RE: [amsat-bb] Nominations for the AMSAT Board of Directors -REPLY -

[Paul Williamson <kb5mu@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 8:38 PM -0400 6/16/03, Gunther Meisse wrote:
>  If elected, I will work hard on the establishment of an
>AMSAT Endowment Foundation, who's sole purpose will be to develop an
>annual income stream to allow us to build, concurrent, diverse birds,
>and pay for the rides.

And where will this money come from?

It may not be widely known, but the AMSAT Board has made many 
behind-the-scenes efforts to match up corporate grants or other 
philanthropic funding sources with AMSAT needs. A volunteer with 
experience doing exactly that tackled the job just a couple of years 
ago. A small part of the effort was the creation of a separate, 
donor-oriented web site (still available at http://www.amsat-na.org 
). A lot of work was done, but a lot of money was not found. There's 
a mismatch between what we do and what companies want to support.

If it's not donations, it must be selling a product. Except the only 
products we have are the efforts and expertise of our volunteers. The 
Board has tried that, too. It helped to pay off some of the debt from 
the P3D project, but it doesn't scale well. You can't ask volunteers 
to work year-in and year-out on projects for outside interests.

I'm not a Board member (incumbent or candidate) and I wasn't involved 
in any of the work mentioned above. I know about it because I take 
the time to attend the annual meetings of the Board after each year's 
Space Symposium, as any member may do.

My point is just this: if AMSAT hasn't raised a lot of money from 
outside the amateur radio community, it isn't for lack of trying. It 
will take more than the establishment of a Foundation and good 
intentions to change that. A lot more.

73  -Paul
kb5mu@amsat.org
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