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Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

khanacademy.org

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Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#71

Post by wccrawford »

notokay wrote: post #63

Khan Academy don't care about users feedback for years, so, no donations from me. https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115...

Donating or not is up to you, and absolutely your choice.

But that link shows that they did listen, they understood, they debated, and they decided that they don't want that functionality. They think it's counter-productive for how they're trying to educate their students.

Right or wrong, you can't say they don't care. Merely that they don't agree with you.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#72

Post by inimino »

notokay wrote: post #63

Khan Academy don't care about users feedback for years, so, no donations from me. https://khanacademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115...

So answering the question and explaining their decision is not caring?

I'll donate a little extra for you.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#73

Post by Aachen »

mschuster91 wrote: post #58
ipsum2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one gets in the government gets paid $800k, the highest paid salary is the president, at $400k.

Add to that the extra income from illegal such as bribes or the income Trump's orgs like his hotels do, to the legal avenues after the term such as book deals, speaker fees, corporate board memberships, lobbyism deals... the president nominally gets 400k but in reality way, way more than that.

But not out of the pockets of tax payers (or in Khan's case, donations). If people pay for Trump hotels, Trump speaking at their party, Trump endorsing their book, that's not the elected government's choice. Similarly, non-profit CEOs are free to have a hotel chain on the side, but I'm not sure it should come from donations that people gave to the platform.

That said, compared to other ceo salaries I've seen in the USA... This isn't that ridiculous indeed, it gets much worse (and I'm talking only about non-profits).

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#74

Post by woofie11 »

Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #17
thoraway329 wrote: post #11

The CEO make $824,000 in salary in 2018.. non-profit my ass.

The IT staff also get paid... How very dare them. Go to work and earn a living... It’s disgusting I say. They should do it completely for the love of it. Same goes for those pesky YouTubers. Long story short. If you don’t offer a decent incentive package, you won’t incentivise people to come and take a CEO roll. If you look around you will find that CEO at other charity’s also get paid well.

I worked for a not-for-profit where, 3 years in, we learned the CEO was making as much as everyone else combined for the first year. Guy was also doing minimal work.

I got fed up with these things.

If Khan either open-licenses the platform, or takes a pay cut to $200,000, I'll donate. If he does neither of those, I'm treating this as a 501(c)3-by-technicality only. It's a good for-profit, mind you, but still a for-profit by any definition I (rather than the IRS) would use.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#76

Post by kiba »

elamje wrote: post #51
dmayle wrote: post #27

(Replying to a trollish comment, but don't want to push it to the top). There was a comment about the salary that CEO Sal Khan takes, with is over $800,0000 per year. I think Khan Academy is fantastic, and was going to donate until I saw this figure (verified). I think that it's entirely inappropriate to extract that much from the donations.

The year is 2050, Khan Academy has raised 2 billion in funding, restructured as a for-profit corporation, and has vendor lock-in with nearly every school and child in the world. Khan academy charges a minimum of $800/yr/student. The CEO takes home $56 million a year. Which do you prefer, 800k, or 50 mil? Do we really want to a world where a brilliant mind, Sal Khan, is not rewarded at all for leaving his hedge fund c…

This whole startup scenario is likely to end badly for Khan Academy, or that the drive for money at all cost is killing Khan Academy's value as an education platform.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#77

Post by cellularmitosis »

sim_card_map wrote: post #14
op03 wrote: post #2

Would moving to torrents reduce the load? Kiwix seems to able to distribute offline wikipedia stackoverflow etc that way - https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages

They can also move from Python.

they recently posted about how they are doing exactly that.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#78

Post by mikekchar »

kharak wrote: post #56
dmayle wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about paying a salary. I've worked in non-profits before, all of the employees themselves are taking pay cuts to work for the greater good. He's asking people to give up their money in order to provide this service. A salary half that size provides an extravagant lifestyle, what he's taking is exorbitant.

What CEO's and many other people in for-profit industries are getting, is also quit exorbitant. But that's generally accepted. Why do some people go nuts if they see non-profits demanding high pay? Khan Academy has done something unique, helpful and truly excellent, but how dare Salman Khan wanting a cut similar to for-profits. (If it is similar, properly still less).

I think the key here is that most people equate "non-profit" with "charity". The idea is that as much money as possible is used to fund the services provided by the entity. However, there are many businesses run as non-profit entities that are not in it to provide a charity. It's just that the entity of the company is designed to take no profit. Often these entities invest heavily into growth as opposed to taking profit (and often this is even the stated goal of the organization).

If you take donations, it sounds like you should be a charity, but there are lots of examples of organizations that rely on donations, but are not charities. Basically anybody living off Patreon, for example.

Having said that, I don't think it is wrong for a donator to decide that they don't want to donate because one person is taking the lion's share of the wealth. In fact, there are for profit organisations that I will avoid simply because they don't seem to provide a service other than to line some fat cat executives' pockets. People are free to choose how they want to spend their money.

Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load

#79

Post by dirtydroog »

kharak wrote: post #67
JensRex wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try arguing with less snark. Every comment like yours attacks the strawman that the CEO and employees should not get paid. Nobody is saying that. But I'm absolutely not going to donate anything while the CEO takes out over 800000 dollars in pay, and it looks distasteful to me to go around begging for donations.

I hold the position represented by Dan Palotta in this Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou... There is nothing distasteful about non-profit CEOs wanting high pay. We're speaking about the founder of something that has and is helping millions of people around the world with arguably one of the most difficult and important educational needs. Khan Academy wouldn't be here without Khan…

There is something distasteful about them wanting high pay and extra donations to cover an unseen expense.
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