Re: Charitable collaboration discussion
Subject: Re: Charitable collaboration discussion
From: Scott Mintz <scott.w.mintz@gmail.com>
Date: 5/25/10, 12:17
To: Clark Robinson <robinsonchicago@gmail.com>
CC: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>

These are my initial thoughts and subject to change at any time :) Furthermore, before I can accurately comment I need to better understand what Clark was referring to in terms of the Felipe Farley concept. Is this something in one of the documents that I can read? Barrett, would you mind elaborating?

With regards to legal protections, while putting our names on a document does increase our potential battles, the fact is that incorporation was created with a benefit being reduced personal liability. For example, if one of the charities in the collaboration we're working with sues us due to some miss-communication, I'm thinking we'd rather be incorporated than not.

Also, from some of the links Clark has provided,  it seems possible that we could receive grant money from organizations that are looking to fund original online media ideas. To me, this seems like a great coupling!  I'm not sure that without incorporation and 501(c)(3) status, we could receive said money.

My thought process may be straying away from that of you two, which is good and bad, as I've been less involved of late, but my most recent idea was that it's possible we're trying to tackle too many things at once, and maybe we should put the Africa project and its support system on hold while focusing on the online media aspect. My hope is that once that part is up and running, we will be better able to leverage our resources. Specifically, we'll have a better system to exchange and refine ideas, greater amounts of time to devote, and a track record to increase interest.

Please let me know your thoughts. I'm more than okay with differences in opinions!


On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 7:58 AM, Clark Robinson <robinsonchicago@gmail.com> wrote:
Another thing discussed on last night's phone call was charitable collaboration, example: if the Project PM Africa project creates educational material (referencing Felipe Farley's concepts), PPM would partner with a charity with an established presence in villages who would in turn distribute the material.  Barrett may want to elaborate.  This was a new topic to me, I don't recall making any comments on it.

However, it did cause me to think further, after the call, that to the extent our charitable activities involve education, knowledge dissemination, network design to facilitate cooperation among charities, writing material for distribution, translation of written how-to resources, and other intellectual and communicative activities, that we need not adopt the model of a traditional charity (incorporate, raise funds, make grants) and the model could be more like Wikipedia or our blogger/journalist network.

Also, this may have some bearing on the liability issues that have surfaced, inasmuch as there is little liability potential in the latter models.





Clark Robinson
Chicago
217-722-8680