charities in a downturn [LWN.net]

charities in a downturn

Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:16 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
In reply to: Nicholas? by jspaleta
Parent article: Changes at OLPC

I'm sure I've previously seen analysis that says charities focused on small regular donations aren't badly hit by ordinary recessions. Only a prolonged depression, in which unemployment is very high and people worry about affording food and other essentials cuts deeply into charitable giving for ordinary people.

Even corporate donations are fairly secure for the first year or so, they're usually budgeted in advance, and arbitrarily removing all giving from the budget looks desperate which sends a bad message to investors.

The biggest problem in terms of charities is supposed to be new major donors. OLPC probably needs those, but a local animal hospital or addiction helpline can go on for another year or two without a new building or an X ray machine or whatever they were after.

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charities in a downturn

Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:41 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (5 responses)

I do not think OLPC's problem isn't the economy. I think it is that Nicholas turned around the mission statement in the middle of the task and lost a lot of credibility for the project, and some of his donors ended up walking off because they weren't able to trust him any longer. I don't think that any early disclosures of the XO2 concept have increased confidence, either.

I think lots of people would be more confident if Mary Lou ran the project. But she's probably burned out on that now.

Bruce

charities in a downturn

Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:44 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Oops. Sorry about the garble. I mean "I don't think OLPC's problem is the economy".

Add to the above that the brightest lights on the team were motivated to walk off.

charities in a downturn

Posted Jan 7, 2009 23:51 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (3 responses)

"I do not think OLPC's problem isn't the economy."

Double negative, that sentence parses as the opposite of what you meant to say. Careful... someone might quote you out of context.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion. I'm pretty sure the continued availability of opinions is pretty recession-proof.. but that's just my opinion.

Here's what would be great. Instead of speculating as to whether or not the stated reason is not exceedingly truthful, how about you go ferret out a donor and get them on record agreeing with our assessment of the situation, that they've backed away from the project because of a loss of confidence in the project's direction. That would be fantastic.

-jef

charities in a downturn

Posted Jan 8, 2009 1:38 UTC (Thu) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link] (2 responses)

What? Then Bruce would be reporting factuality, and that's not what punditry is all about! He's probably have to return his card, or something.

charities in a downturn

Posted Jan 8, 2009 1:48 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (1 responses)

Pooh on you. Google is mentioned in the above-cited article as a multi-million-dollar investor. Google's more recent philantrophic activities are listed here. OLPC is not listed.

charities in a downturn

Posted Jan 8, 2009 10:25 UTC (Thu) by metasj (guest, #56000) [Link]

Google.org (which you link to) and Google, Inc. (which sits on the OLPC board) are different entities with different charitable efforts.