Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Even when they are probably doing more harm than good.
We learn. That's not harm.
At the expense of others. That is.
Donate Unrestricted
71–80 of 301 posts
Re: Donate Unrestricted
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most startups fail, and we often talk about how that's a good thing. Absent capital constraints, why is that different for charitable initiatives? Gates is devoting resources towards nuclear (Terrapower) and nuclear has a terrible track record in effeciency (LCOE) and generation as a total percent of fleet capacity. Should he stop trying there? I would argue it isn't. I would argue the same for trying to improve educ…
Not the same. Try failed engineering wouldn't harm anybody (except wasting money). Try bad social policy, could harm people you experimented on. It also has broad impact on the society. Quote: "..., there is nothing inherently wrong with trying a reform and having it fail. The key is learning from failure so that we avoid repeating the same mistakes. It is pretty clear that the Gates effective teaching reform effort…
Therac-25? There are so many other examples, this comment is just wildly wrong.
Trying things has some inherent risk of failure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth working on hard problems. It just means you do the best you can to account for that risk (and learning from it to not make the same mistakes again).
Edit: You added the quote which I don’t disagree with in sentiment (I don’t know specifics of the policy in question).
Re: Donate Unrestricted
#73The article mentioned the Gates foundation which has terrible records in education initiatives: - The big failure in small schools initiative: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/th... - The big failure in teacher evaluation initiative: https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-melinda-gates-foundatio... - The big failure in Common Core initiative: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/…
Unbelievable.
Rather than diminishing the efforts of others, you could start helping by describing your own efforts to improve education (in order to qualify your ability to assess the mentioned and other efforts to improve education and learning)
In context to seed and series funding for a seat on a board of a for-profit venture, an NGO non-profit organization can choose whether to accept restricted donations and government organizations have elected public servant leaders who lead and find funding.
Works based on Faust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_based_on_Faust
Re: Donate Unrestricted
#74[deleted]
Re: Donate Unrestricted
#75"And to be fair, nonprofits don't try very hard to discourage such illusions. They can't afford to. People running nonprofits are almost always anxious about money. They can't afford to talk back to big donors."
Nonprofits can be realistic about this without being cynical about it. I worked with a very good nonprofit that had the fundraising mantra "don't give until it hurts, give until it feels good." As in, recognize that donors give because giving makes them feel better about themselves and the world they live in, and that's OK and something to encourage -- you just have to connect it to the mission.
That means, yeah, you have to take restricted funds and do benefit dinners and other partially-wasteful stuff, and you have to emphasize the photogenic parts of your work more than others. But more importantly, you have to clearly tell the story about your theory of change to your donors, so you're attracting the right donors and educating them to support your mission. They're the "right" donors because the more they learn about how and why you're spending their money, the better they feel about themselves and the world. That sets up a virtuous cycle where you're adequately funded and you're incentivized to do better at your actual mission so you have more to share back.
If you get _that_ wrong, and your donors feel good about their donations for fundamentally different reasons than what you're actually spending them for, that's when you end up with funding undercutting the mission.
Re: Donate Unrestricted
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least in AZ, we have several tax credits that allow you to donate to organizations in certain categories. Unfortunately it’s a fixed dollar amount and not a percentage of liability. I agree, it would be nice to control where more tax money was directed.
Elections are how you control where your tax money goes. Micro-earmarks by voters would create enormous imbalances. Police get so much money for equipment that they can’t spend it all, while public defenders go unfunded.
> Micro-earmarks by voters would create enormous imbalances
How sure are you about this? Would love to see some research into how things would work if taxes were more "crowd-fund" oriented.
> Police get so much money for equipment that they can’t spend it all, while public defenders go unfunded.
Maybe in some places today it would go like that, and in others to opposite. Considering the huge wave of "defund the police and fund social work" in the US today, I think the balance would be the other way.
Re: Donate Unrestricted
#77I worked in Accounting (the dept that did it, not the one that taught it) IT at a major public university for several years. Something like half of the software complexity was in keeping track of each dollar's origin, and making sure that it was spent on only what the source approved it to be spent on. Whether the source was the federal government, the state, corporate donors, or wealthy individuals, they all had str…
[deleted]
Re: Donate Unrestricted
#78I worked in Accounting (the dept that did it, not the one that taught it) IT at a major public university for several years. Something like half of the software complexity was in keeping track of each dollar's origin, and making sure that it was spent on only what the source approved it to be spent on. Whether the source was the federal government, the state, corporate donors, or wealthy individuals, they all had str…
>complexity was in keeping track of each dollar's origin, and making sure that it was spent on only what the source approved it to be spent on. [...] they all had strong opinions on what the money could be spent on.
Understand your frustration but the public was outraged when $1 million of a librarian's donation was used for a football scoreboard.[1]
Yes, the university did comply to the exact letter of his will (only $100k was restricted for library and the rest was unrestricted) ... but the public thinks the spirit of his donation was ignored.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=librarian+donation+used+for+...
Re: Donate Unrestricted
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the same. Try failed engineering wouldn't harm anybody (except wasting money). Try bad social policy, could harm people you experimented on. It also has broad impact on the society. Quote: "..., there is nothing inherently wrong with trying a reform and having it fail. The key is learning from failure so that we avoid repeating the same mistakes. It is pretty clear that the Gates effective teaching reform effort…
Therac-25? There are so many other examples, this comment is just wildly wrong. Trying things has some inherent risk of failure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth working on hard problems. It just means you do the best you can to account for that risk (and learning from it to not make the same mistakes again). Edit: You added the quote which I don’t disagree with in sentiment (I don’t know specifics of the policy…
If you care about education reform, I guess you must have heard of the Common Core. In the field of education reform, almost nobody thinks a national standard is critical / essential to the education reform in the country. It created huge huge political turmoil for many years. Both left and right were against it, but it got pushed through. Now it is gone, nobody cares. Imagine the resource wasted on this meaningless effort which could have been used for something else.
Re: Donate Unrestricted
#80The third restriction is 'purpose gifts' i.e. build a stadium and put my name on it, which seems entirely fair to me.