Worthy internet causes: Khan Academy, Wikipedia and Electronic Frontier Foundation Any other suggestions?
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Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
81–90 of 232 posts
Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And you know already that Khan is going to take the same salary this year? This is just rationalization, be honest with yourself, you simply dislike the idea of Khan getting this much for himself, no matter what.
Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think that it's entirely inappropriate to extract that much from the donations. You know, that Stallman lived for years out of donations? And no one was opposite of that. It also worked for WikiMedia etc. It's great business model but people need to stop looking on non-profits like that next corporation. They require far more work and I think leaders of such projects should be compensated well. :)
To be fair, there's a difference between getting a salary from donations and getting 40x the average income from donations.
To be even more fair, RMS received hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes (MacArthur and Takeda awards just to name 2) for the work he did and as far as I can tell he plowed it all back into the FSF. I couldn't quite figure out what he was paid for his work at the FSF, but I'd be fairly surprised if it was substantially more than what he donated himself.
Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
#84If anyone from Khan Academy is reading this: I tried to donate and my transaction was flagged as "suspicious", now my card is blocked. Probably because their PSP doesn't seem to implement 3DSecure. What's grating is that after I tried to donate I had to solve a bunch of reCaptchas before it showed me the failure status.
Very likely Khan Academy can't help. Also your bank probably doesn't know why and neither does their fraud prevention service provider that runs some machine learning/AI system somewhere that decided to flag your transaction. At least that has been my experience in dealing with these things.
Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
#85(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.
Absolutely not. If you don't pay the best, you'll get lower quality teachers and developers.
There's something to this. Maybe you won't get the most altruistic people, but you'll absolutely get a higher quality cut of the workforce.
I've heard that the Singaporean government has a similar philosophy. Their prime minister is one of the (if not, the) highest paid PM in the world at circa SGD $2m/year.
Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
#86(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.
Yes, truly terrible that non-profit organisations serving the common good should provide high salaries. Founder and employees should just go into banking, because those guys absolutely deserve their high pay. Imagine, just imagine a society, where doing non-profit could be a valid career option without a disadvantage in the income department. The horror.
> Imagine, just imagine a society, where doing non-profit could be a valid career option without a disadvantage in the income department. The horror.
I don't feel like I should have to explain this, but the difference between a non-profit and a profit driven corporation is that:
1) The NPO is likely doing some kind of activity for the greater good, which means that the more money you take out for administration and profit, the less good you can do.
2) The Corporation is likely doing some kind of profit-driven activity for the primary benefit of increasing the value of the company. Corporations generate profit by their very nature since their purpose is not primarily to solve (profit-wise) unattractive problems or to perform charitable work: the purpose is primarily to generate profit.
Anyone that understands the difference between these two should be able to draw the conclusion that:
1) If an NPO is burdened by excessive expenses, such as administrative cost, it will have less money to spend against the objective of "greater good".
2) If a Corporation is burdened by excessive expenses, such as bonuses, salaries or is otherwise mismanaged financially, this only affects the corporations capability of making a profit.
It should be plain to see that the complaint against NPO salaries is not equivalent to a complaint of a for-profit corporate counterpart.
Since I was immediately downvoted I'd also like to add that this logic also applies to questioning public expenses. Taxes are allegedly levied to supply common services and serve the "common good", would you also argue that politicians should be salaried on par with profit driven corporations, in the name of ensuring competence of public officials, even if that means less common good can be taken out from your taxes?
Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes I know and it does disgust me. I wasn't talking about IT staff and regular employees. The CEO founded the "company", does he really need to incentivise himself with a near million dollars a year? I thought NPOs were created by people who want to change the world, but with this salary it seriously skews my perception of his true intentions.
Since it’s a non-profit there are no shares or shareholders and he has no equity, ie the salary is the only way he financially benefits from the success of the organization. 800k is a lot of money but it doesn’t seem outlandish to me, considering the impact and popularity. Why should you need to choose between doing good and doing well?
That's all well and good until you start asking for extra donations during a pandemic that will be followed by a major recession. If you are going to do that, you should probably make a gesture as well. CEOs of various companies have been cutting their pay as a gesture for the duration of the pandemic.
Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, truly terrible that non-profit organisations serving the common good should provide high salaries. Founder and employees should just go into banking, because those guys absolutely deserve their high pay. Imagine, just imagine a society, where doing non-profit could be a valid career option without a disadvantage in the income department. The horror.
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.
What do you think his salary should be that you'd feel comfortable to make a donation?
Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 pro…
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Re: Khan Academy requests for donations as their servers are at 250% normal load
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 pro…
Some economists show in the paper linked below that being not for profit can be seen as a commitment for quality since you have removed from the company the incentives to exploit your consumers.
Abstract :
Entrepreneurs who start new firms may choose not-for-profit status as a means of committing to soft incentives. Such incentives protect donors, volunteers, consumers and employees from ex post expropriation of profits by the entrepreneur.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/shleifer/publications/not-profit...