descriptive. So what am I in favor of? And where's that profit I'm supposed to get?
Nevermind that it's the profit motive that drives the obscene cost of healthcare in the USA. Why should we fix the actual problem, anyway?
Whoa, let's not go crazy and actually discuss fixing the problem. The thread was doing fine until you brought that up. Of course, if you're actually going to fix health care and such for real, then things that can't be afforded like the fantastical "full medical care" have to go.
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Infinite money it is then.
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I would assume you are alluding to serious, old age/end of life scenarios where people spend millions of dollars trying to prolong life six months because of some devastating form of cancer.
Of course, I am. That scenario rears its ugly head quite frequently and that is the sort of problem that one has to deal with and often write off in order to have a functioning health care system.
Ultimately, I think looking at some sort of ROI shrinks humans down to some sort of numbers game which you can't ever accurately measure
Compared to what? You need to play that "numbers game", what we traditionally call "economics", because you have limited resources and unlimited needs. No one can have "full medical care" because that is impossible to support.
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I think you are being overly, how should I say generous, by interpreting "full medical care" to mean "we will do anything and everything we can to cure someone of any disease that they have at any time".
What other definition makes sense? It's not "full" if someone will stop giving care at some point. That becomes limited, not full, medical care.
You could argue that this is an economic decision, where they are making a call to not treat the individual because it will cost too much money for not enough return in quality of life. But it isn't a purely monetary decision. It doesn't revolve around money
And I would be right to do so. Why do you think that economics is merely about monetary decisions? Economics is the study of systems and processes for allocating resources to wants. Money-based markets are a large category of such things, but they aren't the only game in town. Any system of allocating health care, even if it's based on a touchie feelie consideration
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In our current world, there is no need to becoming a dolphin.
For you. You can't say the same for anyone else. As to the alleged confusion of want versus need, I think it's a simple matter of degree of desire, a need is just a want that someone really wants badly.
It simply means it encompasses the current level of standards.
Which in turn is an obfuscation for "we'll have a bureaucracy decide what you want or need". Having everyone pay for their own healthcare is just as much a "current level of standards" as that.
When you work a full-time job, it doesn't mean you work 24-hours a day. It means you work the complete standardized allotment of hours.
Which , given the semantics context of comparing it to "full medical care", you should wonder how that phrase, "full-
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"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."
Hahahahahahahaha.
For one thing, I'm not "conservative", at all. You just think I am because I don't like Democrats. Not the same thing. Really. For your information, I don't like Republicans either. You're a real hoot.
And "McCarthyite claws???? Simply because I asked a question? Hahahahahaha. This is the funniest thing I've read all day.
Do you read bumps on peoples' heads for your next act?
Guffaw. Snort.
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I just think it's funny that you think I'm "conservative".
I will admit, though, that it's easier to mistake me for a conservative than it is to mistake me for a Democrat.
Re:there are nations worse than China (Score:4, Insightful)
They also had a good culture that did not engage in much territorial expansion, like the Europeans did.
China's history is chock full of territorial expansion. That's how it was created in the first place and how most subsequent empires became established, for example. And it has modern military adventures such as the conquest of Tibet or the overthrow of French Indochina.
The big dispute was over Chinese trade with foreigners.
For a few brief decades. China has had many other disputes over the millennia.
The big question, is who won the Cultural Revolution?
The Culturan Revolution wasn't a "dispute", but rather the stamping of ants, 1984-style, to show who was in charge. The ants lost. The ones doing the stamping won.
Don't confuse "culture" with "capability". China in the past didn't have the capability to project its power very far. It was able to win wars in Sri Lanka [wikipedia.org] for example at extraordinary cost [wikipedia.org]. Today it like every other major country has global reach. I believe it will be different and the culture will turn out to be not all that different after all.
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In my view, Chinese culture is indeed less violent, as the Mandate of Heaven can be revoked from the ruling emperor based on performance.
Look at the estimated body counts for such Chinese revolutions. They are among the bloodiest conflicts in history.
In other words, there's a greater separation of church (culture) and state.
The Communist party controls China. That's the religion of China today. So there isn't a separation of church and state.
