[Noisebridge-discuss] meet tomorrow?

[Ben Henry]

My $0.02 regarding donors:

If you let them know up front what you're using the money for, keep
them in touch with how their money is being used (rent, equipment,
events, lectures, etc), then they have no reason to complain.  If you
let them know on day 1 what the risks are for them (wait..they're
donors, not investors), then they should have nothing to complain
about when the time comes and one of those risks happens (shit!).

I know our company's are doing things a bit differently, but the
topics of conversation are very familiar.  We have investors, not
donors, but we actually have them.  So, honestly, getting donors to
give you a thousand or more is not the hard part.  Since they're
donors, they probably won't want their money back, either (which is
something we have to deal with), so just show them what happened with
their money.  It will make them want to give you more even if you're
failing.

Oh, another thing.  There is money everywhere you look.  If you're
worried about where to find donations, look in a different spot.  Send
submissions to something national or international...or local.
Whatever you're not doing is what you should do to get more people
interested.  Selling donors is easy once you're convinced that this
idea is going to work.

Sorry to introduce business into creative border-less organization
(why shouldn't they mix?)  Business is new for me, and being creative
that way is just as fun as debugging traces with a microscope.  Or
finding a 25 year old bug in BSD.

-Ben

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 2:10 PM, Al Billings <albill at arcanology.com> wrote:
> Noah Balmer wrote:
>>
>> To look at it another way, If the board doesn't keep the donors happy,
>> they won't get any more donations, so the board is highly motivated to keep
>> the interests of the donors in mind.
>
> More? How about any? We're asking people to donate a bunch of money up front
> to get the group going since we more than a couple of thousand dollars in
> order to even *get into* a space if one can be found. Then we're asking
> people to promise hundreds of dollars a month for a period of time in order
> to meet the lease on a space.
>
> I won't be at the meeting tonight but I know that before I hand significant
> amounts of money to near strangers, I am going to have questions about how
> accountable the organization is. I was under the impression that we'd agreed
> to have members have some say in the organization, partially because these
> concerns were brought up before.  Maybe this is only a concern to me but I
> suspect that it will not be so.
>
> I don't think that I'm being overly cantankerous here but it is possible.
>
> Al
>
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