people, goals, funding, projects

[alexr_rwx]

At the checkout counter at the pet supplies store, I'm given the option: would you like to donate to animal cancer research? I would! Here's a dollar for cancer research!

I wonder out loud: "Huh! Maybe I could get people to donate a dollar to fund my research..."

This leads to a discussion about "well, what's your research?" with the girl at the pet store. She told me about how she's just now finished up her biology degree, and how she really loves animals, is considering vet school, and volunteers at the wild animal rescue center, and about how they take care of baby wild animals (and rehabilitate injured ones) and then re-introduce them into the wild, and the funding problems that they face at that organization. She'd tried to get the pet store to do a fundraiser for the wild animal rescue center, but it hasn't worked out yet.

People are neat: I need more opportunities for them to tell me about their interests and goals and projects.

Would you donate a dollar to machine translation research, during your next purchase at the store? What if you could pick from a few different projects? Say, every month, there was one from the humanities, something art-flavored, and some science (or something)? ...

How to get businesses on board with this?

Comments

[unya.livejournal.com]

You might be on to something... My only concern is that I don't know if I have enough time to learn about the projects while I am on a shopping errand to become an interested investor. But maybe the projects could be screened and marketed somehow? This idea kind of reminds me of what kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/) does.

[lindseykuper]

I think one reason businesses get on board with this kind of thing is that it lets them later say, "Thanks to our awesome customers, we caused $x amount to be donated to animal cancer research." It makes their customers feel good, it makes them look good, and "animal cancer research" is short and sweet enough to fit into a tweet-sized sound bite. (Actual animal cancer researchers might chafe at the generality of it.) If it takes more than a couple of words to describe one's research in a way that makes the general public think approvingly of it, then one might not be able to pull off this kind of fundraising.

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

I think quite a few things can be explained in non-misleading ways, such that you could say what it is in a sentence. For example, I work on "computerized translation for endangered languages", and you work on "better programming techniques for safer computer programs". These are not un-true! And everybody can see the value, and if they want to hear more about it, they can ask about the details.

Can we come up with some pursuits (http://registrar.indiana.edu/scheduleoclasses/prl/soc4118/index.html) that can't be boiled down to something that sounds good in a sentence?

[lindseykuper]

"computerized translation for endangered languages" is more likely to get change at the checkout stand. You might want to talk about the concrete outcomes, though: "help us translate the web into more languages".

Your summary for me might be even better boiled down to "more reliable software". But I feel we're getting pretty far afield, then, from what I actually care about. I just want to make a nice thing, a thoughtful thing. I'm not sure anyone should actually be donating for my cause at the checkout stand, y'know?

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Hrm! So do you have a sense as to which things should be supported by small convenient donations?

Is your point more like "society shouldn't be paying for this product", or more like "the goddamn government should be adequately funding education and the arts and basic science instead of firehosing all the goddamn money directly into the wallets of the extremely wealthy and the goddamn defense contractors"?

I could see you saying either thing, but I personally only agree with the latter, especially if you add a few more cusses.

[lindseykuper]

My point was more like "Society should be funding those who need help in ways that are further down Maslow's hierarchy of needs before they consider funding my stuff", but I'm also with you with regard to the goddamn government.

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

... then you'd never get funded. There's not a total ordering on world problems; societies are massively parallel, it turns out!