| Subject: Re: Charitable collaboration discussion |
| From: Scott Mintz <scott.w.mintz@gmail.com> |
| Date: 5/25/10, 15:37 |
| To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> |
| CC: Clark Robinson <robinsonchicago@gmail.com> |
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 3:19 PM, Barrett Brown
<barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with what Clark has said here (particularly the portions in which he quotes me, which I agree with entirely). I would add that another reason for continuing the Africa program at this point is that we have a number of people who are a perfect fit for it and in fact who joined Project PM for that purpose, and I imagine that we can set things in motion soon such that our participants will be largely capable of continuing the program with much further work on our part. Additionally, the ADP also serves as an experiment/demonstration regarding this sort of collaborative project, and in fact we'v already gleaned a few insights from it as well as having built something that can be pointed to even at this early stage in order to impress and attract potential new participants.
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Clark Robinson
<robinsonchicago@gmail.com> wrote:
Felipe Farley is a patent attorney in South Carolina, whose interest is in simpler technology that villagers can apply themselves if instructional materials are made available.
Here is the best statement of it I could find in my e-mails:
Barrett: "Campbell Vertesi has been added to the Africa project, along with Felipe Farley. Vertesi has
experience in such projects and Farley is a
patent lawyer who has some great ideas regarding how we could identify
old mechanical/light industrial technology that could be of benefit to
villagers with limited resources and prior knowledge; I just spoke to
him via phone, and we can definitely depend on him to contribute quite a
bit in that regard. We'll need to figure out the best method of
distributing such information; at the very least, we could compile an
online guide that describes a variety of such instructions regarding
mechanics as well as agriculture and whatever else would be useful; this
would cost nothing and could be accessed with some benefit by those
Africans with some degree of internet access. Of course, we'll want to
figure out a means of distributing such info to those without net
access, possibly by partnering with local entities that could print out
such info and distribute it as necessary. Another method would be to
contact African papers and offer them a regular how-to column with
concise instructions on various techs. At any rate, we should keep
looking into water and microloans, while at the same time the spreading
of implementable technological knowledge and other applicable forms of
education should be a major emphasis."
Incorporation: Scott is right that a corporation should serve as a shield from liability (Article), but for a corporation with few assets and no insurance, courts may conclude the corporation is a sham and permit plaintiffs to go after individuals, so by incorporating there is a risk of expanding your potential liability. Nevertheless, being incorporated will be useful if we go looking for grants, and we have found a way to incorporate inexpensively and rapidly, so we may wish to incorporate now and leave the corporation dormant until needed. So I still find the $25 Texas nonprofit attractive, Scott may want to make the case for NY, however.
Africa Project:Thus far the Africa Project has been an extremely useful learning experience, and we will avoid some fumbling in setting up the blogger/journalist net as a result, so I would like to see the effort continue, but consistent with Barrett's remarks above, shift the focus to education, communication, and network planning, rather than conventional charitable structures.
We are also beginning to learn things about working together, which have great practical value.
This morning, my laptop seems to have recovered from the runaway cursor and involuntary vertical scrolling that appeared during last night's storm.
Clark Robinson
Chicago
217-722-8680
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:17 AM, Scott Mintz
<scott.w.mintz@gmail.com> wrote:
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!
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
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302