It is also unclear how much FarmKind could change course based on feedback (other than giving up and shutting down)
There are lots of options helping animals (through raising money or otherwise) that don’t involve this kind of competition around the impact of donations. It’s common for startups to pivot if their first product doesn’t work out.
It’s common for startups to pivot if their first product doesn’t work out.
I think FarmKind would be constrained by the need to keep faith with its donors, though. I agree about pivoting when there has been a material change in facts or circumstances. That’s an understood part of the deal when you donate to a charity. But I don’t see any evidence of the product on which FarmKind raised its seed funding was not “work[ing] out” in practice. It had just launched its platform. The critiques you and Ben offered were not novel or previously unknown to FarmKind (e.g., their launch info cites Giving Multiplier as a sort of inspiration).
It is of course good to change your mind when you realize that you made an error. But from the seed donor perspective, changing paradigms so early would look an awful lot like a bait and switch in effect if not in intent. If an organization fundraises based on X and then promptly decides to do something significantly different for reasons within the organization’s control without giving X a serious try, I think it should generally offer people who donated for X idea to have their donations regranted elsewhere. Whether its donors would chose that is unknown to me.
Independently, it’s not clear that a pivot would be practically feasible for FarmKind (or most other CE incubatees a few months after launch). It launched on a $133K seed grant with two staff members about three months ago (not including time spent in the CE program). Even assuming they could get 100% donor consent for repurposing funds, they would still be going almost back to square one. It’s not clear to me that it could come up with a new idea, spend the time to develop that, relaunch, and show results to get funding for the rest of year 1 and beyond (which has been a big challenge for many CE-incubated orgs).
Given those constraints, I think it is fair to say that the extent to which FarmKind could realistically change course in response to criticism (other than winding down) remains unclear.
There are lots of options helping animals (through raising money or otherwise) that don’t involve this kind of competition around the impact of donations. It’s common for startups to pivot if their first product doesn’t work out.
I think FarmKind would be constrained by the need to keep faith with its donors, though. I agree about pivoting when there has been a material change in facts or circumstances. That’s an understood part of the deal when you donate to a charity. But I don’t see any evidence of the product on which FarmKind raised its seed funding was not “work[ing] out” in practice. It had just launched its platform. The critiques you and Ben offered were not novel or previously unknown to FarmKind (e.g., their launch info cites Giving Multiplier as a sort of inspiration).
It is of course good to change your mind when you realize that you made an error. But from the seed donor perspective, changing paradigms so early would look an awful lot like a bait and switch in effect if not in intent. If an organization fundraises based on X and then promptly decides to do something significantly different for reasons within the organization’s control without giving X a serious try, I think it should generally offer people who donated for X idea to have their donations regranted elsewhere. Whether its donors would chose that is unknown to me.
Independently, it’s not clear that a pivot would be practically feasible for FarmKind (or most other CE incubatees a few months after launch). It launched on a $133K seed grant with two staff members about three months ago (not including time spent in the CE program). Even assuming they could get 100% donor consent for repurposing funds, they would still be going almost back to square one. It’s not clear to me that it could come up with a new idea, spend the time to develop that, relaunch, and show results to get funding for the rest of year 1 and beyond (which has been a big challenge for many CE-incubated orgs).
Given those constraints, I think it is fair to say that the extent to which FarmKind could realistically change course in response to criticism (other than winding down) remains unclear.