4 ms·

This is a such an understated problem with non-profits and charities. In the UK (not sure about other countries) it's pretty common for people to give money to

This is a such an understated problem with non-profits and charities. In the UK (not sure about other countries) it's pretty common for people to give money to a charity which is ring-fenced for a particular thing. Legally the charity then can't use that money for anything else. No one wants to fund the general running of a charity, they'd rather fund a specific event or programme. That causes so much overhead on accounting to ensure those funds go to the right projects and figuring out how to pay the water and electric bills. People don't realise that it actually costs more money on accounting to give ring-fenced money like that. I imagine similar is true towards things like the linux kernel with development efforts.

rkangel 5y ago
You inevitably need to fundraise for something, because it's the emotive stuff that helps you fundraise. You can be careful about your fundraising though to make sure that it isn't quite as restrictive as it needs to be. My favourite story here is "Scrunchy the cat". Scrunchy was a cat in one of the UK cat charities (Cat's Protection?) who needed a hip operation. Management were very clear "if you raise money for this, make sure it's not restricted to just Scrunchy". Inevitably the fund raisers ignored this completely and ended up raising enough money for Scrunchy to have 20 hip operations and the money couldn't be used for anything else. Scrunchy had her hip operation, and then for a few years afterwards any cat in the Cat's Protection who needed the same operation was renamed Scrunchy!