[Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[Brion Vibber]

On 10/9/09 11:33 AM, Gregory Kohs wrote:
> Brion says:
>
> ++++++++++
>
> A few thousand dollars in rent for the Usability Initiative's space...
>
> ++++++++++
>
> It may be equally accurate to say that I have earned "a few thousand
> dollars" this year, or in my lifetime, or that comprises the budget of the
> State of Indiana.  I was hoping for an accurate figure, not a carefree
> estimate, Brion.

I don't have the exact figure, but that's the right order of magnitude 
for a few months' of rent on that amount of space; I wouldn't expect it 
to differ in any way that would be relevant to this conversation. We're 
talking about something on the order of 1/1000 of the annual budget.

> A more efficient organization might have waited to launch the Usability
> Initiative staff/contractor expansion until AFTER the Foundation moved to
> larger space.

I really have to disagree with you here.

Turning down funding to delay an important strategic development program 
by months or years until a future office move whose schedule or even 
existence was uncertain at the time would have had a *much* larger 
opportunity cost than the expense of renting a little unused office 
space *without a lease lock-in* in order to get things moving and people 
working quickly.

This is the same principle on which, for instance, small businesses  get 
loans to pay for equipment or facilities which allows them to expand 
production or services. In that case, the cost of the loan is paid for 
by getting to market faster and making that higher income level over a 
longer period of time (ie, the time between when they take out the loan 
and the time at which they would have saved up the money from income 
alone... if they even could have).

In this case, we reap the benefits of *doing* actual programs work -- 
improving the site's functionality for our users -- sooner, thus 
producing more good for more people over more time.

The money spent on rent to get many people working is more effective 
than the same money would have been spent on something else later (say, 
a little bit of contracting time... which would still leave us 6 months 
or more behind where we are now thanks to having actually started the 
program... assuming we still would have gotten the funding with such a 
delay).

-- brion