Wow. Even Frederick turned up for this one. :-) Frederick Noronha [फ़रेदरिक नोरोनया] wrote: > To my mind, the not-for-profits are not problematic in themselves. > What *is* problematic though is when they turn into a huge > self-serving bureaucracy, and more energies go into keeping themselves > running rather than solving the problem which they were set up to > tackle in the first place. > On one level, I see the bureaucracy as necessary to keep the philanthropists/funders happy, because they like to be happy when tossing money out. But as I wrote somewhere else, much of the paper chase seems to work like this: (1)Mow lawn. (2) Toss clippings in poor neighbour's yard. (3) Ask neighbour to submit paperwork and plan of action to remove said grass such that funding may be disbursed. In case you are wondering about what the clippings are - think of the effects of policy. $1 million spent on policy change is worth more than $10 million in trying to balance a poor policy.
Might be a lot easier to just put the clippings somewhere else, but then no one gets in the media. Very sad. Whatever would we do without these solutions and problems to read about? Then on another level, the bureaucracy also protects itself by assuring continuity. This, perhaps, derives from everyone's want for stability. NFPs are not very stable ways to make a living if one keeps doing a good job. After solving the problems, people have to go find other ways to pay bills. So it is attractive to some to keep the status quo; I've seen it in some NFPs. I won't call any names, but I think we all know that when calls for proposals go out there are a lot of people writing proposals. > So, rather than working to make themselves obselete, they should work > to make themselve self-sustainable, not funding-driven, focussed on > their mission, and not bureaucratic or self-serving. We needn't throw > away the baby with the bath-water. > Erm. I think they should make themselves obsolete by solving the problem - focusing on the mission and not being self-serving. I don't see this as either/or - I think we're talking about the same thing. And what I also think is that the dependency on funding helps create the situation. In a way, proposal writing could be called the intellectual's rationale for begging. Get a good street corner (social network) and master the art of proposal writing (pan handling), you're in! Could many projects be made self-sustaining? Yes, I think so. But would people make as much money as they do now by working for NFPs? Probably not. Would they have to? Probably not. I have a tendency to chuckle a bit when a project is managed in a country where the cost of living is higher than where the money is supposed to go, as an example. That's sort of like the grass clippings above, only they write a proposal to get money so that the people who tossed the clippings get paid to remove the clippings. I mean - when you step back and look at these systems, they are grotesquely amusing. :-) On another level, it is impossible to avoid the necessity of stability of the people doing the work. Few people can live as non-linear as such work would require; it requires great sacrifice. The people I respect the most in NFPs always seem to be barely making ends meet. > For example, the way in which the not-for-profit Free Software > movement (less so the Open Source network, which has grown with > corporate support and in the media spotlight) has grown is a pointer > to what is possible. > That generalization won't work. Free software/Open Source not-for-profit projects vary. Consider Ubuntu. Shuttleworth did the initial funding, and while I haven't stayed on top of it I do know that he at least threatened to pull funding unless the business running the distribution became self-sustaining. That's a brilliant example, but it was because Shuttleworth Said So. To balance that, well - there are plenty of failed NFP Free Software/Open Source examples as well. I know for a fact that Latin America and the Caribbean has had a fair share of failures; part of that was simply because no funding was available or because people stuck to their guns and didn't 'sell out'. I could name names and point fingers, but that is of no use. I've been involved with studies on Free Software/Open Source in the region as well as NFPs - and I've also been involved in NFPs which were in other regions or global. I advocate Free Software and Open Source, as well as Open Content and Open Standards - but I must say that they are by no means a great example of how things should be done. A few, yes. Most? No. There is no silver bullet, but there are plenty of guns. -- Taran Rampersad Presently in: San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.knowprose.com Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/knowprose/ "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo "The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine." - Nikola Tesla _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@digitaldivide.net http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
