I don't disagree with you. Though I think that starting with one and slowly work their way might be an alternative, I don't see anything wrong with three fundraising staff members. I'm just saying we don't even have them yet, so it's a bit early to speculate on them.
-Dan On Apr 17, 2008, at 10:08 PM, George Herbert wrote:
Dan, I can't predict the future any better than you can 8-)
However...
The general observations remain. Other nonprofits use such people, to do the same things, to drive large parts of their fundraising. This is normal and par for the course in the organized charity realm.
What the WMF wants to do, what we've asked the foundation to do, do require these types of growth.
It's possible that executing on this will not go well, but trying to do it seems clearly appropriate.
-george
On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 6:56 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
I think we're far to early to pass judgment over whether the 3 positions are cost effective without a) knowing the salaries, which I doubt we will, and b) seeing how well they perform, and c) actually hiring anyone yet.
-Dan
On Apr 17, 2008, at 9:52 PM, George Herbert wrote:
On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 6:25 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
Do we honestly need 3 more employees all doing the same thing? I really think a dedicated "Donations Coordinator" could accomplish the same thing, rather than making 3 positions, at least at this point in time.
These type of employees usually pay for themselves many many times over in the increased donations. I have heard of exceptions, and hopefully Erik, Sue, and the Board will reverse this if the donations don't come through accordingly.
But... if one looks out there at donating entities, foundations and rich individuals and companies and the like, there's a lot of charitable money out there that the Foundation should be going after, and the bandwidth and focused job role of doing so seems like an excellent idea to me.
We want the foundation to be stable, growing, build an endowment, be able to help with creating and encouraging open content not just within the context of the projects but in society as a whole. Those things aren't going to be cheap. There is donor money out there. If we want to do those things, we need that donor money.
"Growing up" to the point that we acknowledge that, create the positions, hire for them, and then execute on chasing and catching donations of appropriate scope is an important evolution for the Foundation. It's a good idea. It's a necessary set of steps in the long term.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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