Fiscal Year Close a Good Donation Time for Free Software 24
Matt writes "The close of the fiscal year is a great time to encourage your employer to donate to open source non-profit foundations." (Follow that link for more information and links to various foundations.) Lots of businesses that might shy away generally from software they haven't paid for are happily using Firefox at the very least, and plenty are running free software from the GNU project -- the FSF would be happy to supply some manuals.
I have a better idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone's company have a practice that eliminates the incentive to waste money this way in the first place? The amount of money thrown away in this fashion is staggering and it happens in pretty much every organization, private or public. Surely some accountant, finance head or game theorist has come up with a solution, or at least an improvement, no?
Re:I have a better idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I have a better idea... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I have a better idea... (Score:1)
Re:I have a better idea... (Score:1)
Re:I have a better idea... (Score:1)
Re:I have a better idea... (Score:1)
Re:I have a better idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
Replace "government" with "any large bureaucracy inside or outside of government", and Milt was spot on. Bureaucracy is a metastatic organizational cancer; in business, it's somewhat limited by the threat of bankruptcy, and in government, it's unlimited until the society collapses.
Since we can't eliminate the problem, the only thing to do is to try and mitigate the collateral damage.
Employer-determined donations, plus employee-directed contributions, strike a pretty good balance. Yes, you're spending someone else's (your employer's shareholders') money, and yes, you're spending it on someone else (your favorite charity), but by having thousands of individual employees making those decisions, you at least get the sort of efficiency gains that come from free markets -- and if you don't like econo-speak, you can rephrase that same sentence for "swarms of decentralized intelligent agents", or "social networking".
$25000 thrown into the black hole of the government does more harm than good. $50000 thrown down the rathole of the United Way does no good, but does less harm than paying the taxes on that $50000.
But 10 $500 donations to the FSF, 7 $500 donations to the EFF, 2 $500 donations to Mozilla, 3 to the Apache Foundation, 3 to the FreeBSD folks, and so on - and for the 75 nontechnical employees out of an imaginary company of 100, 75 $500 donations to 75 separate charities ranging from the local animal shelter to half a dozen parents who set up tutoring classes for kids who would otherwise be getting shot on the street...
One guy with a $50000 budget isn't going to have the time to parcel out the cash like that, and even if he did, he's going to be sorely tempted to spend a day or two on the golf course (or on three-martini lunches) with the 501(c)3 equivalent of salesweasels who want to lobby him for a shot the whole $50000 prize.
But if he just gives his 100 employees $500 apiece, and each of those employees spends just ten minutes making up their minds on what to do with their own slice of the pie, the process of apportioning the donations takes him neither time nor effort, affords nobody an opportunity to accept any kickback more interesting than a coffee mug, and actually does some good.
Even if your only motivation is to get the tax deduction and/or burn through the rest of the budget, employee-directed contributions are a win. You get the same deduction, and spend the same dollars, for much less work, and you do vastly less harm (and even some good) in the process.
Re:I have a better idea... (Score:2, Informative)
So, what is missing from Milton's examples? Oversight and the fact that decision making is singular. This issue is transparent in the first example because everyone that cares about the transaction (being the si
Re:I have a better idea... (Score:2)
Not at all. An informed, involved citizenry can limit government waste if they so desire. Waste will grow only to the point that citizens tolerate it.
Re:I have a better idea... (Score:2)
I think you're illustrating your own point! It's easy for you to look at hundreds of millions of dollars flying out of my bonus pool and shrug and say "Who is John Galt?" But *I* care!!!!
Savings Sharing (Score:2)
Yeah, a local company around here has such a plan. If an employee comes up with an idea to save money (there must be some level of approval) they measure the actual savings achieved by the plan. The employee and the company split the first year's savings 50/50. The company doesn't save any money the first year but it does every year after. I know of a lady making $40K who took home a $30K check
Re:Savings Sharing (Score:2)
You mean "lose-lose-lose."
Re:Savings Sharing (Score:2)
2cents... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously that thing needs to be replaced by something cute...
The only nice t-shirt they sell is the "Happy Hacking" / generic one. Why don't they do a design competition and bring in some money?
Re:2cents... (Score:2)
Re:2cents... (Score:1)
-n00b
Shameless plug for the software I like to use (Score:3, Informative)
And there's also RubyCentral (Score:2)
Why the fword-ing hell . . . (Score:1)
Re:Why the fword-ing hell . . . (Score:1)
And hey, let's hear it for yet another barely parsable
Question (Score:1)
Of course, I'm sure that running a charity is complex and there may be good reasons for this trend.