Of course, the state can always try to be its own religion so it doesn't have to share with the church.
An approach that China is currently employing.
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The context was about China's overall history, not just the recent few decades.
Any context that ignores what the Chinese society, culture, and government actually does now, is not a particularly useful or relevant context.
Missing the forest for the trees. Those bloody conflicts were revolutions. The tree of liberty has to be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants and martyrs. That doesn't make the culture violent.
Actually, yes, it does. For example, democracies as a rule don't require a bloody revolt in order to change the form of government.
But if you want to talk about Communist/today's China, it's worth noting that Communist started as an invention of Europe.
No, I don't think it's worth mentioning.
Mao might not have risen to power without help from Stalin. You could even say Stalin/USSR was the Big Brother (pun intended) in the relationship.
After the Long March, Stalin wasn't. Mao established sole leadership over the Chinese Communists after this point and Soviet influence in the Chinese civil war was greatly curtailed. And I would i
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Of course, this ignores how just trying to establish a democracy is difficult without violence.
If you have to resort to violence, killing hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of people (to look at estimated body counts in Chinese revolutions) in the process, in order to change your society, then it is inherently a violent society (due both to the violent response to any desire for change and the obvious need behind such desires that caused revolutionaries to resort to such bloodshed).
For example, consider this quote from Wikipedia on a hairstyle known as the "queue" [wikipedia.org].
The queue was a specific male hairstyle worn by the Manchus from central Manchuria and later imposed on the Han Chinese during the Qing dynasty.[1][2][3] The hairstyle consisted of the hair on the front of the head being shaved off above the temples every ten days and the rest of the hair braided into a long pigtail.
The hairstyle was compulsory on all males and the penalty for not having it was execution as it was considered treason. In the early 1910s, after the fall of the Qing dynasty, the Chinese no longer had to wear it. Some, such as Zhang Xun, still did as a tradition, but most of them abandoned it after the last Emperor of China, Puyi, cut his queue in 1922.
This is the sort of law pe
Re:More important: Why are they drying up? (Score:5, Funny)
so just claim your org is pro-war (Score:5, Funny)
example:
old slogan: we give used computers to poor people
new slogan: by recruiting young people into the Infosec milieu, we help america defend against the goddam commie chinese hackers and the motherfucking russians who are trying to make our power system go offline so they can invade our country, kill our leaders, and convert us to non-americanism.
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Don't forget the sapping and impurification of our bodily fluids!
Deny them your essence!
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Well, we can do the knee-jerk thing, and randomly shout out guesses of where the funds may be going, or we can examine the various laws passed over the last several years, with a critical eye towards items that appear or disappear during those times. Granted, the language of those bills is...rough, to say the least, and you almost need an indexing service to generate hyperlinks to the original laws / dependencies to figure out what, exactly, they say now....which I imagine lawmakers already have. Actually..
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Why are the grants drying up? Despite the much-hyped "austerity", in reality the government has spent more money in each of the recent years than ever before.
He didn't say a word about the government. Private grants are very common, anyone who has ever watched a PBS program through the credits has heard of several big name private grant programs - McArthur, Koch, etc.
Re:More important: Why are they drying up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why are the grants drying up?
In many cases, it's not that the money is drying up; it's that the money is increasingly 'focused' on projects rather than administration.
There's a popular conception among donors that the best way to keep NGOs from existing for their own sake (and growing fat and complacent) is to cease providing core funding, instead providing money for individual initiatives. As a happy coincidence, this also keeps NGOs on the string, having to justify every single little thing they do, which makes it easier to ensure that NGOs don't do anything that might make the donors uncomfortable, like speak their mind, or have a conscience or tell the truth.
The 'no core funding' argument has some merits, I'll grant (heh) you, as there have been NGOs who got caught up in navel-gazing, who got lazy and spent more time feathering their respective nests than actually, you know, doing good. That is absolutely something to be guarded against. But this move toward project funding has the unfortunate effect of keeping some NGOs on the fringe, struggling to stay alive. This applies particularly to those who challenge the status quo.
