We've actually had pretty good responses. You can always say N/A.
382 karma · joined October 26, 2009
I hope other nonprofits can give this a try and have similar positive experiences.
Actually, I'd be curious to see this done in another system too.
I just want nice things! ;)
ZaReason and System76 are awesome companies! I purchased a small notebook from ZaReason back in '08 but returned it because it was too underpowered. I would happily buy a laptop from either ZaReason or System76 if it was in the same vein of well designed hardware like the 3 companies I mentioned above.
I'm also very familiar with the Windows tax. A few years back I tried, very hard, to get HP to refund the Windows license on 2 desktops I bought for my dad. It was futile. Here are the blog posts from '09
HP Refund for Windows Tax: So far so good - http://bit.ly/wy4zC HP Refund for Windows Tax: No refund policy - http://bit.ly/1a0FW1
Trust me, I hate seeing the little Windows 7 sticker and Windows super key on my laptop, but the hardware is good and I have no compatibility issues. Ideal? Nope. But good enough, and unfortunately that's what we Linux users have to contend with for now.
Also isn't it dangerous to override `EmailDeliverer.send` like that?
Can you imagine any crowdfunding site out there, especially Watsi, without photos?
As for regular bank transactions, we're going to explore it. For now you can hook up your bank to your Paypal account. It's not ideal though, we know!
Thanks for your support!
Early on we were approached by a budding organization that wanted to license our platform. I was initially excited by the potential for revenue, but shortly realized that what we were building would be too custom to us. Coming from a consulting background, I didn't think it would be worth it to the licensee.
> how to think about competition in the non-profit sector
Yes, this is interesting to think about. My personal opinion is that non-profits might be better off moving more towards a for-profit model in terms of needing an actual revenue model. There are a ton of great non-profits out there, but I'm not convinced fundraising is the only way to stay in business in the long term.
Thanks for the discussion!
There's competition in every market, non-profits included. Even though we're not trying to compete for dollars (necessarily) in that we hope to help "grow the pie," we are competing for attention. Anyway, that's probably another discussion.
> If someone else came in and used your "core business code" to make something which was then helpful to other people, that would be a good thing, right?
Of course! My hunch is that that the existing open source systems out there that do the crowdfunding thing would suffice. Catarse[1] is one I can think of off the top of my head. I looked into using it for Watsi but decided it wasn't going to work. My point is is that there is already software out there like ours. The fact that someone could use ours as a base is nice, but not motivation enough to open it up. Are crowdfunding platforms going to become the new CMS? It might already be happening.
> A sort of "in-kind" donation of their time and energy and expertise, right?
Yes, and we are already leveraging that, just selectively. Everything takes time, especially managing open source software. Even though the tools have gotten much better (does anybody remember what life was like before Githug, et al?) it doesn't mean the cost of managing the contributions have gone down to zero. We want to leverage energy where we can, but in a way that works for us. Open sourcing our code doesn't necessarily feel like the right approach to me.
Open source is hugely important to me, and Watsi wouldn't be what it is without all those awesome people out there writing code for the masses. Props to them!