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| Author |
Message |
janc
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Fund Drive Rebate?
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Dec 29 07:34 UTC 1998 |
A while back we had a fund drive to raise money for three things:
- The application fee for 501(c)3 status
- A drive for the future "mail machine"
- Spare parts for Grex's current 4/670 computer
We paid the application fee, but the drive and the spare parts have been
donated to us (though I think we'll be paying shipping costs for the
spare parts so they aren't completely free).
This means that we need to figure out what to do with the leftover
money. The 501(c)3 application was paid for by people who earmarked
their donations specifically for that. But for the rest only a small
amount of money is going to be spent for what it was donated for.
My suggestion is that the people who donated money for the fund drive
should be contacted, and offered the choice of (1) having their money
refunded, (2) applying it toward a Grex membership for themselves and
putting it in the general fund, or (3) adding it to some other fund of
their choice, like the UPS fund or the silly hat fund.
This item is for any discussion of this idea that seems necessary.
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| 21 responses total. |
mary
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response 1 of 21:
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Dec 29 11:43 UTC 1998 |
That's a good plan.
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steve
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response 2 of 21:
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Dec 29 15:30 UTC 1998 |
My only problem with this is that we don't know about the condition
of the 4/670 stuff yet. The motherboard we have doesn't have either
memory or CPU's yet, and the fully functional motherboard hasn't arrived
yet. There is the chance, throuh small, that we're going to find out
that we don't have good working hardware. I don't think this is going
to happen, espically in the case of the second unit which was in a
known working system 'till a little while ago. However, there is still
that chance so before we offer people money I think we should demonstrate
that the hardware works. This shouldn't take too long.
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janc
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response 3 of 21:
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Dec 29 17:56 UTC 1998 |
I agree that we should wait till we've received and evaluated the spare
parts that have been donated.
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other
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response 4 of 21:
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Dec 30 02:57 UTC 1998 |
also possibly retain the donations for other purchases of spare parts.
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janc
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response 5 of 21:
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Dec 31 04:58 UTC 1998 |
The request for money asked for support for a fairly specific set of
components. I don't think we should broaden that without permission
from the donors.
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other
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response 6 of 21:
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Jan 1 00:38 UTC 1999 |
i think a public announcement of the situation and the p[lanned response, with
a waiting period for responses from those donors, is appropriate. i see no
reason to make individual contact. those people donated money to grex because
they wanted grex to be able to offer improved services. if those improvements
cost less than initially estimated, i don't imagine many of those people are
going to mind the excess going into the general fund to sustain grex's ability
to provide those improved services.
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mary
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response 7 of 21:
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Jan 1 14:20 UTC 1999 |
I disagree. Each donor should be sent email explaining the situation
and asked what *the donor* would now like to see happen to his/her
gift. I'd expect most to simply want their money to go to other projects
or the general fund but that should be their choice. Wouldn't it
be nice if we could go into the next targeted fundraiser with
a clear collective conscience? ;-)
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i
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response 8 of 21:
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Jan 1 15:32 UTC 1999 |
The extra $$$ would make a great down-payment on a Grex yacht. (But janc
can't be allowed to go near it if we want to keep it......:)
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aruba
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response 9 of 21:
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Jan 1 17:44 UTC 1999 |
It won't be any trouble to mail individual donors, so I think we should do
that. We can prorate the refund according to how much was donated and how
much we spend on shipping.
But we should wait until we're sure everything we have works, of course.
BTW there is a precedent for refunding earmarked donations that were not used;
we refunded a $100 donation to the UPS fund in early 1996.
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other
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response 10 of 21:
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Jan 1 20:25 UTC 1999 |
I think that the idea goes a little overboard in terms of staff effort for
a small return in goodwill. It's not like giving money to the University of
Michigan earmarked for WUOM and then having them decide to put the money into
the Regents' Travel Expenses fund. Grex is a small operation, and I think
asking people if they want their money back because it didn't get spent on
a specific narrow purpose is more likely to generate requests for returned
money than rolling the money into the general fund is likely to generate
complaints.
There are times when I think it is more appropriate to be simply responsive
rather than proactive. I think this is one. Why ask for opportunities to
give back money that was given Grex. It really seems counterproductive, and
the benefits of the approach seem negligible if extant.
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steve
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response 11 of 21:
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Jan 1 21:17 UTC 1999 |
Sigh. Things are always more complex on the inside than they seem
from the outside.
If mark can create letters reasonably, then we should fire one off
to everyone who donated, and see what they're willing to do.
But, in the future, for the next fundraiser, I'd like to see a little
clause that says something like "In the event that Grex winds up not
needing these dontated monies for this specific purpose, you grant the
Grex board of directors the ability to spend it on something else that
is needed".
That way we'll get around this problem.
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rcurl
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response 12 of 21:
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Jan 1 21:48 UTC 1999 |
It would be better to obtain that as permission when the donation is
made, but not as a requirement for a donation. Records of donations have
to be kept anyway, so it is easy to have them flagged for whether such
permission has been given or not.
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