When I was secretary for The Supply at UIUC (the non-profit organization I discussed in my last post), I was in charge of the RSO's emails. There was one particular email that proved appealing; the subject read "Earn money for your organization!" from a company called DonorsPlay. By the end of every semester, we were devastatingly over $400 short of reaching our $1000 semester goal. So naturally, I researched DonorsPlay, and by surprise, the company provides a legitimate means of fundraising for organizations. Its Student Partnership Program lets students raise money by donating a few minutes of their weekly meeting to testing new mobile applications. If 20-39 members participated five minutes a week, we'd earn $120 a month. For 40-59 members, it'd be $200 a month, and so on. This was our ticket to reaching that $1000. I immediately contacted the president to discuss the logistics.
When the new semester rolled around, The Supply had its first general meeting, focusing primarily on DonorsPlay. Fortunately, we had a great turnout of 30+ members. The executive board assisted the members with the installment and registration. Online I was able to check how much we were earning, and that day, we raised $32 dollars. Following the meeting, we reminded the members to test the new apps weekly.
When the new semester rolled around, The Supply had its first general meeting, focusing primarily on DonorsPlay. Fortunately, we had a great turnout of 30+ members. The executive board assisted the members with the installment and registration. Online I was able to check how much we were earning, and that day, we raised $32 dollars. Following the meeting, we reminded the members to test the new apps weekly.
After some while, our members eventually got lazy and played with the apps less and less. One day, I checked online and we had raised just over $140. After surprising successes of our other fundraisers, people had forgotten about DonorsPlay and no one had cared as to how much we had earned--even the rest of the executive board. Being the only individual to have had access to the value of how much we earned, I was often faced with the option to act opportunistically, especially since people forgot. No one would even know if I had taken a portion of the earnings. Having had been struggling financially, I was constantly consumed with the idea.
Thankfully, after much considerable thought, I did not follow through with this plan due to obvious reason. Although there was probably a two percent chance someone would find out, I still would have been overwhelmed with much guilt. And, as a strongly moral individual, stealing obviously would go against my stance on cheaters. Moreover, This was an organization I actually care about. I would be utterly selfish for using the money for my self gain, especially if it's meant for building up the education of slum youth.
It seems that anyone who wouldn't behave opportunistically would be because of the two reasons I explained above: guilt and immorality.
It seems that anyone who wouldn't behave opportunistically would be because of the two reasons I explained above: guilt and immorality.
Yours is an example where the detection of opportunistic play by others was near zero in likelihood, but not zero. It raises the question of whether small probability of detection is sufficient to deter opportunism, especially if the personal gain is not too great. What do you think about that?
ReplyDeleteYou might also speculate in response how you'd have behaved if the amount of money was far greater, say $10,000 or so. In most organizations, one doesn't have to account for small expenditure items, but for large ones there is a more formal procedure. Ditto on the revenue side of the ledger. In the story you told, it seemed that the rest of the Executive Team of The Supply didn't demand such an accounting from you about DonorsPlay. Might they have behaved differently if the stakes were higher?
There is then the issue that you were tempted and what might be done to avoid such temptation in the future, when the circumstances are similar. Out of sight out of mind is a phrase many use when talking about how to avoid temptation. Were there ways for you to make the DonorsPlay money less visible to yourself?
Finally there is the question of the whether the DonorsPlay approach really was a scam in the sense that the reward for effort was quite low. If you did something like a calculation for hours put in testing for them, you might have been able to come to some conclusion on this score. If the pay turned out to be below minimum wage, then perhaps you made a mistake promoting the activity in the first place. I don't know. I'm just raising the possibility, for what I say next. Sometimes people "take one for the team." One source of motivation for doing that is having erred where in retrospect you felt you shouldn't have. Then you try to do something beneficial to compensate for your prior mistake.
Professor Arvan -- thanks for your comment. For me, in the moment, the personal gain was substantial because any amount of money would've assisted me in my financial struggles. If the amount was $10,000, yes, I would think that the rest of the board members would be more meticulous and most likely would have transferred the job to our treasurer.
DeleteIn terms of temptation, I think just dwelling on the consequences was enough to avoid following through with the act of opportunism, as well as remembering where the money is going--to help the slum youth to build education.
I apologize for not explaining more in detail about the means of pay of DonorsPlay. So for every app that was tested, $1.00 would be earned. Sometimes, the money wouldn't go through. In that case, it was hard to judge whose testing of the apps counted and whose didn't. This was why I was tempted in the first place--knowing the members' ignorance of the money earned.