22 Aug
2000
22 Aug
'00
2:49 a.m.
At 09:15 AM 8/22/00 -0500, you wrote:
-very centered analysis about how Goodwill is doing a good thing deleted-
The one complaint that you have with which I really
can't argue is
that it's not obviously part of their company charter. However, I'd make
the reply that so it isn't, but that just means their charter is
inadequate. What they are doing benefits society, in that it is developing
and making available a great display of the history of computing. (This is
the right group to claim that's a worthy goal, right?) They also make that
collection visible to anyone, even folks of very limited means, and that's
something that no other organization in the state (region?) is doing.
Comparing these benefits to the relatively miniscule finacial benefit
they'd get by, how do we say, "whoring the collection on eBay", I find it
very attractive to hope they will persist and increase their collection.
Actually, I think that hosting a computer museum actually helps them
achieve their mission. They get nationwide exposure, which helps
to increase the volume of both donations and sales; it makes more
people aware about older computers, and some of them may end up
buying more computers from Goodwill. Finally, given that they
already have to do some of the most time-consuming chores for
the store (such as sorting and testing donated equipment), the
incremental effort that goes into maintaining a museum is smaller.
Well managed, it makes economical sense for them to host a museum,
although it is certainly a long-sighted strategy; you don't see much
of that in business practice nowadays.