donating to scratch is for scratch to maintain its website not to donate to a different person. that would be weird. there are already charities you can donate to.

Scratch is poor, because Scratch is a nonprofit. They even pay ST members. (according to our AI overlords)
How about Scratch partners with a charity so Scratch can ask people to donate? Yes, 41% of people on Scratch are 10-14, but there's a few people old enough to donate.

Elijah999999 wrote:

Scratch… is poor.

Correct, Scratch can't just spend there valuable dollars to help the poor…. Sadly…

-fluffycottoncandy- wrote:

I don't think it is…

Scratch runs on donations. They have to pay to run the servers and to pay themselves. That’s already a lot.

The fact they can even manage to run the website and also be so proactive with fixing glitches and responding to reports is amazing.

I understand the need to donate to the poor, but can you explain how this would fit in to Scratch's goals of building a coding platform?

Scratch doesn't run on infinite money. They can't just randomly donate money when they need money themselves.

Ok so I don't think this fits in suggestions unless you are suggesting for scratch team to promote donations to the poor
Which is alright but like
Most people on here are 11 and already have no money
But lets just assume they have been saving up cash from their allowance or a lemonade stand
11 year olds would prefer to spend their money on V-bucks or some other stuff and not waste their low cash on donations
Also they might not even know where to donate
If you are saying for scratch to donate then scratch is non-profit
This means the website makes no money
And server costs are expensive and they might not be able to afford to donate

development is hard
development is expensive
even then you need infrastructuralists and engineers to maintain production servers, which in themselves do fail!!!
to an extent i do feel that the st do have to pay for servers (although i think aws and google sponsorships do take the burden off slightly)
furthermore software licenses like redis (possibly, possibly covered by amazon though) and cleanspeak do need to be funded

some of these costs (cleanspeak in particular) are, in my terms, “fixed fees”. they will always remain present, and at an announced cost (that is likely a fixed cost)
some of these costs need human intervention to be covered (you have to manually renew grants, etc)
some of these costs are consistently present but change according to laws and regulations, for example, wages and (at least in the uk) broadband, and furthermore they might be dropped due to lack of funds (think, layoffs)
some of these costs are “zero-hour” costs and are completely up in the air, for example a zero-hours job where an infrastructuralist might have to be on call to investigate and rectify (whether temporarily or permanently) any sudden downtime or failures. you never know when, or even for how long or often, this may happen, it may happen not at all, but you still need to pay zero-hours employees

now we've run into a problem
this list is likely not definitive. there will be physical goods that the team may acquire through some means that need to be funded. motivation for a team does also cost money (being a good employer may involve spending time or money in order to ensure that your team is well-pampered and motivated). and we find more and more and more and more and more costs that seem to spread the grants rather thin

so when we have these expenses, when you look at it in the way i wrote the first part of the post, it's a bit hard to source the funding to “donate to the poor” when the scratch foundation isn't entirely housed in a mansion in LA like notch's is

this further raises the question:
can grantmakers justify this cost? i mean after all, a nonprofit donating to a completely unrelated nonprofit or charitable cause is rather strange and unusual. furthermore with this monetary cost, what relevance does this have to making the fundamentals of software development easily accessible to people of all backgrounds and ages?

scratch was started as a research project for the above reason. andres monroy-hernandez then developed a website and community that revolved around sharing projects as part of his phd thesis (i need to actually read it at some point ngl), discovering how people remixed, what influences them to remix and their attitude towards remixing. i do not feel that branching out into donating to the poor, like charities such as shelter, samaritan's purse and convoy of hope all seem to do, would really be in line with the idea of scratch. this response does not only apply to this suggestion, but ones like it where the benefit to scratch's direct users is minimal at best and at worst negatively impacts them in a way that didn't need to happen in the first place.

i think this is really my two cents (or in the uk, pence) on the suggestion but hopefully i've summed it up rather well

Banana

undeterministic wrote:

-fluffycottoncandy- wrote:

I don't think it is…

it is deeply so

How?

undeterminstic wrote:

donating to scratch is for scratch to maintain its website not to donate to a different person. that would be weird. there are already charities you can donate to.

From the internet:

We help individuals and families facing hardship and disadvantage by providing furniture and other items and by offering volunteering opportunities.

-fluffycottoncandy- wrote:

undeterminstic wrote:

donating to scratch is for scratch to maintain its website not to donate to a different person. that would be weird. there are already charities you can donate to.

From the internet:

We help individuals and families facing hardship and disadvantage by providing furniture and other items and by offering volunteering opportunities.

Source?

Maybe

NPLol39-2_ wrote:

Scratch is poor, because Scratch is a nonprofit. They even pay ST members. (according to our AI overlords)
How about Scratch partners with a charity so Scratch can ask people to donate? Yes, 41% of people on Scratch are 10-14, but there's a few people old enough to donate.

