The AUM 2010 Dana Cloud (Operation Raindrop) - Final
----------------------------------------------------

Introduction
------------

(With reference to the file: AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-MindMap-Final.pdf)

I call it my "Dana Cloud", a trope of the "Dharma Cloud" of Buddhism 
(The Cloud of the Buddha's Teachings), hence by way of derivation - the 
"Dana Cloud" of the Buddha's activism - not that this AUM 2010 Dana 
Cloud is specifically Buddhist in any exclusive sense, but rather that 
the Tathagata in the 21st Century would understand it's purpose.

It is also referred to as "Operation Raindrop", as it is a massed, 
parallel, micro-donation model - a dam is filled by rainfall, one drop 
at a time.

From the perspective of Permaculture it can be considered as "Integrity 
Irrigation of the Governance Garden"

It is modelled on the "Fundamental Root Pragma" of: "Act Or Assist".

If you have the skills, energy and time to assist directly with an 
Active Conscience Organisation (ACO) then you can or you can assist 
indirectly by financially supporting them, or you can do both.

Unless you are a polymath genius of boundless energy and efficiency, 
there will be only a small finite number of ACO's that you can assist 
directly with your personal skills, capabilities, time, familiarity and 
experience, however the number of ACO's you can assist indirectly is 
practically infinite, although in practice limited by the granularity 
of donation relative to your donation budget.

Massed, parallel, micro-donations, done on the same day, done and 
dusted and then a couple of weeks later, the finalised documentation, 
done and dusted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

Akin to the Maslowian Hierarchy of Needs with the base of survival and 
the acme of self-actualisation, there is a cognate Maslowian hierarchy 
of finances and income from sheer survival up to the acme of pure 
self-discretion, the more money you have the easier it is to donate, 
given that you have more discretionary income to apportion between self 
and selflessness, sensibly, beyond survival and maintenance and long 
term planning.

The top layer of the Maslowian Hierarchy, the Self-Actualisation level, 
is particularly apt, with its qualities of:

"...morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of 
    prejudice and acceptance of facts..."

At social security levels of income, which is geared to survival 
maintenance, between 1% and 5% of gross income is an approachable goal. 
The greater the gross income level the more that discretionary freedom 
is practical, for incomes of $25,000 up to $100,000 per annum, 10% is a 
reasonable goal. For greater income levels, the sky is the limit, at 
$1,000,000 per annum and above 51% should be the absolute minimum to 
demonstrate true executive competence of self and ego, marshalling and 
donating the income as a self mandated Governance Self Tax (GST).

The design of this Dana Cloud is constrained by the absolute amount 
available for donation and also by the MMQ (Minimal Meaningful Quanta) 
of donation, which I fixed at circa $10.00 USD per ACO during 
2008-2010, that is a granularity of donation of 101 - which is circa 
the smallest practical donation to any organisation, relative to the 
OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) costs for the organisation. The 
granularity of donation constrains the FFF (Fractal Fine Feathering) 
dimensionality of the design - for instance, with a budget of $500 and 
a MMQ of $10, then the maximum dimension of the Fractal Fine Feathering 
design pattern would be circa 50, with a budget of $1000, up to a 100 
active conscience interdiction dimensions can be practically donated to.

The following table summarises the AUM Dana Clouds for the last three 
years, detailing the cumulative amount of donations for the financial 
year, the percentage of total gross income for the financial year that 
it represents, the cumulative total of donations averaged over 52 weeks 
and finally, the number of logical stewardship domains and the absolute 
number of active conscience interdiction dimensions:

Year  FY      Total     % Income  Average  Domains  Dimensions

2008  FY2009  $581.30   4.00%     11.18    12       42
2009  FY2010  $828.52   5.26%     15.93    11       47
2010  FY2011  $1227.35  6.97%     24.56    12       71

With each successive year as a stewardship competence goal, you always 
seek to refine the design from four perspectives:

* Refining the care portfolio of active conscience interdiction 
dimensions in the logical stewardship design for that particular 
financial year, subject to the limitations of the granularity of 
donations, to best address the emergent problems, both acute and 
chronic, that you are aware of and monitoring, or have freshly 
discovered - strategic, tactical, operational and logistic decision 
making.

