I actually discussed the idea of donor earmarks with the other
fundraising folks at WMF a while back. There are a few potential
problems with such a system:
* More overhead for managing donations
* The Foundation is trying to move away from any type of strings
attached to donations (including grants) so that resources can be
managed optimally and flexibly
* What happens to money earmarked for scuttled projects? Would it have
to be refunded? (e.g. The Philip Greenspun illustration project)
I do think, however, that such an earmarking system would make donating
more attractive to some people, so it's worth discussing at least.
Ryan Kaldari
On 9/3/10 3:11 PM, James Salsman wrote:
Platonides wrote:
... And if you want WMF to have its employee do
X, the pay would be
'I give Y money to WMF if they fix this first'? That seems a bit awkward.
It would be best to follow the pattern that the Red Cross uses, by offering
either "where needed most" as the default, or a handfull of alternative
options:
http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main
Jean-Marc van Leerdam wrote:
Well, if you want to keep some control over
destinations of the
donations you could allow to earmark up to 50% of the donation....
Yes, you could do that (with a footnote or similar disclaimer), and/or
associate a certain amount with some of the earmark options after
which those would be no longer available for selection (i.e., after
they were fully funded.) Earmarking options could be offered in the
order they score as maximizing total giving, until the closed-ended
items with a maximum budget are fully funded. (Each could have its
own goal thermometer shown. After all the closed-ended earmarks are
satisfied, only the open-ended projects would remain in the order that
donors find them most inspiring.)
Platonides wrote:
The idea of earmarking for minor donations is
good, but it should
not be readily available ... while not completely hidden, either.
Absolutely; a multivariate linear regression test to determine the
extent to which each of the earmark options tends to maximize total
contributions should be run in advance, with a sample size (assuming
30 earmark possibilities offered four at a time in a variety of
different languages and locales) of between 5000 and 30,000 donations.
The dependent variable would be total amount given, while the
independent variables should be the binary flag of whether the option
appeared in each test (donation.) Here are some links to statistics
to help with multivariate linear regression:
http://www.statmethods.net/stats/regression.html
As for the earmarks, in addition to the five I suggested earlier, and
the ten approved but un-slotted Google Summer of Code projects, and
Sue has a list of 15 open-ended goals which could be used. There is
ample opportunity to run more than just 30 earmarking options. I'm
sure people could suggest others, either that they think of or find on
their favorite mailing lists or village pumps.
Best regards,
James Salsman
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