Talk:General Priorities

Thoughts on prioritization

Establishing priorities will never boil down to generating just one list, highest to lowest. It will always be more complicated than that. For instance we might have a list of three things we want to do in this order:

Interrelated projects

1. Hire Tennis Ball Coordinator
2. Start tennis ball collection program
3. Give away tennis balls to the needy

These three are "projects" are interrelated. They are therefore arranged in order of dependency since we need to do one before we can do the other. Abstractly the highest priority might need to be done later than a lower priority, but the lower priority must be done first since the higher priority depends on it. We would want to consider all three as a package, maybe even integrate them into a single proposal.

Considering real world constraints

1. Hire Tennis Ball Coordinator (costs $50,000 per year)
2. Start Ping Pong Ball Collection Agency (costs $500 per year)
3. Start Basketball Collection Agency (costs $600 per year)

These three items are unrelated, but we need more money for the highest priority item (item 1). We might look at our books and decide that we only have enough cash for items 2 and 3.

We might also decide that items 2 and 3 are income generating, and therefore (if successful) could financially allow item 1 to be established. This kind of converts the list into a list of interrelated projects.

Fundable or not?

1. Hire Tennis Ball Coordinator (costs $50,000 per year, but the Pollywog Memorial Foundation might fund 50% of this)
2. Start Ping Pong Ball Collection Agency (costs $500 per year, and we'd have to use our own money)
3. Start Basketball Collection Agency (costs $600 per year, and we'd have to use our own money)

If we have enough money, we'd write the grant and commit to doing item 1, but that creates a condition ("if we have enough money"). We need a note about that included with the proposal, something like: "If it appears we can raise $25,000 for the project, we should apply for the Pollywog Memorial Foundation grant to fund the rest. If that is successful, then this is a very high priority."

Types of priorities

1. Things we are already doing -- List D
2. New things we are committed to doing (assuming we have enough resources to do them)
3. New things we would like to do (assuming enough resources)
4. Things which there is no consensus around (yet) -- List E

RfS 09:49, 25 October 2006 (PDT) Each of those might require separate lists. Lists 2 and 3 should be vetted by the fundraising group.