And as noted here, it has a knock-on effect on all NGOs, who find they can obtain salaries and meet project expenses, but can't own any fixed assets or even keep a vehicle running. Perversely, this increases their operating costs, which have to be met somehow. And that results in bigger grant applications for project funding.
Obligatory software analogy: This is similar to tech companies who see design, tech support, permanent staffing and even updates as cost centres and therefore areas to starve as much as possible. This can all too easily lead to more friction in the gears, longer ramp-up times, slower release schedules, reduced quality and sales, and yes, higher development costs, once everything's factored in.
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The problem is that the donors are often themselves large organizations full of people with questionable motives, so an increase in donor micromanagement may actually decrease the quality of services rather than improve it. It's not like either the government or places like the Ford Foundation have particularly strong accountability imposed on them.
In academia at least, I think it's generally made things worse. Whereas previously a lot of interesting research would slip through the cracks and get funded on
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The government should broadly decide what kinds of scientific research to fund, but it should not micromanage them, because red tape and micromanagement by bureaucrats is not how innovation happens. The government's job in funding scientific research is to allocate money and get the fuck out of the way.
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The government's job in funding scientific research is to allocate money and get the fuck out of the way.
I think we should skip the "allocate money" and move on to "get the fuck out of the way". When you're allocating money without responsibility, you create moral hazard. Researchers and engineers, who could have done something productive for society, now are angling for public funds simply because it's easy money.
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this increases their operating costs
This is the reason we run our non-profit, http://www.thetechfoundation.org/ [thetechfoundation.org], on a per project basis with basically no running operating costs at all. We find funding for our projects in our spare time, not as an employment deal. We have gathered a team of people from around the globe who put their time and effort into the foundation, nonsalaried. Of course, people willing to do that are hard to find, but the ones that are willing to do this are the ones you really can rely on. We also did not just pop into
It's goig to bankers and army. (Score:2)
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So where is all the damned money going?
Shrinking the National Debt [latimes.com]? More still needs to be done, but this a good start. What we shouldn't do is go back to eating potato chips and drinking pop just when our pain at the gym of budget cuts is starting to pay off in the form of a smaller deficit waistline.
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Starting to? It's been shrinking for years. The deficit has shrunk every year since the current administration took office, even the years when the Dems controlled Congress.
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The deficit has shrunk every year since the current administration took office, even the years when the Dems controlled Congress.
The deficits in individual years have shrunk, but the total national debt has continued to increase every single year. In other words, we're still spending more than we take in each and every year. It's a pretty lame excuse to say that you're better than previous administrations because you don't run up the balance on the credit card each year as much as they did. Meanwhile, the total amount owed is still increasing, albeit somewhat less quickly. That's a low standard and hardly what I'd call a "race to the
Re:More important: Why are they drying up? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More important: Why are they drying up? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's going to entitlements, mostly. Increased taxes and spending are justified by progressives with phrases like "taxes buy civilization", but they choose to spend most of the new money coming in on increasing individual benefits (it buys votes, I suppose). A lot of the rest is spent on bailouts and subsidies to failing industries. Infrastructure and non-profits are stagnating or get cut.
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"Buys" votes? Isn't it possible that people are electing representatives that share their positions? You make it sound like bribery, when it's really just democracy in action. It's just not acting the way you'd like.
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First of all, the groups being bribed are small special interests, like unions. They then deliver votes and are politically active on the part of candidates. No position in the US ever receives a majority of voters.
Second, even if a majority of voters vote for something, that doesn't mean it's constitutional. That's why even decisions like Prop 8 can be challenged in court.
Third, my parenthetical remark wasn't even intended to challenge the legitimacy of such votes; I actually think people are short-sighted
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Legal Defense for the IRS. And Prosecution of the IRS, and apparently line dancing videos for the IRS, and conferences for the IRS.
I think this begs the question who the hell was supposed to be watching the watchers?
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I think the better question is why the need to watch the watcher is greatest when the watcher actually watches those who deserve watching?
Watchtower (Score:2)
I think this begs the question who the hell was supposed to be watching the watchers?
