I’d like to talk about PayPal here, because it’s used by so many folks nowadays, but also because I believe it’s pretty reliable and we’ve been using it to handle our online donations for a while now. So I can give you the benefit of some short experience here.
Archives for 2003
Where do you find Ethics?
Where do you find ethics?
I’m looking right now at how we can begin building a “curriculum” for ethics and peace. Not exactly what you expect the CTO to be doing, but we have to start somewhere. To me the word curriculum means a course of study and does not connote solely that you’re attending some school or course – it is a very broad concept for me. People study things all the time, in their daily lives, and we want to make it easier for people of all ages to think about, and study, ethics and peace.
Sharing Data and Services
Sharing data and sharing services
Non-profit organizations generally have to make-do with fewer resources than so-called for-profit corporations, isn’t that right?. It certainly seems like it’s impossible to get venture capital for non-profits, so it almost goes without saying that non-profits should share resources whever their goals are aligned. Nobody should have to reinvent what another organization has spent precious resources developing.
Putting dynamic content into your web site
Putting “dynamic” content into every web site.
I’d guess that upwards of 90% of the web sites around today have more-or-less static content. They’re maintained by folks who use DreamWeaver or GoLive or FrontPage to build HTML pages which they then upload to their server. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
Job Descriptions
We have posted a number of volunteer “jobs” at our web site. They all have significant online components. We’re looking for an online bookstore manager, for newsletter editors in several languages, and Peace and Ethics Curriculum managers. See the web site for more details on the jobs.
There’s a key orientation which I’d like to explain here. Each of these is a volunteer position, of course, which means that there’s no pay for doing the job. But, ultimately it should be our goal to develop these into paying positions. The bookstore manager position is a good example. If someone smart can take on the task which we’ve described there, they can become a general manager for the store, and the store can become profitable, thus generating the funds to pay the manager to run the store in the future. And, as one of our supporters has suggested, the store could have a physical presence, could sell things other than books, and could become a well-run contributor to the work of the Foundation.
And let’s take the newsletter editing as another example. Why not get a good, robust, widely-distributed newsletter going in Chinese, let’s say, and then turn that into a position funded by a person or group interested in the causes of peace and ethics within the Chinese-speaking world? A grant could then provide enough cash to pay for the newsletter editor position. Of course, you need to get things started – get things up and operational – before you can really propose this to a funding agency. But, ultimately that’s one direction we could go.
If you’re motivated by this, by all means let us know via email at info@dlfound.org