I've just seen this, too. 1. You're absolutely right to ask for donations. Your Arts Council funding is bound to be challenged in the near future. Put me down for a tenner. 2. By what mechanism are you going to take the donations? Is there some less-capitalist but equally-useful alternative to PayPal? I've just added PayPal to my own site, but not without a qualm. 3. I like the idea of a cooperative, although it's difficult to imagine how you could be much more cooperative than you are already. There are different kinds of co-op, though, aren't there? The Co-op Supermarket is owned by its customers, and although there are good things about it it doesn't seem to treat its employees all that well, and organisationally it seems like a bit of a shambles. (My local supermarket is a Co-Op. I shop there every day and know quite a lot of the people who work there, so I've got some idea what I'm talking about.) John Lewis/Waitrose, on the other hand, is owned by its employees, and perhaps as a consequence it seems like a more go-ahead organisation. My general conclusion from this is that the better form of co-operative seems to be ownership by the people who are doing the producing (as is the case with the London Symphony Orchestra), rather than ownership by the people who consume the products. But even having said this I'm sure there must be all sorts of nitty-gritty issues to be resolved as regards how a co-operative organisation should be run.
- Edward _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
