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Comment by braythwayt | Hacker News Reader

Some years ago I organized some bridge* events for charity. It was as simple as selecting a worthy cause (a children’s hospital), signing an agreement that we were going to turn over the funds, collecting the funds, and handing them over.

These were a minuscule success, and I later thought that a “fun run” would be a good way to raise some money. I asked around about how to organize such things, and I was connected to a firm that organized these things as a service.

They took me to a nice lunch, which I thought was a bad sign. “Never buy anything in a room with a chandelier,” is the old saying, and while there was no chandelier in the restaurant, the metaphor was nevertheless on point.

When I finally got the actual details of how the run would operate, I realized that the firm’s fees would greatly exceed the amount of money that would end up going to the charity.

I speculate that the “market” for these services are people who want to buy some respectability. Had I gone though with the deal and the run was a success, everyone would think I was a nice person doing nice things for people in need, even if the actual numbers would show that I was a nice person doing nice things for a service company’s revenues.

N=1, of course, but I have had an extremely cynical view of charity events ever since. There appears to be an entire industry built around siphoning away 90%-99% of every dollar adjacent to charity.

———

* Bridge the card game, not the BASE-jumping location.

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I saw what I consider to be the epitome of money-grubbing "charity fun run" about five years ago with the "Ugly Sweater Run". They blatantly advertised that there would be no clock, no results, and it would be "about 5K/3.1 miles". For $85. On a private road that was unlikely to require any permits or even much traffic control (Remlinger Farms, for those familiar with the Seattle/Carnation area). I've run plenty of 5K runs with awards, traffic control, support, timing and placing for $35 (and this old man thinks that's high).

But wait, you might ask, what about the charity? Toys for Tots. Bring your own damned toy, because the organizers sure as hell weren't giving the little shits any toys. None of the money was earmarked for the charity, right into the event organizers' pockets it goes.

That's the most egregious example. Other examples abound to solidify my belief that charity fun runs are a racket. Write a check directly, and go find a run that isn't trying to bullshit you with a coat of "it's for charity".

Fun runs are probably generally cost-inefficient, and if what you're saying about the Toys for Tots is true, thats terrible, but I don't quite understand how the pricing relates to the story.

> with awards, traffic control, support, timing and placing for $35

Surly those must struggle to break even? Wouldn't a higher fee, and, more importantly, nearly-zero costs be exactly what you want for a charity run?

> Surly those must struggle to break even? Wouldn't a higher fee, and, more importantly, nearly-zero costs be exactly what you want for a charity run?

The one for 35$ wasn't the charity run, that was the commercial one. The charity one was 85$, thus even if they just paid the commercial one 35$ per runner, they would still comes out with 50$ per runner given, yet if his story is true, they gave 0$ per runner.

To put a lower bound on how much these things can cost. The Kent Fitness League (UK) runs an old school cross country event. It costs two pounds (2015).

I did my first timed 5K over the holidays for free through a local parkrun:

https://www.parkrun.us/

Apparently they're sponsored, but I have no idea who sponsored this one.

I have been to a few fun runs that do not support a charity, cost >$40, and ask for volunteers to help pass out bibs, direct traffic, etc.

I never understood why people would volunteer for an event like that. You aren’t supporting anything except the company that is profiting from the run.

If anyone profits from the run, it’s the company that pulls out the clock and the timing mat. That will be a fixed fee, whether you have volunteers or not. The timing company does not care about charity, or not, they want their money to pull out the equipment. I know a few of these folks, most are one person/mom and pop operations. None that I know of are driving nice cars and raking it in.

The volunteers are to reduce other costs for what is probably at best a break-even proposition. Race directors generally aren’t rolling in cash, either. That is, unless one doesn’t provide any of those services and charges $85.

"everyone would think I was a nice person doing nice things for people in need"

Notwithstanding effective altruists.

That aside, when I spent more time doing running & triathlon there was an unspoken rule that people don't ask the group for charitable funding for these things.

A large number of charity marathon runners will be effectively buying a place in a race they did not good-for-age qualify for. There's nothing wrong with that and cool that a proportion of the ticket price goes to charity, but it would be great if more people could just own it.

The general rule is don't ask other people to pay for your fun adventure activities.

