But, assuming they are honest, they’ve already got the money for the prize, which is currently unproductively sitting in a bank account. Or, if we relax that assumption...
They don’t literally have the prize money sitting in a bank account. What they do have is legally binding contracts with people that say “When you determine a prize winner, we’ll give you the money to pay out the amount you’ve promised.” (James Randi’s prize for demonstrating psychic powers under controlled conditions is funded the same way.)
which is currently unproductively sitting in a bank account.
And the reason for that is that this money is dedicated to the prize and cannot be touched until and unless the prize gets awarded.
Which, I think, is the standard way these things get done. Otherwise you’d get into situations where you spend the prize money on “administering” the prize, but when the time to actually give out the prize comes… oh-oh, where did the money go?
Sure, but if they don’t have the money needed to administer the prize, then the prize money will sit in the bank forever, assuming that it exists. So why didn’t they allocate less money for the prize and more money for the operating costs? They could still have solicited donations to increase the prize, and they would have been reasonably sure that they were able to administer it.
Smells fishy. You can budget $100,000 for the prize but you don’t have the money necessary to run the tests needed to administer it?
See http://lesswrong.com/r/lesswrong/lw/j1j/help_the_brain_preservation_foundation/a1ns, my previous comment. Is there something there that you still feel “smells fishy”?
Yes. Why did you arrange your budget that way?
I’d guess that it’s easier to get people to give money in the future than give money now.
But, assuming they are honest, they’ve already got the money for the prize, which is currently unproductively sitting in a bank account.
Or, if we relax that assumption...
They don’t literally have the prize money sitting in a bank account. What they do have is legally binding contracts with people that say “When you determine a prize winner, we’ll give you the money to pay out the amount you’ve promised.” (James Randi’s prize for demonstrating psychic powers under controlled conditions is funded the same way.)
And the reason for that is that this money is dedicated to the prize and cannot be touched until and unless the prize gets awarded.
Which, I think, is the standard way these things get done. Otherwise you’d get into situations where you spend the prize money on “administering” the prize, but when the time to actually give out the prize comes… oh-oh, where did the money go?
Sure, but if they don’t have the money needed to administer the prize, then the prize money will sit in the bank forever, assuming that it exists.
So why didn’t they allocate less money for the prize and more money for the operating costs? They could still have solicited donations to increase the prize, and they would have been reasonably sure that they were able to administer it.