This is stupid. ISAC, like any other entity that survives on web donations, gets very, very little money.
Anyone who knows anything about shareware and the web and collecting donations for *any* cause with a similar publicity level, no matter how worthy, could predict---no doubt correctly----that they barely get enough in donations to defray the costs of keeping their site on the web.
Anybody who's ever run a small business and had experience with other small business owners and with volunteers on the boards of various cooperative organizations or the collections and budgetting of a small church has some idea of what kind of publicity and pitch draw in what level of donations, and what it costs to provide different goods and services.
ISAC is, apparently, small enough that the lion's share of the work is done by a couple of survivors who spend quite a lot of time and quite a lot of out of pocket money from their own earnings doing the work of their cause.
The people running ISAC are almost certainly pouring significant amounts of their own money into it, on an ongoing basis, not drawing money out of it.
The money poured into it is probably in the form of paying their own travel and research expenses on trips when they absolutely have to go check something out in person---and can afford to---and on phone bills. If they're very lucky, some small part of the ISAC-related long distance phone calls is covered, along with their internet and web costs.
My experience, with running a small computer consulting corporation, briefly--with me as the only employee, but all of the corporate paperwork and red tape to do, with running a small business--which is essentially what being an author comes down to, with having in-laws that have run small businesses, with having a friend who owned and ran a small photography studio, with having been active in a church to the point of actually looking at the expenses and donations in the financial records, with doing volunteer work moderating a publisher's web board, with encountering the members of con committees that organize and run science fiction conventions, with working with the family that purchased and is running our local dojo, with learning the breakdown of the costs of books in publishing---
My experience with all that is that 99% of people looking at a small business, a cooperative organization, or a charity, vastly overestimate the income of that organization and vastly underestimate the expenses.
Most people just don't have even half a clue to know when what they're paying is being sold to them at or below cost, or when they're getting skinned alive.
Anyone who thinks ISAC is swimming in cash or has anywhere near enough cash income to match it's cash outflow, let alone the outflow of the value of volunteer labor provided by the few people right in the heart of it, is either: A) so hopelessly clueless as to be a complete babe in the woods or B) is flat out delusional or C) is trying to make nasty allegations to stir up trouble against people he/she doesn't like.
My best guess would be that the idiot who started this thread is some combination of A and C.
Anybody who can't just *look* at ISAC and make pretty good guesses about their probable cashflow without *needing* their books opened up is a complete and total fool who probably couldn't understand the books even with a very patient, plain-spoken accountant spending a whole damned day explaining them.
For the record, I have absolutely *no* connection to ISAC, financial or otherwise.
I'm just not one to tolerate fools gladly.
Timoclea