The Watchtower [jw.org], of course. But who watches the Watchtower [aawa.co]?
Try the private sector. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Try the private sector. (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming that this isn't sarcasm, there's a lesson to be learned here. If you are willing to operate on a shoestring budget, you can accomplish a lot. But you also have to be willing to look at your idea and honestly assess it's value and whether or not it's time to close up shop and move on to something else.
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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 exemption
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Your description fits the bankers perfectly.
Most charity started from a very little budget, have no expectation of profit, and created for the sole purpose of benefiting the society. Those who started up for some maligned purpose are easily AND quickly caught up by IRS or their state's attorney general.
Besides starting a non-profit have several purposes:
1. Re-define your character, especially if you have a shady past
2. If you have monstrous (federal) student loans, you can qualify for PSLF [ed.gov] for TAX-FREE for
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2. If you have monstrous (federal) student loans, you can qualify for PSLF [ed.gov] for TAX-FREE forgiveness after working 10 years full time in any 501(c)(3) organization, including those you started. (Orgs that are tax-exempted on other sections of the tax code, such as 501(c)(4), does NOT count.) You must be making payments (Hint: use income-based repayment) and in good standing in order to count. If you have private student loans, too bad.
I love the fact that people actually believe that law won't be changed before 2017 (when the first round of forgiveness comes due) to prevent just this sort of thing. Such naivete is kind of cute, like watching Hallmark Channel movies and believing that's what real relationships are like.
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May be. But I bet there if that's the case there better be some sort of "grandfathering" clauses for those who were duped into these low-paying jobs, or there will be major political backlashes.
And I don't see why this sort of thing needs to be "prevented", in fact the shortage of public service non profit organizations means it needs to be encouraged. Getting a 501c3 exemption is not as easy as you think. And the law specifically bans labor union and partisan political organization.
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This is actually at the root of the problem. The general ideology is these days moving toward the idea that the private sector is the only plausible way to function. A marked change from the days when we a mixed economy with different kinds of entity were considered important; this is why we invented the legal frameworks for charities, not-for-profits and so forth. Perhaps all of this is pointless. Personally, I think not. There are some things that are worth achieving, could be achieved but for which is is
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I think we will be, and are becoming, a poorer world for this. Perhaps the trend will turn back again.
So what does the government do in this area that is any better? I think we're a poorer world because a bunch of incompetents are deciding what to do with a large share of society's wealth.
Five Interwoven Economies (Score:2)
Good point on the gift economy. Part of this in the USA may befrom a feminist movement that pushed women into the exchange economy and out of the gift economy for a variety of reasons? Maybe tech non-profits can't survive drying up grants, but there are still other ways to do tech in the gift economy or planned economy or subsistence economy, Maybe we'll even see a "basic income" which would help more free software developers have the time to do great stuff.
From my website:
========
In brief, there have alway
Integrals market (Score:2)
i made 100k off the derivatives market in the past week.
So should people be shorting the integrals [wikipedia.org] market?
merge with a larger organization (Score:2)
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but larger organizations tend to have less overhead and better accountability
What reality do you live in? In my experience that is exactly the opposite of how it works at every organization I've ever seen. Be it an organization of friends, a shoestring non-profit, or too-big-to-fail businesses.
The larger ones may have more paper trails, but that doesn't actually mean ANYONE is accountable, as we can see the world over as big businesses fuck up economies left and right and the only thing that happens to them is ... nothing. They don't even get fucking fired for needing the governm
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What reality do you live in?
Like I said, the new reality where grant givers are making larger but fewer grants. Groups of friends and "shoestring non-profits" don't get those very often in my experience. I'm not saying he has to merge with the red cross. Just that perhaps his current charity could become a project of an already-grant-receiving community redevelopment organization in his area. A small piece of a $200,000 grant is better than nothing, and he's probably end up with more exposure, volunteers and resources than he has
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Like I said, the new reality where grant givers are making larger but fewer grants.
The new reality is the same as the old reality. You claimed that large organizations have better overhead and accountability. The behavior of grant givers (especially, ones burning other peoples' money like governments) doesn't give us an indication of whether that statement is true or not. My take is that the statement is in error.
