[bksvol-discuss] Re: A couple of notes on Bookshare.org
- From: Grandma Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 12:54:20 -0700 (PDT)
Excellent letter, Jim. Thank you for taking the time
to write and explain. :-)
Cindy R
--- Jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 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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>
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