Hi Daniel and DhObies,

So people routinely want to donate to this site in gratitude and Daniel routinely keeps paying for it, all that that entails, encouraging a "practice well is the best payment" mode and enabling our chance to practice together (and all that that entails, including some combativeness discourse, to which I've certainly contributed/unwound here).

Being plugged into TEDtalks since 2008 and Upworthy for the last few weeks (thanks again, Vijay) and reading such great efforts here every week on the DhO and in private emails I thought, "Huh, why not open a big can of worms and have a DhO scholarship in specific thanks for what Daniel started and gives us?"

Specifically, I was watching this tonight (http://www.upworthy.com/a-15-year-old-with-a-huge-brain-and-an-even-bigger-heart-blows-mit-away-3?c=upw1) and thinking about the researchers who sometimes work with participants on this site and thinking we could just be a small resource to help someone at the end of every year.


Ironically, this could cause another expense for the founder and I want to avoid that. So I'm thinking that a passive thread could be started, "So you really want to donate..." with a link to some site that handles this stuff (Paypal?) and just explain in the thread that at present the founder is generous and stubborn and therefore aDhO scholarship has been set up.

This doesn't have to happen. There are many ways to say thanks, go back to "just practice well", but it's a thought that occurs.

I don't know how the scholarship would be defined or decided each year. I don't know that Daniel wants something else to decide, but this is a thought about what to do with the deep thanks people feel for the site and founder and practice.

Thoughts?

What did you want the scholarship money to support and who would it go to and who would decide that?

I somehow got lost and didn't figure out exactly what you were trying to say.

Hi Daniel,



1. Thank you for the site, Daniel. Your thoughts are most welcome;I wasn't sure if you'd reply to this thread or not. It could be a sort of nuisance for you.


2. If I wrote the thread, tonight it would read,


My thinking is amounts would be likely be small (a lot of students use the site and the overall economy is a bit thin, too, and people give elsewhere/sustain), but that it would provide an outlet for the persistent sentiment of moolah-dana arising here, and it'd could provide something specific. Yes, I'd handle it if no one else does (and the transparency of that would maybe come up once a year, to prevent a recurrent "donation" thread from coming up like an NPR fundraiser-- love NPR, though).

If nothing comes of it, this thread can be used as a reference for yet another place explaining why monetary donation has been ruled out so far.

Ok, that's interesting, and a wide range of possible uses for the money. I think it would be interesting to figure out how the decisions for the use of the money would be decided, as those things can get tricky.

My current favorite charities, in case anyone is interested, are The DhO, Greenpeace, Doctors Without Borders, and the ACLU (not that I like all the people the ACLU helps, like the KKK, but I do like civil rights and freedom), and I give to those monthly, along with Buddhist Geeks, which is about to be a formal non-profit after it finishes its restructuring, and I think is worthy of support, in case anyone is interesting in helping a good and useful dharma organization that really could use the cash right now...

Nice, I find the above useful. So I/anyone could also contribute to those causes (or one's own) and in the "note" section just thank here, DhO/founder. I've done this before, actually, and it's like a modern "merit sharing" practice.


I'll keep my eye on this thread and pick it up again in December.

Thank you.

Daniel:


Okay, well, I'm a tiny sustaining member in your honour, Daniel, now. Thank you for setting up this community- and self-study site, hosting candidly some of the most difficult questions and comments that people may not raise on retreat/in person.

I like the GP organization, too, how it supports sentients and systems that cannot fundraise nor advertise for themselves. Aside: when I lived in Alaska I remember a GP volunteer saying that oil employees where some of his best anonymous donors; they would thank GP for upholding human responsibility for environment as they couldn't see themselves leaving their work/society changing off oil, but knew their companies needed strong countermeasure in how/where they operated.

I sayz, give em 1 laptop with the URL and the DO Logo proudly displayed on the LID.


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*Brief tech note on auto-carriage return setting, it's a bee atch for the hack.