Instead, to me this centralization effect sounds like how in so much of R&D, public funding drove out private. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few decades, there are peopl
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.
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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.
That's the same problem we have in government with keeping stuff working. Everyone wants a new bridge or aircraft carrier named after them, but no one wants to fund the million bucks a year to keep the bridge or aircraft carrier painted. Of course, it's the same in the life of an individual. We will brag to each other about buying a new car or a new house, but we won't brag to each other about buying a new transmission or a new water heater for an already-existing 'used' car or house.
Nothing has changed.
Follow the US gov cash (Score:2)
Step 1. Find any US gov funded anthropologist. Chat with them about US gov funding, regions of the world with the US is handing out big aid grants.
Step 2. Sell, present your tech skills in a new light. Your helping sell brand USA to the world, diverting impressionable young people to good US projects.
Allowing US tech, methods, Universities, hardware, software to filter down to places where its been seen as too expensive, distant or difficult.
Step 3. Find some history proje
Run your non-profit as a for-profit (Score:3)
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sorry to burst your bubble, but there are laws about how much extra money your non-profit can make, what happens to money made in activities "not closely related to its public purpose", and what can be done with extra money (hint, no bonuses). Consult a lawyer, this is complex subject at state, federal and local levels.
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Partially correct. There are no caps on the amount of untaxed income your non-profit can have as long as it they are associated with its purpose, but there is a cap on the amount of tax-free income that can be earned from unrelated activities. Even in that case, you can typically continue to operate as a non-profit as long as the appropriate taxes are paid on the unrelated activities. However, your last point is 100% correct, and the most important: talk to a lawyer.
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do you have proof United Way has bought private jets? I can't find any only internet rumors without substance.
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Sharyl Attkisson, “Student Loan Charity Under Fire: Is One Educational Charity Abusing Their Status with Lavish Travel and Huge Salaries?” CBS News, March 2, 2009; Sharyl Attkisson, “Loan Charity’s High-Flying Guests Exposed: Educational Nonprofi t Under Fire for Transporting Politicians with Money That Could Have Gone to Students,” CBS News, March 3, 2009.
that's an article about Educap (Score:2)
what's that got to do with United Way?? You're posting about the interday price of yo-yo's on the chinese market.
EduCap is an on-profit student loan company made of t three organizations: EduCap, Loan to Learn and a charitable fund operating as the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation
Wellcome to the world of non-profits! (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless you have some kind of revenue stream, you are going to be relying on donations and volunteers just like a community clothes closet for the homeless. Sounds like now that the gravy train of easy money is drying up these tech non-profits are being forced to demonstrate how they benefit the public good. I'm sure that there are many worthy causes, but now their in the wild competing for the same dollars and mind-share as food pantries, elder advocacy groups, and animal shelters.
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.
Endorse a Theme Park (Score:3)
(most of this stuff should be obvious, but the laser pointer is included to help you pass the time making dinosaurs chase after the little red light while you wait to be rescued)
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However, under no circumstances should you follow the variant of this plan that includes an eccentric millionaire in Belize and freebase bath salts.
Funny, my first thought b4 reading, sell the best (Score:2)
Why should you survive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why should your non-profit survive when compared to any of the others? The overwhelming majority are staffed with good people with good intentions who work for very little money. The problem is one over-saturation for the market and a donation fatigue from a public that is burned out. There are hundreds of thousands of non-profits in the US alone and every single one of them thinks that /they/ are the most important.
When a business starts to think that they 'deserve' our money we accuse them of entitlement (e.g. Circuit City) and vilify them. A non-profit really isn't any different in that they serve a function that costs money and in order to survive need to take in money. Like a business they can merge, be bought or go bankrupt.
Frankly if more non-profits started to merge it would enable greater economies of scale and efficiencies, just like a business. It would also enable them to spend more money on their mission and less money on overhead. Services from secretarial to bandwidth to phone banks could be shared at greater efficiency across more organizations.
