Where your money goes when you fund the General Fund

Given a choice between funding a girls' football club in Zambia and funding a nonprofit's operating costs, almost everyone picks the club. We would too. It is the more vivid thing, and vividness is not a bad instinct.

But the General Fund is what makes the club possible on our end. It pays for the e-learning platform we build for a partner who could not commission one. It paid $4,966 of the Nepal clinic, the international trainer travel, so that the public ask could be the $7,175 that stays in Nepal. It pays the hosting bills on partner websites years after the launch that nobody fundraises for.

Its five categories are published like any project budget: People and Time $12,000, Tools Platforms and R&D $14,000, In-Person Clinics $12,000, Unrestricted $5,000, and a $65,000 Program and Operations Lead. $108,000 a year, all of it traceable to costs rather than to a percentage.

The honest case for giving here is a capacity argument, not an emotional one. We do not take on new partner work until it is funded. Every dollar in this fund is, fairly directly, the next organization we are able to say yes to instead of turning away.

And it is the fund with the least natural constituency, because no photograph of it exists. That is precisely why we itemized it.