Ask Slashdot: With Grants Drying Up, How Is a Tech Non-Profit To Survive?

helios17 writes "Non-Profits like this have traditionally gotten started from the money grants provide. Most grants award vehicles, computers, and even pay for organization rental and utility costs. The problem fledgling and even established non-profits are encountering is the dwindling number of grants allowing for Operating or General Support costs. What good is a vehicle received via grant if you can't afford to put fuel in it? With the number of Operating or General Support grants shrinking and those available funds competed for heavily, should we be looking on line for help? Can efforts like this be a better way to approach it?"

Comments

Re:merge with a larger organization

[BitZtream]

but larger organizations tend to have less overhead and better accountability

What reality do you live in? In my experience that is exactly the opposite of how it works at every organization I've ever seen. Be it an organization of friends, a shoestring non-profit, or too-big-to-fail businesses.

The larger ones may have more paper trails, but that doesn't actually mean ANYONE is accountable, as we can see the world over as big businesses fuck up economies left and right and the only thing that happens to them is ... nothing. They don't even get fucking fired for needing the government to save their asses.

Re:More important: Why are they drying up?

[khallow]

I take it you think there's a problem here? My view is that non profits are an excellent place for parasites to thrive since there's no real accountability aside from whatever donors happen to impose. Donors are merely getting wise to what's been happening over the past few decades to the non profit sector.