This sounds like a good introduction to a greater debate about when it is better to support individuals and when organizations. Examples from real life (for both sides) would be great to have. But because the existing standard is to support organizations, it seems very useful to remind people that supporting individuals is also an option.
My intuition is that organizations have a lot of overhead. They need to register as a legal entity, do accounting, rent an office space, make themselves visible and legible for potential donors. If something can be done by a single person, sponsoring that person directly saves these costs. Sponsoring an organization might actually encourage mission creep.
Organizations are probably better when the specific person is easy to replace. If you sponsor the organization, then if the person doing the task quits / gets hit by a car / joins a religious cult and stops caring about research, they will be replaced by someone else, and the project will continue.
So, it seems like good questions are: Can it be done by one person? Is the specific person replaceable?
This sounds like a good introduction to a greater debate about when it is better to support individuals and when organizations. Examples from real life (for both sides) would be great to have. But because the existing standard is to support organizations, it seems very useful to remind people that supporting individuals is also an option.
My intuition is that organizations have a lot of overhead. They need to register as a legal entity, do accounting, rent an office space, make themselves visible and legible for potential donors. If something can be done by a single person, sponsoring that person directly saves these costs. Sponsoring an organization might actually encourage mission creep.
Organizations are probably better when the specific person is easy to replace. If you sponsor the organization, then if the person doing the task quits / gets hit by a car / joins a religious cult and stops caring about research, they will be replaced by someone else, and the project will continue.
So, it seems like good questions are: Can it be done by one person? Is the specific person replaceable?