My niece is currently soliciting sponsorship for some kind of charitable visit to a foreign country. As far as I can tell it's simply a holiday. No actual charitable work will be done (it's meant for the children to "experience the world" or something). She, or rather, the donors, have to pay the full cost and at over £3000 it's quite a lot more than a two week package holiday to the same place. I declined to donate.

World Challenge? Yeah.. On sign-up, the children seemed to think the organisation was a charity, which felt a bit more acceptable. The company didn't hide the fact they were for-profit.

To be fair, they are doing more than a simple package holiday offers, but it is still not a cheap expedition.

Well, check out the annual reports from your favourite charitable organizations; the most successful ones have a high correlation with those where fund raising costs is the biggest line-item expense. It seems to be this "grow or die" mentality spilling over from the corporate world. United Way is one of the biggest offenders.

I wish more charities would constrain themselves to their original narrow mandate without success inevitably growing their "addressable market"...

Big Charities are fundraising companies with a branch of operations which do some actual good.

I feel like this is an obligatory reference: https://www.fastcompany.com/3035734/ikea-is-a-nonprofit-and-...

Other groups who have been "nonprofit" until recently include Visa (the credit card network) and the NFL.

Today I learned - thank you!

A career ago I spent a good chunk of my time going over the financials of non-profits large and small. It's an entire industry passing grants back and forth, skimming a percentage each time. United Ways are typically run by a board of trustees consisting of the local elite; lawyers, accountants, small business owners. The UW sends money to other local non-profits who spend it on services and rent from those same lawyers, accountants, and small business owners while employing their failsons. Thousands of donations go in, and at the end someone gets a bag of dented cans of cream of mushroom soup.

Not all charities are like this; the against malaria foundation for example seems very cost effective

AMF is a UK charity so I'm not sure I'm reading their financial page correctly: https://www.againstmalaria.com/FinancialInformation.aspx

Looks like they're using half their revenues to build up a bank account. To smooth out their net purchases? For the most part, I like their model. They turn thousands of small donations directly into nets without a bunch of middle men.

By their "failsons" do you mean their "ericsanddonaldjrs"?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-is-failson-culture-look-n...

You can find more effective charities at givewell.org

I'm an academic researcher that studies nonprofits and trust me, you are not alone in thinking this. But the problem with charities constraining themselves to their original narrow mandate is that this leads to tiny nonprofits trying to solve the greatest challenges facing humanity (poverty, disease, etc.). Tiny nonprofits simply cannot impact the world significantly.

Sure there are examples of egregious shadiness in nonprofits, but an above comment mentioned the Red Cross basically putting 375m/500m of donations toward the programs. Honestly, if they send every dollar received straight the beneficiaries, they would have raised significantly less than 500m. Would it be better for the programs to receive 375m/500m or 25m/25m? Sure we don't know how much they would have raised without all the fundraising, but this issue is more nuanced than people think.

EDIT: I read the Red Cross article from NPR, and it appears that example falls under legitimate questioning of the use of funds. My larger point still applies in general though.

Glad to know my intuitive revulsion at how fake this type of corporate “charity” seems is borne out by the facts. Something always seems off.

Edit: It seems to me that it’s an amazingly potent form of evil to poison the well of charity so that there’s no air/light/goodwill left for those who would legitimately try to help the unfortunate.

Reputation-laundering. I would not be surprised if such an adjacent industry also exists for foreign aid.

When I worked in Boston I organized a company event for habitat for humanity. First year was great, we worked on a house all day, paid HforH somewhere between 1k and 5k (i cannot remember). A year later we returned to the same site. But... the house we worked on the year before wasnt finished yet...

That kind of blue my mind. I always wondered whether the money donated by companies would have been better used to just hire contractors.

It actually does go to hire contractors. The dirty not-so-hidden secret is that HFH sets aside houses for volunteers to work on.

The majority of HFH houses are actually built by contractors without any volunteers messing shit up.

ah, that makes sense, but also feels pretty lame overall. I definitely won't volunteer again or org anything for them.

There was a great HN comment a few years ago that broke down the "Charitable-Industrial Complex" using The Real Housewives as an example.

