Of course it is. :)

Your suggestions are appreciated. :)

With all due respect, magiciansampras, that's precisely what we did.

I hope a little history lesson will put every one's mind at ease.

Originally, Randy had the idea of using the community spirit of FT for the powers of good, ie, raising money for charitable causes. IMHO, Randy's got a big heart and FT's efforts in response to 9/11 and the Tsunami a couple years back reflect that.

At the same time, he wanted to enable FT members to be able to do the same: approach the FT community with charitable causes that WE are passionate about. But this, of course, is against the TOS as more or less spam.

So he asked the TB to create a process for allowing case-by-case exceptions to the spam TOS for charitable appeals by FT members.

The TB came up with first and informal and then later formal guidelines for Flyertalk Cares charitable appeals.

IMHO (since I got the fun job of helping to drafting them) the guidelines do a fine job of balancing the need to do SOME vetting of proposed charitable appeals before granting a spam waiver against the goal of keeping FT from being cluttered with charitable appeals.

To wit:
Some vetting:

• A TB member investigates the charity to achieve some small level of comfort that the charity is legitimate and not either an outright scam or a way for someone to line their own pockets.
• TB members then vote for an approval to the spam TOS exemption for that specific charitable appeal.
• It is not meant to say ANYTHING about the worthiness of the cause or as a recommendation to give. It simply says, you may post that piece of 'spam' and if other FTers want to participate they can choose to do so or not. FTers are a diverse group and what may be a passionate cause to me may offend you, but that's NOT the point. The point is that it is a legitimate charity that a FTer supports and would like to spread the word about.

Keep the clutter down:

• FT Cares solicitations are limited to a single thread
• That thread is to be clearly marked so if no one is 'tricked' into clicking on it
• Thread bumping and other TOS rules are strictly enforced.

As for the vote being noted here both in terms of a motion being made and the charity being approved, well, that's done so everyone can know what the TB is talking about.

IMHO only, it can also help possibly catch a FT Cares proposed TOS exemption for a 'charity' that the TB is being snowed about.

So, now with all that in mind (and after you have reviewed the FT Cares Guidelines we approved this Spring), how do you suggest we improve the process?

Would it be better if the threads in this forum just said "FYI: XYZ under consideration for approval"? Would it be better if there was no notice at all and it was simply presented as a fait accompli?

Speaking only for myself, I think it's fair to say the TB is always open to improving our processes! ^

^ Thank you for this reasonable and comprehensive reply (the first one I've received to my concern)! I will digest this.

And a little more historical research would point out that the first procedures were not 'informal' but 'formal' and that was the first procedure which TB used before they were revamped by koko later on - and there are still some areas which are only covered by the earlier set of guidelines and not the later ones....

The revamp was great, but it was just that - a review of what had gone before and what had worked and what hadn't worked.

Agreed. And for anyone who DOESN'T know, and I hope she doesn't mind my saying this, if you could see the private TB forum on a read-only basis you would know that Jenbel has been and continues to be the TB member who is, imho, most responsible for the success and especially the fairness of the FT Cares program.

No, I think that's something we all bring to the table.

But I'll own up to the grey hairs on getting the first iteration of the guidelines through - which experience meant I was happy to leave it to koko on the second iteration :p

Unfortunately we'll have to take your word for it. I for one believe you, though. ^

FWIW - I didn't view this as a popularity contest. I took it as stated in the OP.

My only nit is that I'd like to see at minimum a url provided so that we know which charity specifically is being asked whether to be added to the list of FT charities. As scoow pointed out in his post above w/ links to dif ones, sometimes there are similar-sounding charities.

Given that FT has members from around the world I see no reason to limit charities only to US-based ones.

Cheers.

Plus there should be a publicly accessible list of all the approved charities with, as you suggest, a link to the charity’s website. This one is a bit out of date.

And on a side note, scoow is actually a pretty young woman. But I realize it’s hard to tell the sex of a poster from their handle. :)