* Seek to increase the percentage of your gross income that is devoted 
to donations, until your practical limit is reached and then tested, 
noting that any such logical stewardship discipline has to be 
sustainable in the long-term, the absolute value of your donations is 
secondary to the percentage it represents of your annual income level 
at the time.

* Review the diligence and prudence of the design and number of the 
logical stewardship domains in which the active conscience interdiction 
dimensions are organised to address the exigent matters of the 
stewardship domains identified.

* Seek to increase the fractal fine feathering (FFF) dimensionality of 
your design, the absolute number of active conscience organisations 
that you donate to, subject to granularity of donation limitations and 
your annual stewardship budget.

Whereas the 2008 (FY2009) AUM design was intended to be a fairly 
comprehensive spread spectrum of active conscience interdiction 
dimensions over several logical stewardship domains , the 2009 (FY2010) 
AUM design was focussed more on "kicking butts" at the big end of town 
and the unnecessary discretionary bastardry therein - the 2010 (FY2011) 
AUM design is an extension of that latter principle, as the times 
require.

Active Conscience Organisations can be classified in myriad ways, but 
also in this particular regard - those that attend primarily repairing 
the damage and destruction caused by the selfish and powerful and those 
that seek primarily to limit the selfish and powerful from being able 
to damage and destroy so freely in their unprincipled and undisciplined 
pursuit of money - of course an ACO can be a mixture of both, the 
latest logical stewardship design emphasises the latter.

In these extraordinary times of "neo-liberal" global capitalism and the 
corruption of democratic governance systems by the corporate system, 
global warming, environmental collapse, the profound concentration of 
wealth, the maximisation of structural injustice negativities - such as 
health, nutrition, communication, accommodation and education 
apartheids - there is an exigent need to boost the governance immune 
system or establish governance firewalls so that the governance systems 
are transparent, integral, accountable, of evidence based policy, 
responsible and responsive to the needs of the citizens and not the 
interests of the corporations, the wealthy and the selfish.

You also have to contemplate and meditate taking the "capability 
elevator" (intellectual, physical, educational, economic) of the myriad 
variants of human being from the penthouse to ground-level and beneath, 
down into the underground basement into the deep vulnerability of 
trailing edge consciousness and to take appropriate correctives for 
each level, it is only courtesy, given your innate or achieved 
stabilised capability, by dint of good fortune of birth, sheer luck, or 
self application. One has to also bear in mind to see how sub-ordinate 
and otherwise deeply vulnerable strata of consciousness whether animal, 
plant or inanimate suffer at the hands of humanity and it's egoic 
ambitions and indulgences.

The design principles are quite simple and straight-forward, minimally 
- as an aware conscious adult, taking independent stewardship 
responsibility and initiative for society and the environment, both 
locally and globally:

* Am I paying attention and am I paying sufficient attention?

* Am I taking action and am I taking sufficient action to that which I 
  am paying attention to?

The 2010 Dana Cloud design is not perfect, by any stretch of the 
imagination, but it will do for FY 2011. It is not an exemplar of 
design, but merely an instance and example, this is important to note 
and to bear in mind the distinction in meaning between "exemplar" and 
"example". It may well be an exemplar of how to process and document 
your donations, exhaustively, to maximise the probability of 
comprehension (and emulation of the essence of the technique) by 
third-parties, however the actual donations design itself is merely one 
instance and example of donating to a panoply of active conscience 
interdiction dimensions over myriad logical stewardship donations 
subject to the limitations of income and budget and the granularity of 
donation.