I found it:

One thing I've learned from many so-called "philanthropists" is that hosting charity events can be a great status and money making/saving opportunity for those in the business of it. If you've ever watched a "real housewive of ..." episode, those wacky ladies are constantly hosting charity events and provide a pretty good example of how this works:

Full comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6113969

Plenty more examples abound. Even the American Red Cross — raised $500mm in 2015 for Haiti earthquake relief. Used $125mm for internal expenses[0]

[0] https://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482020436/senators-report-fin...

Are there many people playing bridge these days? I'm in my early 30s and was one of only half a dozen members of my school's bridge club (Grammar school, in England), most of our opponents were older folk, we all thoroughly enjoyed match days but I doubt many British schools have bridge clubs, is it popular elsewhere in the world?

Off-topic but I'm curious, what does "Never buy anything in a room with a chandelier" mean? Tried searching everywhere to get some explanation, but the closest hit I get is from Google which is a link to your comment here.

If they can afford to take you to a really nice place for a sales meeting, it means the margins are crazy high and you're getting ripped off.

That's how I feel about almost every real-estate office I've ever been in. The agent is always driving some flashy car, like a maserati or tesla, and everything in the office is way too nice.

Basically, yes. But not exactly, or at least, not as I understand it. Someone can be crazy-successful and be able to afford to take customers to a really nice place.

What makes it a “room with a chandelier” is when it is artifice, designed to impress those who mistake flash for function. And here is the kicker: They are trying to close the business while the “mark” is overwhelmed by the spectacle.

It’s a judgment call, in my opinion. If Tim Cook flew me to California and took me to his favourite place to talk about working at Apple, I wouldn't think he was trying to con me with opulence.

But of he just happened to have an employment agreement in his pocket, and would I care to sign it over the cigars and brandy... That would be buying something in a room with a chandelier.

Likewise, if a block-chain startup took its angel money and bought themselves a party at CES with an open bar... I’d look askance at my “VIP Invite.”

But if, during the party, all they said was, “Hey, keep us in mind if you or someone you know is looking...” well, that’s buying exposure, and maybe I’m not impressed, but they aren’t trying to sway me at the moment I’m making a decision, so it wouldn’t be buying something in a room with a chandelier.

100% bias in my characterization, as you can tell.

Why the cynical view? People have fun, organizers make money, and a charity makes money. Without the event, nobody has fun, and nobody (including the charity) makes money.

I've participated in many such charity fun runs and see no problem with this type of arrangement. It takes a lot of work and experience to host successful running events: registration, insurance, web site development, course marking, permits, aid stations, timing, t-shirts, clean up, etc. It's worth paying an event management company to ensure everything runs smoothly. Shop around and you might find a smaller local company willing to do it for a lower price.

In the end the charity still gets more money than they had before and the runners get some exercise: win / win. Plus you've raised awareness of the cause and some participants will go on the become regular donors.

But people think they are donating money to a charity, not purchasing an experience from an event company. It’s misleading at best.

>It’s misleading at best.

Is it though? Not everyone who participates does it to support a charity. Some people just want to do the event.

Obviously it's more efficient to simply not hold the event and have all the resources that would be spend on running an event simply go to the charity ... but that's not the point. You're doing the event, because you want the event.

There's no need to mislead potential participants. Just post information on the event web site showing where their registration fees go and let them decide.

I don’t think it’s the participants who are being mislead the most, though. It’s the donors. The people who “sponsor” the participants.

Arrangements vary by event and production company but typically participant registration fees cover the management company's charges. Any additional donations from sponsors go directly to the charity, minus a small processing fee. Of course you might be able to find exceptions to that rule.

As someone involved in a very local run this weekend, people aren't that dumb. They know that there will be a company making sure the run actually works, and a small portion of proceeds goes to the charity. Actually, it really depends on the number of runners, so after a hundred or so runners, the amount to charity increases per additional runner.

It's a bit like saying that people play the lottery and think it is an effective way to support education in their state. No they don't. They know most of the money doesn't support education, but even if a small amount does, the other benefit (playing the lottery or running a 5k) is still worth something to them.

> I realized that the firm’s fees would greatly exceed the amount of money that would end up going to the charity.

So who pays the bill for the firm's fees? Might be okay if it's a "sponsored by megacorp" kind of thing, but if it's just a civic-minded individual who's actually trying to run a real fundraiser?

