alt Hacker News> We received a €100K donation. Which was amazing, but we decided to give it all to the community so they can continue developing their projects. Not to sustain the organisation itself.
It seems a lot of the problems they described are self-inflicted and go a step beyond simple mistakes or errors in judgment.
To be honest, I think the request for extra support would be more sincere if the leadership involved in those situations also stepped down and, instead of promising a 'version 5', looked at solving the problems in the org itself.
The due diligence just doesn't check out and there is zero indication that the organisation has learned from these problems and not merely acknowledged them. How would you know it's not a scam?
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Even assuming good intent, that was extremely silly from them to donate their money away when they don't have anything to begin with. This either assumes that the community is wiser at doing their work (doesn't sound to be the case), or that they were betting that it'll work out one way or another (most likely through another donation) – not realizing that such a donation is exactly what guarantees their organization's future.
Who solves the problems if the leadership steps down, without any real resources to speak of?
I'm reminded of a clip of Mark Cuban talking about his biggest WTF?'s from Shark Tank. One business owner made a product for $15 cost, and sold it for $30, but they were burning cash.
Mark's story is that he asked the owner about it and noticed she was offering free shipping "to make the customer happy". Cost of shipping was, of course, $16.
Call me cynical, but I see organizations as being right-wing simply by existing as organizations in the sense that somebody in in charge, they induce a hierarchy, etc. As an organization gets larger, more established and more "sustainable" you see increasingly that the purpose of a system is what it does. [1]
One problem I've been thinking of is how community organizations can stay in touch with people online without centralized social media. The backdrop is here [2] and a good example of an anti-social media local organization is [3].
I'd trust a rag-tag group of web developers working on their own account to have a good chance of doing a good job of building out and promoting this kind of platform. If you could just pay people without having an organization or fundraising, $500k would go a long way. If a big non-profit, say the United Way, gave it a try, it would value groupthink more than competence and I think would struggle to develop an effective team and the budget would stretch into the $5-50M range. It would certainly spend more on overhead than it would on action. Worse yet, a group like that might solicit grants, but grants would go to people who are good at getting grants, not good at making web sites, so you might as well piss the money away.
"Sustainable" is the word non-profits use for "profitable" and if there is a big risk in non-profits it is that they are every bit if not more niggardly than billionaires yet without the profit motive you can't approach management and say "we can improve our process efficiency by 5% and pocket the improvement" (radical when repeated) or "here's a new venture that could expand our market by 30%"
I don't understand his situation completely, and I can also understand that making this into a real business (profit or not) is necessary to make it sustainable, but I can also see the fear of creating a monster [4].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join_or_Die
[3] https://fingerlakesrunners.org/
[4] Oxfam, Bill Gates, and company will do anything for Africa except help them develop a real economy that the state can tax and provide services
I can't shake the feeling that this a dream that was pursued by people who (at least for a time) didn't need the income, and not technology that was under any pressure to actually work. Something like a lifestyle business, but in this case, maybe a lifestyle charity.
The article is full of "community" this and "local people" that, and very low on details. The little that is there raises red flags. For example: The fact that their rented machine shop had to close down is given as an explanation for them having to sell all their machines below cost and then not having the money to buy the machines back when they found a new place. That doesn't add up: temporary storage spaces exist and aren't even expensive, given that you can choose a remote location. It seems like a crucial detail was left out, maybe one that would paint them in a bad light.
I gather that they sell (apparently unsafe?) wood chippers, presses and some injection moulds, probably at cost. I don't understand what else is there. The "version 4" release thing mentioned in the article might be their open-source "academy" [1, 2] that's supposed to teach you how to start your local recycling shop. It includes valuable tips like "add all your expenses" and "don't forget to include taxes" and comes complete with an empty Excel sheet -- I'm sorry, a "Business Calculator". No commits since 2020, so the "version 5" of this guide that they claim to have been working on for five years must be hosted somewhere on a private GitHub fork instead. I'm sure it's awesome. Best of luck.
[1] https://community.preciousplastic.com/academy/business/works...
[2] https://github.com/ONEARMY/precious-plastic-kit