"You're in the desert, you see a tortoise lying on its back, struggling, and you're not helping — why is that?"

Most of our activities are conducted by volunteers and consist of scouring the research literature so we can proactively cross-pollenate ideas, fill in gaps with in-house R&D, and build alliances with other research groups that will lead to getting better and eaiser-to-use technology into your hands.

As a result, we can't measure our progress in terms of how many dollars we are spending per-person-served to help a fixed number of people. What matters most to us, and ultimately to you, is the flow of ideas which will benefit everyone.

But we do face a lot of fixed overhead that stems from our need to comply with government regulations — regulations that were designed to keep much larger charities that conform to that model from misappropriating donations.

Phase One - Prehistory

We started out talking to a lot of frustrated end users and equally frustrated researchers. We saw that often the best solutions never made it into your hands because the best people were trapped playing games in pursuit of funding, having to continusly drop promissing lines of research as funding patterns shifted like the wind. Many of our colleagues expressed the dream of having an organization that could support them in what they wanted to do, a source of funding and support that would let them do what they knew was needed by focusing on the big picture.

Phase Two - Birth

We then built up a team and took that idea one step closer to reality by incorporating and winning IRS recongition as a Tax Exempt Public Charity. It took a very long time to lay this foundation with many bills comming due for the hard costs of legal and accounting expertise to do everything right from day one. These costs were paid for with internal debt that we need to pay down as quickly as possible, so our organization can finally stand on its own legs. This represents a lot of red ink on our balance sheet, but it also means that we aren't going away when some outside creditor comes looking for payment. The entire risk of failure is on our shoulders, so we are highly motivated to do a good job.

Phase Three - Adolecense

At this point, we are dramatically slowing our burn rate of capital and actively pursuing everything that doesn't require cash, so we can maintain a holding pattern while we gather support from End Users like you.

We are still loosing money, or more precisely, risking a greater financial loss if we can't attract donations since our professional service providers need to be payed up front - but this isn't a show stopper, since The Institute can be made finanically whole with your support.

Phase Four - Sustainability

Our next goal is to bring in enough revenue to cover all ongoing expenses. When we reach this milestone, The Institute will be able to cover its hard costs without increasing its founder funded debt. Ideally, we would like to get to this point by the end of this year.

Phase Five - Solvency

The next objective will be to bring in more donations than our hard overhead, so we can pay down and eliminate our startup and operating deficit. This will mark The Institute's maturity and dramatically increase its credibility with institutional funding sources.

Phase Six - Maximum Impact

With our financial house in order, we will ramp up our fundraising activity and start to fund students at various University Labs to write code we can give away to you and build up a cash reserve to further increase our long term viability. At that point we can decide whether we can be more effective remaining a virtual organization or whether we need to lauch a capital campaign to maintain adminstrative offices and lab space.

Since we are still running on a shoestring budget, we can't justify the overhead costs of using most online donation collection services. We could shunt you to a third party Donor Advised Fund (a class of nonprofit that collects and redistributes donations to other nonprofits) to make a credit card donation (after which the fund would make us wait for enough donations to accumulate to justify their sending us a payment), but then we would have to wait, we would loose a portion of your donation to the other organization, and we wouldn't be able to log you as an individual donor.

So instead, we ask you to mail us a check, in any amount, but please be as generous as your financial circumstances permit. Then we will know who you are, you won't have to trust another entity, and we will get the full value of your donation as soon as the US Postal Service delivers it to us.

1. Make your check payable to: The Institute for End User Computing, Inc.
2. Write 'Donation' and your email address in the check's Memo field.
3. Post it to: The Institute for End User Computing, Inc.; Box 1717; Ossining, NY 10562
4. After we deposit it, we will mail you a hard copy receipt for your tax records, since donations by US Citizens are deductible to the extent provided by law.

Or if you see one of our Officers at a Conference, you can make a donation in person (Cash or Check), provided that we are duly registered to solicit funds in the jurisdiction where the meeting takes place. For this year's Hypertext, JCDL, and "Business of Software" Conferences this is the case.

Whatever you choose to donate, your contribution is most deeply appreciated and will be used wisely.