[Foundation-l] Donations - Direction - Destiny

[Robert Scott Horning]

Zack Clark wrote:

>Listen up, CREATING WEALTH & BEAUTY IS YOUR STRONGEST FORTE.
>OK? So why weaken yourself by pandering to false & pathetic
>scarcity principles wholly alien to the wiki spirit?  Your
>proper placement for key endeavors should always be right
>at the very top. But let me just say that you will never
>be sterling players in the supplicant's area. There are
>just far too many of them who have already honed their
>curious craft to razor sharpness.  Even if you should
>become honored & famed fund raisers that inevitably
>lures one into the sullen slippery slope realm of
>the lecherous lobbyist.  And before you know it
>your previously free & wide open world starts
>shrinking to accommodate the mean & narrow
>minded precepts of the status quo.
>
>The very existence of vastly varied cultures resulting solely
>from the segregation of populations is itself, an indisputable
>indictment of individuals' innate predisposition to assimilate
>cultural norms. So it is no surprise that so many minds -after
>years of turning to dollars for their very survival- form this
>impression that fiat currency is necessary and scarcity is the
>natural way of the world. They then run both their daily lives
>and organizations in accordance with the status quo's dictates.
>So even while we may be setting on top of a mountain of wealth,
>there is always the blind propensity to ignore our true assets
>and instead seek after rather dangerously deceptive currencies.
>But just as 7F (as expressed through WP) stands to obliterate
>the sordid sanctity of copyright;  a well working alternative
>to FRNs (Federal Reserve Notes) could crack our dependence on
>that harmful mind warping illusion also.
>
>
>
>Z.Clark
>  
>
While I might have dismissed this posting, there is some things that I 
do agree with you here.

There is the point of fundraising, however.  This is unfortunately 
necessary as there are physical, tangible assetts that need to be 
aquired (in the case of the WMF, there is the server farms) and some 
professionals that are required to maintain these servers.  This means 
that Wikipedia and the sister projects need to exist in an environment 
that requires hard, cold cash.  Paying for internet bandwidth isn't free 
either, and for the quantities that Wikipedia uses, normally won't even 
be donated by most organizations, for profit or not.  Indeed Wikipedia 
gets discounts in terms of value per megabyte simply because of the 
volume of data being streamed from Wikimedia servers.  Fundraising is a 
necessary evil, and that requires the whole thing of trying to deal with 
accountants, lawyers, trademarks, CEOs, and professional staff. 
 Considering the size of the volunteer force that is available and 
working on Wikimedia projects, this professional component is 
surprisingly small, even for similarly minded charitble activities.  And 
the value produced per dollar donated to the WMF is quite high, which is 
why thousands of dollars have come in simply by sticking out a tin cup 
and asking for some donations, with the only real ads for this coming 
from the website itself.

That said, I hope that we stick to proven fundraising techniques, and 
don't waste too much effort or time into grants that may end up being 
more of a hassle than any real value.  A couple of ideas and projects 
have floated by that have made me scratch my head a little bit to wonder 
just why it was thought up, but at least people are trying to be creative.

I want to thank Jimbo on trying to avoid getting the WMF into any 
political mess, including the network bandwidth issue and other seeming 
partisian neutral issues.  For crying out loud, there are enough 
internal politics going on with Wikimedia projects to last for a 
lifetime.  We don't need to turn Wikimedia projects into political 
battle grounds any more than [[w:George W. Bush]] already is.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning