Roughly speaking, if the value of sending a person to CFAR is the same, regardless of whether a hundred people go or a million go. If you are paying for a scholarship today, the benefit is largely about the effect on that person, regardless of future students. What is the alternative charity? If you spend to save a life, that’s just one person, too.
Here are two reasons why scale could matter. One is room for funding. If you think CFAR will never get big, then it will never consume that much money. So it wouldn’t have room for a lot of funding. But the important question is whether it has room for your funding. Eventual size doesn’t tell us much about that.
Another reason is gains from scale. The value of sending the millionth person may be the same as the value of the hundredth, but the cost may be much smaller. Curriculum development is amortized across students. If the next bit of funding is going to pay for curriculum development and two people agree about the value of the curriculum for the average student, but may disagree about the total value because they disagree about how many students it will reach.
What does the size of the organization matter?
Roughly speaking, if the value of sending a person to CFAR is the same, regardless of whether a hundred people go or a million go. If you are paying for a scholarship today, the benefit is largely about the effect on that person, regardless of future students. What is the alternative charity? If you spend to save a life, that’s just one person, too.
Here are two reasons why scale could matter. One is room for funding. If you think CFAR will never get big, then it will never consume that much money. So it wouldn’t have room for a lot of funding. But the important question is whether it has room for your funding. Eventual size doesn’t tell us much about that.
Another reason is gains from scale. The value of sending the millionth person may be the same as the value of the hundredth, but the cost may be much smaller. Curriculum development is amortized across students. If the next bit of funding is going to pay for curriculum development and two people agree about the value of the curriculum for the average student, but may disagree about the total value because they disagree about how many students it will reach.