Can you clarify non-profit, non-profit nowadays means very little, ICANN is non-profit and is about to fuck up top-top level domains so their CEO can buy a helicopter. Do you draw a salary and how much?
You're not wrong that this is sometimes the case, but definitely worth noting that plenty of the best charities in the world are non-profits with some salaried employees, it doesn't automatically make them evil.
For sure, I hope you dont object I've just registered adsbycappuccino, my idea is to make it a non-profit ad agency that does work for benefit of charities, in my business plan Ive decided to pay myself $120k pa (is yours the same? we can share a coffee and talk) presuming we get that via donations and running some commercial ads in the roration. It should take off as those stupid HN readers will see non-profit and put some rockets behind my startup. Sweet.. :D
Yeah, that's an example of it being bad, what I'm saying is that a charitee with paid staff isn't automatically evil, it's not so black and white.
For example, let's say this charity has a range of options for getting free advert spots on sites for charities. Option A is to have people who care but don't have the experience, and they get X monthly impressions. Option B is to pay someone a low full-time wage, say $30k, and they get Y monthly impressions. Option C is to pay a fantastic salesman $120k/year and he can pull in Z monthly impressions. Until you know the numbers, is option C guaranteed to be bad for the charity?
And of course that's just an example of a high salary - my first comment, that you replied to, was talking more about charities like Oxfam, where without any paid staff they just couldn't operate, they're far too big to be run on a 100% volunteer basis. But people they do employ are paid lower-than-typical salaries for their positions, and a large number of their work force are indeed volunteers.
Agreed. But with no transparency it pays to be cynical. In addition, bootstrapping it by asking HN to commit their time and web space whilst drawing a salary is a bit of a slap in the face from day 1. Im sure a consortium of true HN readers could get this off the ground without salary employees, maybe in six months then it would make sense to appoint salary positions such as a treasurer and top-notch biz dev person.
I'd go so far as to argue that I have trouble trusting non-profits that do not pay their staff. If a not for profit wants to compete for good people, they need to pay them a living wage.
Indeed, but perception is a powerful thing, a non-profit for charities especially. Microsoft and [insert-evil-company-of-choice] could be non-profit if you soak up any remaining revenue by salary/bonuses. I mean ICANN is non-profit and the CEO already has put a down payment on a learjet from his new $185,000 tld registrar. My point is that they are soliciting free work from HN readers on some illusion of acting like a charity (it might turn out legit and verifiable, who knows) whilst being as transparent as a SOPA.