Reply To: General thought on old coal mines.

[Rezwan]

Rezwan wrote:

I guess you would have to get membership to receive such information on short notice, otherwise the membership itself would not make sense.

Intriguing statement.

So you’re looking at this like a service. You pay money for some news.

I would say that membership is about being a part of something, an organization, that does something you want done. A nonprofit organization with a mission.

I’m getting the sense that people have both unrealistic ideas about the time and money for research to get done, as well as for nonprofit organizations to function. How to put it in hard cold numbers.

Take a look at the website: http://www.dosomething.org – and then take a look at their 990 form. Every nonprofit has to file a 990, this is public information. Fascinating reading. This organization basically leverages their website to link teenagers to action they can take to make the world a better place. They also offer funds to teen initiated projects. Of note, right there on the first page is their 39 employees. In their expenses, $995,776 goes to salaries for those employees. $1,197,006 goes to fundraising expenses. And their website design was $149,641.

I admire their site and their approach, so I looked at their 990 to see what it took. Very enlightening.

Also, I had to fill out our 990s, so I wanted to see what was involved. Of course, I just had to fill out the ez version, 990N – because our organization has averaged less (far less) than 25K in the past 3 years. If you look at membership donations, it was about $4000 this year. That might pay for office supplies for the above organization.

The ~4000 in membership fees for FFS is from about 50 paying members.

Think about these numbers. All those folks who fear for global warming and believe in solar and wind and so forth put their concerns to funding the nonprofits that advocate for these things and volunteering for programs that the funded nonprofits then support. For fun, look up their 990 records. You’ll see how much money is involved, how much is “operation expenses” (salaries, accounting, website etc), and how much is “program”. These things don’t happen by themselves.

So, I’m trying to raise money to hire people to raise more money and to get the stuff done. It’s like any energy thing. You spend a lot of energy just to get the organization working, and the programs are the “net energy” – the surplus. The better your organization, the more the surplus/benefit/efficiency/output.

Sounds like what you’re interested in is a blog by Eric and fellow researchers. Something they’re not interested in doing.