Perhaps my answer seems callous, but the bottom line is that no organization is entitled to survive. Non-profits need to embrace what the business world has done and go through a series of mergers for the greater good. Are your clients better served by your merging with another organization because you are stretched so thin that you are no longer effective?
People typically start and run non-profits because their ego tells them that they can do better than the person already running a like kind service. Society as a whole would benefit enormously if non-profits put their missions before their egos. These warm hearted organizations need some cold blooded business acumen.
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One reason is because the public will balk if not enough money goes directly to the cause. Heaven forbid if the non-profit spends more money on advertising and administrative overhead (which may be necessary in order to grow big).
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html [ted.com]
Forget nonprofits (Score:2)
Have you considered making a social network for cats instead? Ms. Naemeka will understand.
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Yeah, I tried that with ShowMeYourPussy.com - it doesn't work.
Alanis Morisette, take note (Score:2)
This would be the definition of irony.
You give away computer for free, and you can't afford computers of your own. So you want someone else to buy you a computer, in order to help manage your give-away-free-computers business. Ptysician, heal thyself?
Perhaps, just maybe, you should select a mission that you can actually achieve; you know, on your own: with your own skills, and your own money.
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liberals like giving other people's money to everyone, conservatives like giving other peoples money to their friends
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I'm suggesting that if you try, and then fail, you should give up. There's nothing wrong with suggesting what others should do with their money. But you can't be surprised when they don't agree with you.
I have zero interest in funding computers for poor children. I don't think it's a good use of anyone's funds. Clearly, others agree with me.
If you don't have funds of your own to donate, I'm saying that you should focus on building yourself to the point where you can actually contribute. It's a big deal
It probably won't. It's not needed. (Score:2)
Seriously now: Handheld cellular-networked supercomputers are this short of being sold in newspaperstands and gumball machines for less than a days worth of MC Donalds burger-flipper wages. What do you need such a non-profit for?
I don't want to rain on the GPs parade, but this seems more like a pet project/hobby to me than anything else. If it really is a charity, well then, call it a charity and do charity work.
No one needs an organization that hands out free leftover computers anymore. Not with brand new
Rolls eyes. (Score:2)
Just Kickstart it, there are enough bleeding hearts out there willing to separate themselves from from a few hundred dollars on a 'scause for applause, just offer them an orange wristband as a reward.
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Selling stuff that does not relate to your exempt purpose is considered unrelated business income and subject to tax (in the U.S.)
http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Unrelated-Business-Income-Defined [irs.gov]
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You may wish to familiarize yourself with Rolex (the corporation, you can't afford the watch) before stating such silly things. They are operated by a foundation which has charitable obligations but they're very much for profit and very much tax payers.
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Do you read your links or not bother paying attention? Rolex pays plenty of taxes... Really, it's okay to be wrong. Hell, here's a quote from YOUR link:
Founded in London at the start of last century by a German watchmaker named Hans Wilsdorf, along with his English brother-in-law Alfred Davis, Rolex started with Swiss movements and English components. It moved to Switzerland during World War 1 to avoid British taxes. In 1944 Wilsdorf established the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, which is reported to be treated in Swiss law as a charitable foundation, and thus saves on Swiss taxes. It continues to hold the shares of the company; Wilsdorf himself died in 1960.
Emphasis mine.
Don't you think that if they paid ZERO taxes (I note you've now moved the goal posts to "corporate taxes" instead of "tax-free money" which is *all* money) that would be mentioned? Notice how it isn't? The Foundation owns the company, the foundation is a non-profit, the company is FOR profit though, the Foundation makes charitable donations (a
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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.
unless you actually work for the government (Score:2)
i have seen people get layed off and fired all the time in the government.
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That is not my experience. I experienced the exact opposite.
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You want money to combat the influence of money? Hmm... I think not.
Re: Grants to Root Money from Politics w/ Tech &am (Score:2)
That makes more sense.
Sister company (Score:2)
Non-profit orgs ( 501c3 in general) are also allowed to have subsidiaries corporation that are for-profit. So technically the non-profit can hold shares of the for-profit and receive dividends to sustain its operation. (That is assuming the for-profit subsidiary is actually making money and giving dividend to its share holders.)