This AUM 2010 (FY2011) release is the "Final" one, which means that it 
is the summary and summation of all the donations and micro-donations 
for the Financial Year 2011, from the 1st July 2010 until the 30th June 
2011 inclusive.

The original intention was to make all the donations circa the 1st July 
2010 (BOFY 2011), however the vicissitudes of life mandated that it be 
the 15th August 2010 instead, that was when the main "Strategic" design 
for donations in FY 2011 was eventually executed, according to the 
planned budget and criteria. Of course in the subsequent months, other 
matters arose and came to one's attention, and hence there are the 
"Tactical" amendments to my donation patterns in response, the 
strategic and tactical donations are annotated accordingly in the 
spread-sheet design.

For instance, this time around, donating to WikiLeaks became 
problematic due to the great difficulties they were having with their 
donation vectors, such as PayPal and Visa and MasterCard.

If you are working on a fixed percentage of your gross income as a 
budget, then the initial "Strategic Design", at the beginning of the 
intended annual period, could be allocated 80% of the available funds 
and the remaining 20% reserved, with discipline, over the remaining 
year for "Tactical" responses as exigent matters arise or if new active 
conscience interdiction dimensions or stewardship domains are 
reconnoitred and discovered. Aligning the annual period with the 
Financial Year is very practical for tax purposes, as many, but not 
all, active conscience organisations have tax deductable donations.

As always, it's an imperfect work in progress and the work continues, 
2011 (FY 2012) is way overdue and 2012 (FY2013) beckons.

Why Bother Documenting?
-----------------------

Whilst the donations are necessary, they are not necessary and 
sufficient, it is necessary to also comprehensively document your 
donations so that you can clearly and efficiently communicate to your 
future self and also keep track of your awareness levels over time and 
to monitor your capacity to act on your awareness. The spread-sheet and 
the mind-map are also clear and efficient means to communicating to 
third-parties, whether friend, family, associate or stranger.

Particularly if you are a parent or grandparent of children, your 
donations and documentation thereof, are a message, both an inheritance 
and a legacy, and an education for them as they come out of the 
chrysalis of childhood into adolescence into young adulthood and as 
their critical faculties start to mature and they begin to wonder what 
it means and what it could mean to be an adult human, beyond the mere 
capacity to be able to successfully sexually reproduce.

As their adult critical and discriminative sensibilities start to 
manifest, from your documentation they will be able to understand how, 
over the years and decades, how you have been parenting and protecting 
them, whilst they were helpless, vulnerable and uncomprehending during 
their childhood years, and by such documentation they will be able to 
learn what the nature of aware, mature, adult stewardship consciousness 
is, by straight-forward pragmatic and real example and thence be able 
to apply such wisdom when it is their time, in turn, to have children.

The mind-map and spread-sheet and related documentation can be 
considered an APL (Action Pattern Language) - an efficient and 
effective means of communication on matters of active conscience, the 
donation to a panoply of active conscience interdiction dimensions over 
myriad logical stewardship domains, subject to granularity of donation 
limitations relative to the achievable budget.

Donation Process Practicalities
-------------------------------

Essential resources to establish a smooth orderly donation process are 
a Visa or a MasterCard debit card and associated bank account with 
internet e-banking enabled and also a "PayPal" account linked to the 
debit card.

A debit Visa or debit MasterCard has no credit facility whatsoever and 
directly draws funds from the associated bank account instead - there 
should be absolutely no impediment to obtaining one, if you can open a 
bank account, then you can obtain a debit card.

Internet banking facilities should also be set up with the relevant 
bank. You should be able to find a bank account and an associated debit 
card that are free of any monthly fees. For instance, in Australia: 
http://nab.com.au

Dedicate the bank account and the associated Visa or MasterCard debit 
card for donations only, nothing else, the only transactions should be 
deposits of funds into the card account and donations to organisations 
- this ensures that any reports generated from the account are 
uncomplicated by irrelevant, extraneous, transactions.

