I don’t find this appeal to donate irritating because the Internet Archive is a non-profit, and it does necessary work I’m grateful for. Asking for donations is the main way the IA can keep doing the good things it’s doing, so I wouldn’t want to stop that.
I don’t like the idea of good human works being lost, so I’m glad that the Internet Archive archives lots of media, especially scrapes of websites in the Wayback Machine. I’ve used the Wayback Machine usefully multiple times in the past to find information that would otherwise be gone.
(That said, I didn’t donate, because I feel that I can’t afford to.)
Yeah and those damn pesky charities who have the audacity to ask for donations to help sick children get better or provide clean water and food to families in third world countries... /sarcasm
To answer your question: yes, you are the only one that finds appeals for donations for worthy causes to be irritating. The Internet Archive might not get as much attention as Wikipedia or other donate-able causes, but what they're doing is a very worthy cause and something that will be commended and finally recognised one day in the near distant future. When someone is willing to match a donation 3-1, you can't argue that even the minimum donation of $25 which I am sure most HN users could afford would help them out a lot.
It's attitudes like yours that are the reason sites like Wikipedia have to resort to plastering Jimmy Wales' face over their site and beg for donations to keep the site running. Have some heart, man.
I just donated $50, please consider donating even just $25.
No, you're not. And that's why non-profits have to spend large sums of money on marketing to convince people to give more.
But you say: "Marketing is a waste of money for a charity! Feed more starving kids with it!" That sounds good, until you realize that the ROI on marketing is positive and if the charity wants to grow, it has to spend a portion of each $1 you give to it trying to get the next $1 to help it grow.
Thus we end up with overhead, which ironically, can upset people more and make them want to give less.
It's a vicious cycle people. Spread the love and give.
Marketplace on NPR interviewed an economist researching charity fundraising. Some highlights from the interview:
* 1-to-1 match works well, but increasing the match to 2-1 or 3-1 doesn't do any additional good.
* Raffles. If you're serious about raising money, offer people a prize. And just by doing that you end up increasing gifts by as much as 100 percent.
* "Once-and-done" policy: Since charities know it's annoying to constantly get solicitations in the mail, they give you a choice: if you send in some money today, and check a box opting out, we'll never bother you again. People who are given the once and done proposition, they not only give more money in that particular fund-raising drive, but they do not check the box. And in future months they end up giving more money that people who never received the once-and-done proposition.
