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But it does take a high salaried non-technical CEO to market the idea to more people, which brings in more funding for the project.

That's the thing. $50 / month from you or me means nothing compared to $5 / month from a 100x larger audience. Growing the audience means marketing, and tons of non-technical work.

A lot of charities become marketing firms to bring in more money. Because that's how you effectively grow a charity and get more work done. Its just the reality of modern society.



> That's the thing. $50 / month from you or me means nothing compared to $5 / month from a 100x larger audience. Growing the audience means marketing, and tons of non-technical work.

Sounds like they don't need my donation, the people who do this non-technical work are bringing in revenue by the wheelbarrow load. If they weren't the price they charge for their skills would not be justifiable.


I mean, all I have to do is bring up a highly successful 401(c) like Red Cross, or even significant portions of universities / schools.

Small donations over a large base, which largely go towards marketing (ie: Sportsball and festivals at universities) will make a far larger and more successful charity than a purely technical oriented one. Its just the reality of the modern world.


Marketing and technology aren’t exclusive.

Look at the heads of Linux Foundation and Apache. They seem to do a great job marketing but also have a deep background in open source software.

I’ve worked for companies with CEOs from engineering and CEOs from marketing, I’ll try really hard to never work at a marketing company again.


> But it does take a high salaried non-technical CEO to market the idea to more people, which brings in more funding for the project.

That's the same argument used to pay CEOs hundreds of millions ("they make us more money"). And then there are studies suggesting that the effect the CEO has on the success of the company is rather small - and of course, the CEOs who aren't successful still get paid unbelievable amounts of money.




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