I see big problems with this type of arrangement - you raise ten dollars while spending five thousand on the event itself. Yet you will call this a charity event? Also what awareness? There are people who don't know breast cancer is bad (actually breast cancer isn't even that bad anymore. Most patients get quite a good cure)?

This is on top of the fact that the charity again takes a huge admin cut, and I'm willing to bet that the kind that organizes marathons with pink ribbons are the same that have 95% expense ratios.

If you go to Panda Express the person asks if you want to donate a few dimes for charity. I bet they contribute more to charity than these pretentious events. You don't call it a charity lunch do you?

Do these events if you want but be honest and call it for what they are which is just circular congratulatory social Sunday pasttimes for people with too much money (and ps someone somewhere might get a buck or two, maybe).

> I see big problems with this type of arrangement - you raise ten dollars while spending five thousand on the event itself. Yet you will call this a charity event?

This reminds me of when people complain about charities paying their CEO well.

Would you rather pay a CEO $100k to bring in $1million in charity funds, or pay a CEO $1million to bring in $5million in charity funds?

Same here. Would you rather run a successful event that brings in $5k in charity funds, or an event run by amateurs who end up bringing in $1k in charity funds?

There's an argument to be made about transparency, and organizations that take all this too far (90+% is clearly too much), but end results matter.

>Would you rather ...

How are they going to raise the money, does the one raising $5M blindly do so by enlisting a third party to pay poverty wages to young people to con pensioners out of their money (usual way is to trick them in to signing a monthly payment when they think they're paying a one-off [to get rid of the annoying person invading their home]) on the doorstep?

Do CEOs only act competently for immoral sums of money?

How about the CEO does an honest days work, raises what they can without defrauding people and gets paid at most, say, 3 times the median salary of everyone employed by the organisation?

There's a good chance that even if the CEO is honest and completely above board all they're doing is stopping other charities getting money. That is, splitting the pot differently. So, perhaps the $100k is far better - was overall the charity sector gets more to spend on charitable aims.

A very pessimistic view of everything!

I can't say anything about your fraud or conning comments. Obviously that's bad, and I worry that you're arguing in bad faith by bringing that up.

My main point is that being the leader of a large organization that brings in lots of money is a skill that is highly sought after. If you want to attract that kind of person then you'll have to pay for it, or find the 1 in [some large number of people] that has both the skills needed and the willingness to work for much lower than the rest of the market would pay them.

100k may be better for the overall charitable sector, but its worse for this particular charity. It's the tragedy of the commons. It's a well-studied problem, and there's no non-centralized solution to that problem.

My wife worked for a non-profit theater (12 million/year budget, 4 million from donations, 8 million from ticket sales. Most of the donations are from major donors - 5K and more.) Its 'CEO' was the best-paid person in the theater, paid ~230k/year. The stagehands, who were making ~$25/hour would grouse non-stop about how much he was paid. From what I know of him, and his job, (mostly fundraising), I am almost positive that he was a profit center for the theater. If he left three months from now, their financials would not improve.

Now, it's entirely possible that someone else in his position, who would take the job for $130,000/year, and would raise as much, or more money. Or maybe someone else would raise even more money, and expect $500,000/year.

I think that for that particular theater, they'd probably be wrong to fire their CEO, if their goal was to cut costs.

>Would you rather pay a CEO $100k to bring in $1million in charity funds, or pay a CEO $1million to bring in $5million in charity funds?

Personally I'd rather pay five CEOs $100k each to bring in $5million, than one CEO double that for the same net effect.

There is only so much money people will give to charity in a given year. It's entirely possible that the larger charities with higher expense ratios starve out smaller charities that are more efficient at spending the money the receive, so the net effect is worse.

That's assuming the five CEOs aren't going to go after the same $1million each. A more talented CEO might be able to bring in new streams of money.

Y'all are bringing up a ton of hypotheticals that don't matter to my main point: Talent costs money. The optimal end result may end up spending a lot of money on that talent to bring in the most amount of money.

This includes hiring an agency to run a fun run (the original scenario) when having it be run by amateurs might end up with it failing for a million reasons (low turnout, insufficient staffing, etc).

"Talent costs money"

And yet that argument is never made to justify paying line-workers more. Non-profits often pay regular workers less than public sector or private sector jobs because "the mission is the reward". Shouldn't the same apply to non-profit leadership?