However having said that, the myriad vicissitudes of life may mandate 
that money is deposited and withdrawn, serially, from the donations 
account, despite your best intentions, as you shuffle finances between 
your various bank accounts, over the course of time. However the most 
important discipline not to resile from is that all transactions to 
third parties (i.e. parties other than you) are donations to active 
conscience organisations - keep that pure and unalloyed.

http://www.paypal.com.au
http://www.mastercard.com/au/personal/en/audebit/debit_info.html
http://www.visa-asia.com/ap/au/cardholders/cardsservices/visa_debit.shtml

Secondly, create a dedicated PayPal account for donations as well, 
linked to the donations Visa or MasterCard debit card - the only 
transactions in the PayPal account should be donations - again that 
ensures clear and simple reporting.

These are dedicated donations PayPal and debit card resources.

If you want similar resources for every day, mundane, transactions, 
then open a different bank account, a different debit card and a 
different PayPal account all dedicated to every-day transactions, 
exclusive of any donations, this will profoundly minimise accounting 
confusion.

For each PayPal account you will need a unique email address, here are 
some recommended resources:

http://www.fastmail.fm http://www.pobox.com http://www.gmx.com
http://lavabit.com/    http://mail.google.com/

All provide webmail access and more significantly provide both POP and 
IMAP access via your local email client on your computer as well, as an 
added bonus, all e-mail traffic can be SSL enabled.

Note carefully that PayPal accounts have two modes of transactions:

* Directly via the nominated debit MasterCard or Visa debit card, or -
* Directly via the nominated bank account.

Generally the former provides the most information, for reliable 
confirmation and cross-correlation of transaction records with 
donations, as well as immediately and always pre-allocating the 
transaction amount from your available bank balance prior to the 
donation transaction clearance - so that you always know that the 
available balance remains true in real-time.

The latter is substantially more uninformative in your bank account's 
transaction records - particularly in the instance where you transact 
multiple donations for the same amount on the same day, it will be 
almost impossible to identify which transaction record corresponds to 
which donation, worse still, the transaction records manifest several 
days after the donation and the amount of the donation is not 
pre-allocated from the available bank balance immediately, thus you 
have no means of knowing what the actual balance is in real time.

Despite PayPal's fulsome encouragements, it's strongly recommended not 
to register any direct bank accounts in the PayPal system and to only 
use it via a MasterCard or Visa debit card - you have been warned.

Of course, occasionally, you will have to use the MasterCard or Visa 
debit card directly for a donation, and depending on the OLTP (Online 
Transaction Processing System) of the recipient organisation, such a 
transaction may be processed immediately, or in batch mode at a later 
date, and in either case, may or may not register as a pre-allocation 
in you bank account at the time the transaction was commissioned, 
pending the transaction finalisation - thus it is good to maintain a 
spreadsheet of all transactions with estimates of the value of the 
transactions, so that an estimated trial balance can be maintained - 
which can be corrected later once all transactions have finalised and 
the donation period has completed.

For authenticity and posterity, it is recommended to include the 
transaction histories of your donations account and your PayPal 
donations account in your documentation - however be mindful to remove 
references to your specific account details such as your bank account 
number or PayPal identity - as such information is private and should 
remain so. Source a PDF Editor to redact (edit and remove) such details 
from the PDF print-outs that you generate of your transaction history.

Notes for those on Social Security
----------------------------------

For people on low incomes or on social security, the primary deployment 
of any available money is survival-maintenance, the opportunity for 
deployment of any available money for selfless purposes is limited, as 
is the ease with which one can save for any purpose.

In Australia, at least, with the Federal Government's Centrelink Social 
Security system, if you are receiving a social security income then you 
can, fortunately, get an advanced payment, up until circa $1000 - which 
then has to be paid back over the subsequent six months in equal 
fortnightly instalments.

This is an excellent way of planning and executing your donation 
strategy since it removes the challenge of saving the intended donation 
budget before hand - battling the vagaries and vicissitudes of life as 
you accumulate savings - and you know precisely what the decrement is 
in your fortnightly payment for the next six months, subsequent to the 
advanced payment, and can plan and accommodate budgeting circumstances 
accordingly.

Documentation and Process Tools
-------------------------------

Fundamentally, to process the donations, you only require a bank 
account, a debit card and a PayPal account, paper and pencil and some 
gumption, grit, patience and determination.

However to keep an accurate record of the donations and keep track of 
the donation account status easily, a tabular spread-sheet program on a 
computer is highly recommended.

Furthermore to efficiently and effectively communicate the particulars 
and the intention of your donations design, a mind-mapping program and 
an office suite for word processing are also highly recommended.

Whilst there are many excellent commercial applications that have the 
relevant functionality, fortunately there are also free-ware 
open-source alternatives for all the relevant functionality.

Open-Source Freeware Tools:

It is recommended that you download, install and familiarise yourself 
with the following cross-platform (Windows, MacOSX, GNU/Linux) 
applications:

Office Suites (Word-Processing, Spread-Sheets):

http://www.openoffice.org/ http://www.libreoffice.org/

LibreOffice is a developmental fork of OpenOffice. Both suites contain 
a word-processor and a spread-sheet application and much besides.

Both suites are capable of creating Adobe Acrobat PDF's of their 
documents and work-sheets.

Mind-Mapping:

http://freeplane.org/ http://freemind.sourceforge.net/

Freeplane is a developmental fork of FreeMind and has a better 
interface.

Both Freeplane and FreeMind have the capacity to switch to outline mode 
and also able to export the mind-maps to word processing documents - 
with all the mind-map nodes, sub-nodes and end-nodes and related notes, 
all properly structured and outlined in the exported word processing 
document, from which you can adapt to suit, inserting tables of content 
and page numbering and the like.

However there is a limitation on both Freeplane and FreeMind and that 
is that both require OpenOffice to be installed for exporting to work 
properly, exporting will not work with LibreOffice.

You can have both LibreOffice and OpenOffice installed on the same 
computer, and each suite can be used to edit the exported files, 
however.

The XMind mind-mapper http://www.xmind.net/ has both a freeware and a 
paid version. With both you can import the Freeplane and FreeMind 
mind-map files and also export them as well-formed structured Rich Text 
Format (*.RTF) word processing files with excellent embedded graphics. 
With XMind you also can make better graphics of the mind-maps 
themselves than either Freeplane or FreeMind, and that is it's 
recommended use - all primary mind-mapping development and maintenance 
work should be done with Freeplane, however.

Note Taking:

http://keepnote.org/

Useful for organising and collating the plain-text notes and URLS for 
the construction of your mind-map in Freeplane or any other mind-mapper.

To assist with MacOSX installation:

http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/ http://tinyurl.com/27xbh2r

Password and Registration Management:

http://keepass.info/

To keep sensitive transaction data secure, note that there are myriad 
password managers to choose from, SourceForge is a good resource to 
search: http://www.sourceforge.net

Adobe Acrobat PDF Notes:

Plain text files and Adobe Acrobat PDF (Portable Document Format files 
can be universally read on all computing platforms, such as Windows, 
MacOSX or GNU/Linux, this is not guaranteed for word document files. 
PDF's also have the virtue of displaying consistently on all platforms 
and the PDF's of word processing documents preserve all the special 
formatting that word processors are capable of, that plain text files 
cannot provide.

