[bksvol-discuss] Re: A couple of notes on Bookshare.org
- From: "Kaitlyn" <kaitlyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 11:38:11 -0700
Hi Jim,
Good to hear things are progressing. I work for one of the large
universities here and I know it can take time to make changes when it comes
to computers.
The AGEL World Mission
Kaitlyn Hill
WWW.AgelPortlandMission.com
503-777-7155
503-358-3547
kaitlyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
kaitlyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
WWW.GetAgelInfo.com
-----Original Message-----
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 7:42 AM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] A couple of notes on Bookshare.org
Just a few data-points on some of the generous questions raised on the
list:
1. Your money going to subsidize other Benetech projects. Not in much
danger of that: we have to raise $4 from philanthropy for every dollar
we're getting from Bookshare.org subscribers. Why? We're raising more
money at the moment to add staff and engineering resources. Plus, $50
for all the books you can read is relatively cheap.
2. The benefits of being part of an organization that has six projects
and not just one. 7 technical staff with different skills instead of
part of one which is what Bookshare.org can currently afford. A two
person fund raising team (which scores $100,000 of foundation funding
for Bookshare.org last week). Me spending lots of my time on policy
issues (making sure K-12 textbooks actually get to print impaired
students) and trying to get quality books directly from publishers to
improve book quality. Being part of a large(r) organization means that
Bookshare.org benefits from having full-time people and skillsets to tap
that it cannot afford.
3. Slow pace of change. Three reasons.
- The first is we're still tiny, which means we're not a rich
organization with tons of resources. We're making tradeoffs all the
time.
- The second is that over the last two years we have not done a good job
of making all of the changes we know are needed. We're changing and
hiring as a result, and I think this will lead to better progress. But,
it's not a switch that turns on in an instant.
- Priorities. We've chosen to improve customer service by hiring John
Glass, and we've chosen to replace the servers to improve speed and
reliability (a process we are half-way through but you should have seen
some improvements on both fronts in the last few weeks). We've hired
Jennifer Sutton to improve the quality of books and deal with thousands
of books that could be in our process by getting one of the world's
leading experts on DAISY to join us.
Benetech is a nonprofit organization. We're here for mission reasons,
and our team wants to do the best job they can. I hope that our
community will join in being encouraging us constructively to do better,
and respecting our desire to do that.
Jim Fruchterman
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