>And yet that argument is never made to justify paying line-workers more.

This isn't an argument to "justify paying the leadership more". That's backwards. This is an argument to say that when you're a board member trying to fill a leadership role, it might be worth it to spend a good amount of money to bring in people who would otherwise never take the role.

If you want a line-worker argument, it's similar to when people start trying to outsource software work to cheap firms and are then surprised when the results aren't satisfactory. Bring in line workers (software workers in this case) who cost more but are better and you might have better end results.

You shouldn't just pay the outsourcing firm more money and expect better results. In the same way you shouldn't "justify paying the leadership more", you should find leadership who are worth more money.

In both cases, it's possible you find the holy grail of someone wiling to work for the cause for little money and are also talented, but it's much more difficult.

> work for the cause for little money

I never said "little money". Leadership roles signify high status, so you have to pay an upper-middle-class or upper class salary for the area.

But is it not fair to assume that nearly everyone who cares more about the money and is talented enough to take a leadership role, has already gone to the private sector? A desirable CEO candidate determined to stay in the non-profit world is far more likely to look at whether the org excites them, than how much it's paying (again, as long as it's an upper-middle to upper class salary).

For line workers it really may just be a paycheck.

Talent may cost money, and there are a few highly sought after precious examples of those people, but the world is swarming with parasites with absolutely no talent but lots of social standing they want to maintain by being seen as acting charitably (like Trump's failsons), desperately competing with each other to con you out of your money, and that's what you usually end up with.

In principle a competent CEO who truly brings in "novel" money to a charity more than a cheap one is worth it. Note my use of the word Novel above because it is to differentiate between money a charity makes by just poaching money that would have gone to some charity anyways from money that would not be spent philanthropically otherwise.

If Robin Mahfood can justify his 400k CEO paycheck for "Food for Poor" (real name and number) and also promise that all the new money he brought in was actually money that would have been squandered otherwise, then Robin Mahfood is indeed a worthwhile expenditure. I doubt that's the case most of the time, though.

Nevertheless, these might not be comparable scenarios anyways - an expensive CEO might atleast make financial sense if not a moral one. It's just a stretch to say a very low margin charity event is even a financially viable event, and hopefully your million dollar CeO can see that and avoid it for his charity.

> charity makes by just poaching money that would have gone to some charity anyways

No, “money going to charities” is not all one bucket. A huge chunk of charities are incompetent or are just stupid ideas to begin with. It’s better for 70% of my donation to go to a competent charity than 90% to a pointless one, even if that 20% difference is going to the CEO.

Checkout givewell.org to learn about the importance of picking good charities. It is critical to poach charity money from bad charities.

Well, if the charity is run for your own ego, then I would prefer the one who brings 1M.

In most realistic scenarios I would pay attention to efficiency first.

What if you prefer to get the most money you can to the cause that you care about?

I would prefer to invest in 5 charities instead.

Frankly non-profits and for-profits are usually not competing for the same CEO pool. And for non-profit leadership, compensation should not be a motivating factor - assuming they're already paid enough to live an upper-class lifestyle in their area. The mission of charity should be what matters.

>> Panda Express the person asks if you want to donate a few dimes for charity

These requests burn me up. The cashier at Super Store asks "would you like to donate $5 to charity?" What charity? It's nutrition focused for school kids; what kind of monster wants little kids to go hungry?

Then you find out it's the Weston (controlling family) charitable organization, they use the money to buy food through their own organization and benefit from the tax credits... no thanks.

My process:

1. Sit down with your family and decide what causes you'd like to support,

2. Do some research to identify organizations that are cost-effective with their money,

3. Make a commitment on an annual or reoccurring basis,

4. Be the dick who says "no" to every other casual request at your front door, stores, etc.

I do the same, you might find givewell.org interesting.

Mine to.

I have a personal set of charities that I donate to regularly.

Then, as a family, we discuss, and we have a couple regular charities, and then a few charities for causes that are important to us that year (e.g. this year it's voting rights), and we research and find the best charities (not necessarily the biggest) and donate a much more significant amount.

We discuss this every year, and bring up the past year's giving.

This is something new for us -- discussing money and charity like this. As kids, we had no idea my parents donated to anything. My own kids are too little at the moment, but soon enough they can join too.

I don't donate anything else (except for my local homeless news carriers), and feel no guilt at all for not accepting the supermarket's scammy charity of anything else.

Loblaws at Thanksgiving:

Buy a turkey (at retail, from them, full price, no discount) and then immediately donate that turkey to Second Harvest. They give nothing, but take the markup on the bird. How charitable.

What a scam. I gave the local food bank $35 cash instead which has way more buying power to get food for people in my area in need.

First, they sometimes get very little. “Just 1% of Seattle Marathon money goes to charity” [1]. You’d do better to just go door to door.

Second, often this “awareness” is completely absent, even among volunteers. I ran a race once where the primary charity was lung cancer research, and volunteers along the course were smoking.

[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/just-1-of-seattle-...

>Second, often this “awareness” is completely absent, even among volunteers. I ran a race once where the primary charity was lung cancer research, and volunteers along the course were smoking.

What exactly is the issue with volunteers smoking? Is it that they might physically or emotionally trigger someone?

Cigarettes trigger lung cancer. Frankly I'm surprised you needed somebody to "raise your awareness" about that. But now you know!

I am honestly still missing exactly what the poster finds offensive.

Is it a fear of second hand smoke related illness? Do they find the irony upsetting? Something else

Yes, cigarettes cause lung cancer. Does that mean smokers should be disqualified for volunteering at a lung cancer charity? They probably have more of a vested interest in the charity than the general population.

I am honestly still missing why you are so offended by somebody not wanting people to smoke at a lung cancer charity event, that you would call them names like "triggered"? You're not being honest when you claim you can't figure out what the poster finds offensive. They find the lung cancer caused by second hand cigarette smoke upsetting, not the irony of the situation. And you "honestly" couldn't figure that out?

None of your straw men make any sense. Nobody is asking for smokers to be disqualified, just for them to control themselves for a few moments and not smoke at a lung cancer charity event.

You calling somebody else "triggered" is ironic too: Why are you feigning moral outrage about somebody else being "triggered", which in their case is totally justified and absolutely harmless, more than you're honestly outraged at somebody else not just ironically but hypocritically smoking a cigarette at a lung cancer charity event, which is physically dangerous to them and other people, reeks to high hell, and is totally ignorant, clueless, disrespectful, and rude, flaunting the whole point of the event? They're practically blowing smoke in other people's faces. Yet that doesn't offend you, while other people being offended by it does.

Get some perspective and stop pretending to be so triggered and outraged yourself. Being "triggered" at somebody smoking in a totally inappropriate situation like that is not worse or even close to a smoker making a mockery of a lung cancer charity event by flagrantly giving themselves and other people lung cancer at the event. And you getting so triggered yourself that you disparagingly call somebody else triggered isn't a very convincing argument. It's the textbook definition of projection.

And "honestly": pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity pretending to be concerned, is called "sealioning".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

Sometimes text is not the best medium for communication. I intdended to ask a concise and honest question and I am sorry if you took offense.

>What exactly is the issue with volunteers smoking? Is it that they might physically or emotionally trigger someone?

Triggered isn't exclusively a slur, but a real phenomenon, though often misused.

Smoke triggering a physical reaction in a post-op cancer survivor may be a legitimate concern, as would be triggering a emotional response in people who lost a loved one.

It was not and is not clear from Ken's post that this was his rationale, and rather some relation between smoking and cause "awareness". I have lost family members to lung cancer, and have other family members who still smoke. I have seen people smoke as they die of lung cancer. I do not think it is for lack of "awareness".

Also, it seems like you have a very different mental image of what was described, and a very different reaction to it. Seeing someone self harm at such and event would make me sad, not angry. They are literally the class of people the event is trying to support.

> In the end the charity still gets more money than they had before and the runners get some exercise

So "they" should be thankful for any old crumbs left on the table after their betters are done patting themselves on the back?

Honestly, I prefer the Randian take on charity to this. At least that one has the virtue of not obfuscating.

> N=1, of course, but I have had an extremely cynical view of charity events ever since. There appears to be an entire industry built around siphoning away 90%-99% of every dollar adjacent to charity.

Kubernetes appears to be built around siphoning away 90%-99% of my CPU when I tried to use it to manage a 100 item todo list on my Chromebook.

N=1 of course.

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