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Frequently Asked Questions
The internet can be a wonderful place full of resources, opportunity, and potential. But everyone also knows,
that in the shadow of this light lurks disinformation, scams,
and people who will take you for all you will give...
In an effort to help you know us better, and to arrest your fears that our organization might be just
another shadow monster, we want you to understand how our contests and grants work,
what our goals for our foundation are, and, most importantly, that we are a truthful organization working
towards helping fellow writers on the road to their writing dreams. Thus, we have compiled the following list of frequently asked questions about the Hobson Foundation. If there is something else you would like to know about us that is not listed here, please feel free to contact us
at: writers@hobsonfoundation.com.
All our best!
Q) Why do you charge an
application fee for your grants and contests?
A)
As our foundation started, officially, in June of 2004, we haven’t
built up enough capital to offer money to writers. But, all of us here know
how much of an ego boost it is to receive an award/grant for our writing,
and we know how much that has helped us in our writing careers. And we
don’t want to let not having money keep us from helping other writers on
their road to success. The only way we can keep our lack of funds from
being an obstacle is to ask people who apply for the grants and contests to
submit a small processing fee. If every one chips in just a wee amount,
then we can offer dream grants and contest prizes to aspiring writers. If
no one chips in, we can’t. Many other reliable organizations also list
fees, Stanford’s Fellowship Program, My Travel Bug grants, Writer’s Digest
Annual Fiction/Non-Fiction Contest…just to name a few. Go ahead, look them
up. In the case of the grants, ALL the money we receive is used to ensure
future grants. In the case of the annual contests, last year, none of the
contest judges were paid and the director personally donated quite a bit of
her own money just to ensure we could give away cash prizes. In order to
keep that from happening again, we have redesigned our annual writing
contest with the goal of ½ of the money we receive in entry fees going
toward the cash prizes, ¼ toward bills, and ¼ toward the judges’ salaries.
As our organization grows and we receive more and more entries for our
contests and grants, we can offer larger and larger prize and grant monies
to writers. This is definitely one of our largest goals.
Q) Why isn't your dream grant
based on past accomplishment?
A)
We're so glad you asked! In the Director's search for grants for her
own writing, she came across the
MacArthur Fellows Program--which had this exciting premise:
"Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a
reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person's
originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the MacArthur
Fellows Program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts
for the benefit of human society." She fell in love with the idea of
creating grants not just for published authors or those with exceptional writing
ability...but also for those that had exceptional dreams and the potential to
make those dreams come true. Thus...the creation of our first annual dream
grant.
Q) How can we be sure you
actually give the prizes and grants away that you say you do?
A)
We require each contest entrant or grant application to allow us to list
both their winning entry/application and their email address so that anyone
from the public can contact them about the prize/grant and our
reliability—as well as for agents and publishers to contact the author in
case they are interesting in reading more for possible publication.
Q) Are you a non-profit
foundation? And if not, how can I donate money to you and still get a tax
break?
A)You may have noticed that on the “About Us” page of our
website we stated that we are working on getting non-profit status… This is
a time intensive process…and as each of our staff and board members are
currently volunteers (not paid), we work on it as we have time.
Unfortunately, we have to eat—work other jobs, and write—too…Our goal is to be a non-profit
by December of 2007. You can still donate funds to our
foundation; however, until we receive our official 501(3) non-profit status,
you cannot get a tax break for those donations. But don’t
let that stop you. By donating to the Hobson Foundation you ensure
that we will continue to be around offering resources, money, and eventually
even residencies for promising writers. Which is more important—a tax
break—or helping others accomplish their dreams?
Q) Why aren’t you listed in the national or
state Charitable Organizations list?
A) Listing in
and complying with the National and State Charitable Organizations is
mandatory for any organization that pulls in over $25,000 (US) of solicited
charity monies. As of this year’s tax status, we don’t even pull in a
fraction of that. But one day we hope to. When we do, we’ll be
listing.
Q) Why aren’t you listed with
the On-line Better Business Bureau?
A) We've sent in
several applications, and we're holding our breath. We hope the
paperwork goes through soon, so we have proof that we mean it when
we say, “We are working just for you!”
Q) What are the long-range goals
of the Foundation?
A) Over the span of the next ten years, we
aspire to meet our current goals and:
Ø
Expand our database of on-line advertisers, so more writers
can reach us.
Ø
Raise our contest prizes and grants awards in incremental
amounts up to $10,000 (US).
Ø
Receive non-profit status by December 2007 and actively
seek out grants for our foundation for operating expenses and for the
purchase of land and housing for future residency programs.
Ø
Purchase land and build cabins for annual writing residency
programs.
Ø
Offer 3-6 month annual writing residency programs.
Ø
Continue to help up-and-coming writers work towards
publication and financial security. |
