Irrespective of how we describe the goal (crowd <> dollar) I see somewhat of a challenge in setting a goal.
Isn’t it the case that at any given time the incentive is to tie the “goal” to whatever seems currently realistic within the situation in snowdrift-land?
Say you want to reach a goal of a 4000 patrons, noticing that the last two months you could get a growth of 250 patrons, and you’re now at 500 patrons.
- Isn’t the clear incentive to chose 750 patrons as the next goal – DESPITE – your “actual” goal being 4000? I think it is.
- After reaching the 4000 patrons goal wouldn’t there be the clear incentive to make it 4500 next month?
The reason why I bring this up is that there can be a true disconnect from the idea of setting a goal in the sense of “reaching a milestone” –vs– trying to “go one step more”. Our framing should remain honest and reflect that and maybe not to speak about it in terminology like “goal” but … “step?”… ?
Not sure how that ties into the different ideas that have been discussed about multiple goals, but I don’t see how we can escape the issue I brought up – given that we let projects set their goals and tie that to the mechanism in any way.