Maybe we can gather ideas to make Scratch high in money.Thank you for this

banana439monkey wrote:

development is hard
development is expensive
even then you need infrastructuralists and engineers to maintain production servers, which in themselves do fail!!!
to an extent i do feel that the st do have to pay for servers (although i think aws and google sponsorships do take the burden off slightly)
furthermore software licenses like redis (possibly, possibly covered by amazon though) and cleanspeak do need to be funded

some of these costs (cleanspeak in particular) are, in my terms, “fixed fees”. they will always remain present, and at an announced cost (that is likely a fixed cost)
some of these costs need human intervention to be covered (you have to manually renew grants, etc)
some of these costs are consistently present but change according to laws and regulations, for example, wages and (at least in the uk) broadband, and furthermore they might be dropped due to lack of funds (think, layoffs)
some of these costs are “zero-hour” costs and are completely up in the air, for example a zero-hours job where an infrastructuralist might have to be on call to investigate and rectify (whether temporarily or permanently) any sudden downtime or failures. you never know when, or even for how long or often, this may happen, it may happen not at all, but you still need to pay zero-hours employees

now we've run into a problem
this list is likely not definitive. there will be physical goods that the team may acquire through some means that need to be funded. motivation for a team does also cost money (being a good employer may involve spending time or money in order to ensure that your team is well-pampered and motivated). and we find more and more and more and more and more costs that seem to spread the grants rather thin

so when we have these expenses, when you look at it in the way i wrote the first part of the post, it's a bit hard to source the funding to “donate to the poor” when the scratch foundation isn't entirely housed in a mansion in LA like notch's is

this further raises the question:
can grantmakers justify this cost? i mean after all, a nonprofit donating to a completely unrelated nonprofit or charitable cause is rather strange and unusual. furthermore with this monetary cost, what relevance does this have to making the fundamentals of software development easily accessible to people of all backgrounds and ages?

scratch was started as a research project for the above reason. andres monroy-hernandez then developed a website and community that revolved around sharing projects as part of his phd thesis (i need to actually read it at some point ngl), discovering how people remixed, what influences them to remix and their attitude towards remixing. i do not feel that branching out into donating to the poor, like charities such as shelter, samaritan's purse and convoy of hope all seem to do, would really be in line with the idea of scratch. this response does not only apply to this suggestion, but ones like it where the benefit to scratch's direct users is minimal at best and at worst negatively impacts them in a way that didn't need to happen in the first place.

i think this is really my two cents (or in the uk, pence) on the suggestion but hopefully i've summed it up rather well

Banana

Maybe we can up with an idea to help Scratch with this

SidewaysCoder wrote:

I understand the need to donate to the poor, but can you explain how this would fit in to Scratch's goals of building a coding platform?

Scratch doesn't run on infinite money. They can't just randomly donate money when they need money themselves.

Scratch works with the Scratch Foundation including many communtities in Southampton.Maybe we can come up with an idea to see how this can be more possible

unrealalex wrote:

Ok so I don't think this fits in suggestions unless you are suggesting for scratch team to promote donations to the poor
Which is alright but like
Most people on here are 11 and already have no money
But lets just assume they have been saving up cash from their allowance or a lemonade stand
11 year olds would prefer to spend their money on V-bucks or some other stuff and not waste their low cash on donations
Also they might not even know where to donate
If you are saying for scratch to donate then scratch is non-profit
This means the website makes no money
And server costs are expensive and they might not be able to afford to donate

That is what I mean! Maybe we can make an idea with people who also consider this like you.

Hello everyone!
Here are some statements you have told me that I want to explain -

Some of you have said:
Scratch is a non-profit that is poor

Yes,Scratch is poor but it works with the Scratch Foundation and Southampton to help support families and everyone else in need.They help deliver code which is neccesary since it's known to be the best based-block coding for kids in the world.Before you log on to your Scratch Account,there's a ‘donate’ button (that you should really ask your parents to help with).As soon as you donate,your money helps the community working with Scratch.

You might be thinking:
Why the poor?

In the UK and different parts of the world,Christmas(2024) came to an end yesterday(25/12/24) and some people are still poor.Communities such as ‘The Salvation Army’ and ‘Smaritians’ Purse'helps them have roofs over their heads with a nice neighborghood that makes a great difference.Some people don't pay attetion to the ‘donate’ button,so it's important they know.
More questions?Let me know.
P.S-Please don't repeat what people have said over and over and over again.I've seen them.Thank you!

I think you may have confused the SCRATCH charity or the Scratch Project with the Scratch Foundation.

As far as I can tell, neither the SCRATCH charity nor the Scratch Project are associated with the Scratch foundation.

The SCRATCH charity helps provide people with supplies and furniture.
The Scratch Project seems to provide professional services to other companies.
The Scratch Foundation (which split from MIT) runs the Scratch.mit.edu website.

Just wanted to clarify that.

-fluffycottoncandy- wrote:

(#32)
Maybe we can up with an idea to help Scratch with this

if you want to donate to them then be my guest

-fluffycottoncandy- wrote:

(#35)
Yes,Scratch is poor but it works with the Scratch Foundation and Southampton to help support families and everyone else in need.

[citation needed]

-fluffycottoncandy- wrote:

(#35)
Before you log on to your Scratch Account,there's a ‘donate’ button (that you should really ask your parents to help with)

what about it?

Banana

SpyCoderX wrote:

(#36)
I think you may have confused the SCRATCH charity or the Scratch Project with the Scratch Foundation.

they said “ST” though, which is almost never used outside of scratch

8to16 wrote:

SpyCoderX wrote:

(#36)
I think you may have confused the SCRATCH charity or the Scratch Project with the Scratch Foundation.

they said “ST” though, which is almost never used outside of scratch

Wait where?

banana439monkey wrote:

-fluffycottoncandy- wrote:

(#32)
Maybe we can up with an idea to help Scratch with this

if you want to donate to them then be my guest

-fluffycottoncandy- wrote:

(#35)
Yes,Scratch is poor but it works with the Scratch Foundation and Southampton to help support families and everyone else in need.

[citation needed]

-fluffycottoncandy- wrote:

(#35)
Before you log on to your Scratch Account,there's a ‘donate’ button (that you should really ask your parents to help with)

what about it?

Banana

It's how to donate to the poor