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Donate Unrestricted

paulgraham.com

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Re: Donate Unrestricted

#91

Post by zozbot234 »

lowercased wrote: post #86
scythe wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now it is funding anti-racist math: https://equitablemath.org/ In my limited experience, a lot of students seem to have specific weaknesses with the subjects that are traditionally taught in middle school. Manipulating fractions, applying the distributive property consistently, and simply understanding how to dereference a variable by inserting an equivalent number or expression -- I have multiple students messing t…

https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... I dug in a bit and found that and... as progressive as I would like to think I am, I'm 100% confused as to how "focus on getting the 'right' answer" and "independent practice is valued over teamwork" is... 'white supremacy' showing up in math. HN may not be the place to discuss this, but... am I missing something obvious?

> HN may not be the place to discuss this, but... am I missing something obvious?

The Gates Foundation are likely giving money to these efforts so as to balance out the heavy "learn to code" focus of most other SV-tech educational efforts. It's the anti-white-supremacy equivalent of buying carbon offsets for your dirty energy use.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#92

Post by human »

hirundo wrote: post #6

He didn't mention the little problem of the fungibility of money. If a school gets two $100k donations, and one comes with a "no stem cell research" restriction, then it usually isn't a problem to spend the other donation on that, and the restricted one on the road maintenance that would have been done anyway. So a restricted donation is really only effectively restrictive if it significantly outweighs the rest.

Ok so everybody learned a new word this week: fungibility.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#93

Post by websites2323 »

analog31 wrote: post #21
hirundo wrote: post #6

He didn't mention the little problem of the fungibility of money. If a school gets two $100k donations, and one comes with a "no stem cell research" restriction, then it usually isn't a problem to spend the other donation on that, and the restricted one on the road maintenance that would have been done anyway. So a restricted donation is really only effectively restrictive if it significantly outweighs the rest.

Indeed, that happened in the state where I grew up. When they started the state lottery, it was with the promise that the money would be spent on "education." Sure enough, the lottery money went to the education fund, and the contribution from the general fund was reduced by the same amount.

Are you from Texas?

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#94

Post by ralmidani »

Over the years my opinion of non-profits has become less, shall we say, “charitable”; society has a tendency to glorify non-profits because they “don’t have shareholders” but, in reality, a lot of non-profits give peanuts to those at the bottom (with some even working for free) while executives get far more than a living salary. And whether you’re an educational institution, an insurance provider, or an NGO, being an executive comes with lots of perks like travel, entertainment, lavish offices, etc. So while “no shareholders” is often a selling point for supporting a non-profit, there are still people getting an oversized benefit out of non-profits, who in some disturbing cases are the founders and their family members.

If I wanted to donate a large amount of money to a non-profit, I would structure it as a zero-interest loan, and would just keep deferring the repayment of the loan as long as the org stays true to its mission, compensates executives in reasonable proportion to regular employees, etc. Brian Acton (who co-founded WhatsApp, and later left Facebook) is supporting the Signal Foundation with tens of millions in deferrable, interest-free loans. I think it’s absolutely genius, and wish more people would follow his example.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#95

Post by human »

zozbot234 wrote: post #91
lowercased wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... I dug in a bit and found that and... as progressive as I would like to think I am, I'm 100% confused as to how "focus on getting the 'right' answer" and "independent practice is valued over teamwork" is... 'white supremacy' showing up in math. HN may not be the place to discuss this, but... am I missing something obvious?

> HN may not be the place to discuss this, but... am I missing something obvious? The Gates Foundation are likely giving money to these efforts so as to balance out the heavy "learn to code" focus of most other SV-tech educational efforts. It's the anti-white-supremacy equivalent of buying carbon offsets for your dirty energy use.

You are so right and it’s sad to see.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#96

Post by boomboomsubban »

xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #82
flaque wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone of these articles is really unfortunate. Very much positions the donors as bad guys, their own admission of failure as proof that they’re bad guys, and that the problems are fundamentally unsolvable and that we shouldn’t do anything. It’s fine to note programs that don’t work; but schadenfreude in fully-funded experiments with the goal to help children is counter-productive.

Well, Gates is a bad guy. He was a robber baron who decided that stealing a whole lot of money makes him the world's leading expert on everything. He has no training in pedagogy, epidemiology, sanitation, or really anything else relevant to the missions of his organization, yet he seems to actually believe he's a Great Scientist Using Evidence-Based Approaches to Save the World. He lives in a $200 million house yet h…

>yet has funded a billion-dollar propaganda campaign to convince people he's generous

And let's not forget the scummy secondary benefit of Gates donating tons of money into soneth education. It undoubtedly is going to have some influence on what computers they use and teach, further entrenching Microsoft as place.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#97

Post by lrem »

xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #84
jasode wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 (onl…

The problem with that is, in part, that they ignored the spirit of the donation, but also that the proper amount for a university to spend on a scoreboard is twelve dollars and thirty-seven cents. OK, that's a bit unrealistic. I could build them one for a few hundred, though, and they could pay a student $50 to flip over the numbers during the game.

See, they evaded a recurring cost!

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#98

Post by MauranKilom »

xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #82
flaque wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone of these articles is really unfortunate. Very much positions the donors as bad guys, their own admission of failure as proof that they’re bad guys, and that the problems are fundamentally unsolvable and that we shouldn’t do anything. It’s fine to note programs that don’t work; but schadenfreude in fully-funded experiments with the goal to help children is counter-productive.

Well, Gates is a bad guy. He was a robber baron who decided that stealing a whole lot of money makes him the world's leading expert on everything. He has no training in pedagogy, epidemiology, sanitation, or really anything else relevant to the missions of his organization, yet he seems to actually believe he's a Great Scientist Using Evidence-Based Approaches to Save the World. He lives in a $200 million house yet h…

> He has no training in pedagogy, epidemiology, sanitation, or really anything else relevant to the missions of his organization

I'm confused by this statement. It only counts as training if you did it around age 20? Or what makes you think that someone who is spending this much time, effort and money on a given topic would not arrange for appropriate (or rather, excellent) training on it?

Or is this something you conclude by starting from the assertion that Bill Gates must be a bad guy?

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#99

Post by michaelt »

rossdavidh wrote: post #59

I 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…

> It was much easier to get money donated for a new building, than to maintain an old one, so you can have a situation in which new buildings are being built while old ones fall apart.

That seems logical enough to me.

I mean, if every new building is an unprofitable drag on university finances, they wouldn't be building more of them. At the very least a building should pay for its own upkeep, if not its original construction costs.

And given that the fundraising department will surely want to tell rich donors that buildings are good for the university, simultaneously saying that the previous buildings were all bad for the university would be a very confusing message.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#100

Post by danielam »

hirundo wrote: post #6

He didn't mention the little problem of the fungibility of money. If a school gets two $100k donations, and one comes with a "no stem cell research" restriction, then it usually isn't a problem to spend the other donation on that, and the restricted one on the road maintenance that would have been done anyway. So a restricted donation is really only effectively restrictive if it significantly outweighs the rest.

Right, or if funds are earmarked across the board to some adequate degree.
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