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Donate Unrestricted

paulgraham.com

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Re: Donate Unrestricted

#191

Post by joshuamorton »

philsnow wrote: post #185
joshuamorton wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No organization would accept a donation of this form. If the size of the donation was large enough to be compelling, it would also put the organization at risk. Having a looming loan of millions of dollars at risk if you upset someone isn't viable, especially given that the implication is that this would last indefinitely. A nonprofit that took loans like this over time would very quickly end up with potential debts…

Agreed, if a non-profit takes enough of these that any one loan (or any group of loans) makes up a majority of their assets/income, they've implicitly taken on a new board and are more beholden to the "money board" than to their actual board.

Right, in practice this would result in either the nonprofit giving you a board seat, them refusing your money, or increased overhead either via some kind of insurance policy that they pay into that would cover you recalling the loan, or them just refusing to spend your money until the deferment period expires. But those last two probably result in you recalling your donation because the premiums on that insurance would be ridiculous, so they wouldn't be effectively using your donation.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#192

Post by ALittleLight »

"Unfortunately restricted donations tend to generate more publicity than unrestricted ones. "X donates money to build a school in Africa" is not only more interesting than "X donates money to Y nonprofit to spend as Y chooses," but also focuses more attention on X."

Seems like you could arrange the donation, get the charity to tell you what it would be for, and then use that as the announcement. You might get less attention getting descriptions, but I feel like it would still be net-moral to get a little creative with how you described it.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#193

Post by l2silver »

I recently helped to found DigLit.ca, and non profit that helps build technology for other nonprofits. What we've found when dealing with nonprofits is that a lot of the smaller organizations are, suprise suprise, struggling to survive. They're trying to carryout their general missions, but unless they have some kind of consistent funding model, a lot of their energy is turned towards keeping the organization alive. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, it's just the nature of the nonprofit game. But our organization acts a bit like a technology donor, and we've definitely had to restrict the nature of our services to mission facing purposes. Aside from the technical challenges of contributing to the survival of an organization, we've also found that developers want to help with problems directly.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#194

Post by miltonsopus »

a1369209993 wrote: post #161
ojnabieoot wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 populati…

I think that you have missed the point. It is implied in his argument that if the level of racial bias in teachers is no different than in the larger population, then there is a problem with racism in US teachers (as a result of their being a problem with racism in the US).

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#195

Post by PoignardAzur »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #4

I've done a fair amount of volunteering for nonprofits, one in particular[1], and I will say that nonprofits are full of the most overworked, underpaid, and passionate people you will meet anywhere. They need every penny they can get, and very often people mistake nonprofits spending money on essential activities like marketing or event planning as "overhead", when such expenditures generate multiples of revenue for…

> Wouldn't you rather the $1 you donate generate leverage in new donations?

No, because donations are a zero-sum game. They're not "generating" leverage, they're convincing people to give money to them as opposed to giving money to other causes and/or spending it for themselves.

I've heard that people tended to give a fixed amount every year and charities just competed for that amount; I've never seen any evidence that aggressive marketing leads people/organizations to donate a higher percentage of their income overall. And even if it did, I think the principled thing to do would be to convince people to donate more money overall, ideally to high-effectiveness charities, not for specific causes to compete for getting people's money.

Overall I think 99% of marketing is a blight upon humanity, a disgusting morass of callousness and amorality, and a huge waste of resources. Any money given for charity that ends up going into it should be considered overhead.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#196

Post by ojnabieoot »

a1369209993 wrote: post #161
ojnabieoot wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 populati…

No it doesn’t, the specific point is that racial bias is just as bad among teachers as it is every other profession. I never said teachers were more racist than other people, in fact I very specifically said:

> Racism in US teachers is in fact a big problem, as is racism among doctors and bankers[1].

If you want to argue that racist doctors and bankers aren’t a problem then feel free. But don’t project your problems with reading comprehension onto me.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#197

Post by codecutter »

mattr47 wrote: post #165

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.

As a donor, I would appreciate that. It will help me decide whether to give money to charity A vs. charity B. There will always be someone willing to accept the donation.

PS: AFAIK, Religious institutions in USA are exempt from Form-990 so a donor wouldn't anyway know where the money is going.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#198

Post by samspenc »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #189
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…

Zero-interest deferrable loans are an amazing idea. I suppose you'd have to be a substantial investor in order to get the non-profit to accept such a deal.

Not so sure since as others have pointed out, the non-profit would have to repay the loan. Plus a lot of non-profits' "business models" aren't tailored around repaying donations.

Think of some of the performing arts, dance and music programs in some of the largest cities that are structured as non-profits and charge $20 in ticket fees. If they lost their donors, they would have to charge $100 to $200 in ticket fees just to break even.

And that would happen if they got zero-interest loans as well, since they would be on the hook for paying back the loans and have to cover those.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#199

Post by remote_phone »

ma2rten wrote: post #18
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.

I wouldn't donate to universities in general. The have growing endowments which they don't spend. It also adds the income inequality in the US, you are essentially donating to the education of rich people. Note that PG talks about non-profits not schools.

Schools like Harvard and Stanford give away free tuition to students whose families make less than 120,000. This is directly from their endowments.

Re: Donate Unrestricted

#200

Post by PoignardAzur »

scythe wrote: post #66
temp8964 wrote: post #28

The 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/…

>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…

> 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 these up pretty much every week.

Yeah, this is a frustrating one.

I've been catching up my little brother on some math stuff, and I can see him slowly getting better with distributivity, but it's tough.

The frustrating thing is I have a really good sense of what error he's likely to make and why, but I also know that when I try to explain it it's just going to confuse him and he's going to think "your explanation makes sense to me, but my explanation also made sense to me and apparently it was wrong, so how the hell am I supposed to know how to solve this?"

I feel like this is a problem that could be solved with technology, but existing solutions are really terrible at it. I looked at Brilliant, but it does the same "explain complicated mathematical concepts with words that sound logical (and pictures) so the next time the kid tries to understand a complicated thing they'll come up with their own logical-sounding explanation and be completely wrong and get stumped" thing.

EDIT: I think something like an equivalent of Human Resource Machine, except for proof solvers, would be really nice.

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