Not accepting donations while there is a surplus sounds like a good idea at first. I don't think this would dispel potential donors in the long run, would it?
From a decade of NGO work, and expieriences from others that worked a lot longer, I have to say that yes, it would... A large part about succesfull longterm funding is that people can automise their transactions (I suspect I'm getting money from some people that have even forgotten that they're sending me money...), which means the only way to "refund" a donation would be sending it back after receit (as far as I am aware... maybe Paypal and co. provide other options?), which again costs money, so the refund would be less than the sum donated. Which tends to annoy people, because now they just donated a few unneccessary money transactions and feel stupid.
I second the idea of not donating the excess funds and use them as backup if donation goals are not reached in future periods if this does not create legal problems as indicated by jedidia.
The other problem is, even if there's no legal problem (which it probably wouldn't be until a certain ammount has been stockpiled), if everything runs smoothly (as we all hope it will) eventually you will have to do something with that money. I.E. the problem gets likely larger over time. Once you have 5000 dollars stacked up, the issue of what's going to be done with them will be huge.
It seems a bit strange that we're worrying about excess money, but it's really not that uncommon a problem in a non-profit organisation. May God have mercy on your soul if you ever have signifficant ammounts of money left at the end of a project. Smart people therefore have a contingency for this, something in the project documentation that sys something along the lines of "excess money will be used for x". That's exactly what the Administrators are trying to do, and while we might argue about what that should look like, there's no way around some solution that doesn't involve stockpiling with ill-defined purpose. Turning down donations will lead to solvency problems in the future.
Anyways, how's the Doctor doing financially?
Last edited: