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Donate Unrestricted

paulgraham.com

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Re: Donate Unrestricted

#161

Post by a1369209993 »

ojnabieoot wrote: post #158
temp8964 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are exaggerating lots of things here. - The link between “Independent practice is valued over teamwork” to "private tutoring" is very weak. - The link between “focus on getting the right answer” to "private tutoring" is very weak. - No. Those measures do not particularly unfairly penalize students from rough backgrounds. No matter what other measures you propose, affluent students can benefit more. - No. Racism i…

Racism in US teachers is in fact a big problem, as is racism among doctors and bankers[1]. And focusing on standardized test scores almost always hurts poor students because it rewards families who can afford private test preparation[2]. These are scientific facts with a great deal of evidence - evidence which is considerably more compelling than “it sounds good to Hacker News.” You are just wrong. You cannot just ma…

> Racism in US teachers is in fact a big problem,

Your own fucking quotes contradict that.

> teachers held levels of implicit bias, explicit bias as operationalized using a feel- ing thermometer, and symbolic racism that were not statistically different from the levels of nonteachers.

> In conclusion, we have found that teachers' [anti-Black and pro-White] bias levels are quite similar to those of the larger population.

At least put in the effort to find citations that don't directly admit that the claim you're making is false.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#162

Post by ketamine__ »

doktorhladnjak wrote: post #139
ralmidani wrote: post #94

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…

> 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 This flies totally in the face of Paul's post. His point is to donate unrestricted to non-profits you _trust_. If you can't trust the organization or need to put controls in place to prevent them from doing s…

I don't think it's so black and white. The leaders at the organization could change and they certainly aren't going to give you your money back.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#163

Post by entangledqubit »

michaelt wrote: post #99
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 cons…

I'd love to hear insider stories about how misaligned fundraising department metrics can end up being for the university.

Regarding donating buildings in general, Andrew Carnegie seemed to get a lot of prestige leverage when he funded thousands of public libraries by paying for the buildings while requiring the locals to pay the upkeep and operation.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#164

Post by namdnay »

notsureaboutpg wrote: post #118
ralmidani wrote: post #94

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…

There's a huge fallacy where people believe that non-profits are supposed to be inherently more equitable and nicer than for-profit companies. And people who believe this fallacy get upset by executive pay at non-profits and turn to sites like Charity Navigator to find charities where 99 cents of their dollar goes to charity. But the fact of the matter is that paying salaries to people who bring in more money than th…

The money a charity raises doesn’t come out of thin air. It comes from the hard work of the people who donate. Charity A may do more, but it’s taking a lot more money from people to do it.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#165

Post by mattr47 »

I help direct about $2.4 million each year to various parts of the world. We often receive inquiries about donating to a specific need or geographic location and we tell them no thank you.

If people believe in our mission and leadership, then they give without any qualifications to what it shall be used for. We provide accurate records, and reports of what the money goes to.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#166

Post by temp8964 »

ojnabieoot wrote: post #158
temp8964 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are exaggerating lots of things here. - The link between “Independent practice is valued over teamwork” to "private tutoring" is very weak. - The link between “focus on getting the right answer” to "private tutoring" is very weak. - No. Those measures do not particularly unfairly penalize students from rough backgrounds. No matter what other measures you propose, affluent students can benefit more. - No. Racism i…

Racism in US teachers is in fact a big problem, as is racism among doctors and bankers[1]. And focusing on standardized test scores almost always hurts poor students because it rewards families who can afford private test preparation[2]. These are scientific facts with a great deal of evidence - evidence which is considerably more compelling than “it sounds good to Hacker News.” You are just wrong. You cannot just ma…

> And focusing on standardized test scores almost always hurts poor students because it rewards families who can afford private test preparation.

All the other measures (extra-curricula, projects, presentations, reports, etc.) benefit richer family much more. Standardized test is the only thing poor students can work hard on without needing much help / resource from parents. The solution in the article [2] you cited is giving money to kids.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#167

Post by ralmidani »

furyofantares wrote: post #136
ralmidani wrote: post #94

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…

> 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. Not sure if I'm missing something, but this sounds totally ridiculous to me. You give 1M to someone you think is going to spend it w…

There could be sunset provisions (e.g. if a loan is deferred for 10 consecutive years, it is cancelled), this would encourage continued giving rather than massive one-off donations.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#168

Post by lazyasciiart »

remote_phone wrote: post #135
santoshalper wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the outside, it really looks like it's more about you than it is about helping anyone else.

But the end recipients are getting the money, so who cares?

Are they? Or is it sitting there in an account labelled "children named Tom who live in a town of between 10,000 and 11,000 people and got a C in math in 2003"?

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#170

Post by [deleted] »

ralmidani wrote: post #94

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…

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