Comments welcome, voting underway: Charitable Request - Dreamflight
 

Moved by Jenbel and seconded by gleff:

"that Dreamflight be added to the list of approved FTC charities, suitable for promotion on FT."

This poll will close 3 Aug 2008 at 5:19pm EDT

When we're being asked for comments, it helps if some information is provided - ie, either a brief para re: what the charity does or an actual url to their site. Cheers.

So who does that? Spiff strictly recounts what the motion is. I made the motion, so did the background research on this one, so only I can repeat what I said about it when writing the brief for TB - but I don't do that as a matter of policy since the briefing may contain sensitive information (and sometimes has to contain sensitive information) and no-one else can repeat what I have said. I suppose, optimally, it would be the person asking to have the charity approved, but they've already made their pitch to us ;)

And this one is very easily googleable. Surely you wouldn't be commenting on whether a charity is appropriate for FT off the basis of a brief description provided on here? :confused:

If you don't care to post something about it, I'm sure not going to care to even think about it

It seems to me that if you make a motion asking us what we think about something that you should at least make a case for yourself.

Why this charity? What do they do? How do you know them?

That kind of thing.

I understand the concerns re how much to post or posting sensitive info. that may have been disclosed to the TB. However, it is not uncommon for several charities to have very similar names. Especially if one is successful & receives a bit of publicity, others may jump in and hope to capitalize on the name. Just a quick Google of Dreamflight turned up a couple of nonprofit organizations with similar names. A link to the charity under discussion would be nice.

My WAG is that you are referring to either:
Dreamflight or the US-based affiliate DreamFlight USA.

But, there is also Dream Flight USA. And even an organization called DreamFlight that doesn't say it is a nonprofit, but "encourages individuals to learn and help maintain our airplane."

Here is a link to a previous appeal: FlyerTalk thread .

This post is for information purposes only. I just did some looking around FlyerTalk.

QUOTE=scoow;10113247]I understand the concerns re how much to post or posting sensitive info. that may have been disclosed to the TB. However, it is not uncommon for several charities to have very similar names. Especially if one is successful & receives a bit of publicity, others may jump in and hope to capitalize on the name. Just a quick Google of Dreamflight turned up a couple of nonprofit organizations with similar names. A link to the charity under discussion would be nice.

My WAG is that you are referring to either:
Dreamflight or the US-based affiliate DreamFlight USA.

But, there is also Dream Flight USA. And even an organization called DreamFlight that doesn't say it is a nonprofit, but "encourages individuals to learn and help maintain our airplane."[/QUOTE]

scoow basically summed up my thoughts/position. FWIW - I believe JenBel was referring to the UK charity, which GenevaFlyer sent me a link to yesterday when he was wondering the same thing I was - who are they & what do they do?

Whether someone wants to get into a huge description of a recommended charity, I do think at minimum a url should be provided & that I shouldn't have to & google it to figure out which one it is. As TrojanHorse said, if one doesn't care enough to provide even a link, why should I care?

In the case of the Dreamflight link that GenevaFlyer provided me, it looks like it's a UK-based charity along the lines of Make-a-Wish but with trips specifically to the Disney properties. And so I would support it (and see via the link that Spiff provided that Randy & other FTers have done so already.

Cheers.

You guys raise an excellent point and I will bring this gap in logic to the attention of the TB.

My recommendation is that along with the motion to approve, we ought to include from the application:

• The name of the charity/event you'd like to solicit support for on FlyerTalk,
• A brief description to what this charity does, and
• The charity/event’s website.

So, to be clear, the Talkboard is voting to approve the UK organization?

The UK organization listed in my link, yes.

Motion passed.
 

On 30 July 2008, the TalkBoard unanimously approved:

Moved by Jenbel and seconded by gleff:

"that Dreamflight be added to the list of approved FTC charities, suitable for promotion on FT."

Sheesh, way to leave the thread open awhile for feedback before voting, folks.

But we are required to do thorough and full research as part of the process of going through the charitable process - any motion can only be made once that research has been completed, and reported back to TB. That research is much more exhaustive and thorough than what the vast majority of people's comments are based on. Did SkiAdcock (who is the only one to have commented on this charity in particular) investigate the UK legislation on charities, whether this charity met UK requirements, whether it's paperwork was current and what it's financial statements were before voicing her approval? And if she didn't, why should her view be more important than our own decisions, based upon exactly that information.

And to be honest, if someone comes on and says 'I don't like this charity because it is a UK charity and we should be supporting US charities' - then I'm afraid I'm going to ignore that view. Because if you believe that, then you don't give support to that charity, but you shouldn't be trying to hinder others from a charity which they may want to give to. I'm willing to listen to people who have concerns about a particular charity from a regulatory manner. I cannot and will not listen to people saying a charity shouldn't be approved because they don't happen to like it - that's way too subjective, and we are not running this as a popularity contest for charities.

Secondly, charity votes are only open for a week - we took half that time to come to a vote. Why should we delay allowing someone to post their thread, when our research has already shown that the charity is bona fide and appropriate?

Splendid!

Last year, Dreamflight proved to be a tremendously popular charity with the folks on the BA forum.

Thanks TB for approving the promotion of Dreamflight on FT this year ^