For future proofing, always create your PDF's in PDF/A archival format 
as that ensures that the PDF's will be readable and readable as 
intended, into the far future: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A

Generally:

On whatever platform you use, Windows, MacOSX, GNU/Linux, you will need 
an Office Suite with a Word-Processor and a Spread-Sheet, you will need 
a Mind-Mapper, the ability to create PDF files (and edit them - such as 
with Iceni Infix for Windows and SmileOnMyMac PDFpenPro for MacOSX) and 
also a file archiving program (*.zip is the universal format), such 
tools may be free-ware or commercial paid applications, there is 
excellence to be found in both camps, these are some indexes:

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_suite
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PDF_software
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept-_and_mind-mapping_software
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_archivers

http://alternativeto.net/ http://www.similarsites.com/
http://www.moreofit.com/  http://www.siteslike.com/

Enjoy the search and the alternatives search, bon chance!

Regarding the Spreadsheets
--------------------------

There are two identical spreadsheets, the former is the version for the 
Microsoft office Excel spread-sheet program; the latter is the version 
for OpenOffice.org Calc spread-sheet program:

* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-Spreadsheet-Final.xls
* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-Spreadsheet-Final.ods

As you will discover, the spread-sheets are quite simple, the only 
complicated formulae are in the Column "K" which calculates the number 
of days between the day of the donation transaction, and the day of 
confirmation/reconciliation of the transaction in the bank account. The 
respective example formulae are:

* Microsoft Office Excel: "=DATEDIF(B3,I3,"yd")"
* OpenOffice.org Calc:    "=DAYS(I3;B3)"

If you are designing your own spread-sheet, then the row indexes would 
be adjusted accordingly in the column "K".

Freeplane Mind-Mapper Installation Notes
----------------------------------------

For general information on mind and concept mapping:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map

Many of the commercial mind-mapping applications are excellent as well, 
such as Matchware MindView, Mindjet MindManager, Gael MindGenius and 
CoCo Systems VisiMap, to name but a few, check the citations on the 
Wikipedia page, it's a matter of finding one that you like. Note 
however that the mind-map file formats, unfortunately tend not to be 
inter-operable, although the Freeplane/FreeMind format is slowly 
becoming a common import format at least, and more grudgingly as an 
export format.

Please also note that FreeMind and Freeplane, both being Java framework 
applications, can be sensitive on Microsoft Windows Operating Systems, 
in particular, with the windows font-smoothing technology "ClearType" 
and may refuse to run at all. Disabling ClearType easily tests this: 
Start -> Settings -> Display -> Appearance -> Effects

And then seeing as a consequence, if the java application then runs 
properly. If you have any such difficulties running FreeMind or 
Freeplane (or any Java application for that matter) on a Microsoft 
Windows Operating System, such as Windows XP, Vista or the new Windows 
7, then in the first instance, download the "ClearType" PowerToy, 
install it, and then readjust, or tune, your ClearType:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx

This is a technical explanation of the problem:

http://www.x-setup.net/forum/showthread.php?p=6856

Miscellaneous Resources
-----------------------

For the spread-sheet and mind-map documentation, you will need country 
codes, these are the three and two letter ISO (International Standards 
Organisation) codes, the three letter codes are recommended:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2

For the estimated trial balances in the spread-sheet and generally 
tracking the status of your donations account you will need to use, on 
occasion, a currency converter, when donating to foreign active 
conscience organisations. With donations transacted through PayPal, you 
are given an estimate of your donation in your local currency, however 
for donations made directly with a Visa or a MasterCard, a currency 
converter is useful, this is but one resource:

http://coinmill.com/

In addition to your intended donation budget, it is wise to have an 
extra $50 to $100 in the account as a buffer for the small variations 
in exchange rates, until all your transactions have finalised. It 
ensures that all your intended donations can be executed in the 
intended time-frame, with no surprises, any money remaining from the 
buffer amount can be re-deployed as you see fit.

Documentation Resources:
------------------------

These README notes, that you are reading are from the full zip archive 
file: "AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-Final-DateCode-20111112.zip"

The archive contents include this README file in both Adobe Acrobat PDF 
and plain text formats:

* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-README-Final.pdf  (13pp)
* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-README-Final.txt  (10pp)

The two spread-sheets and the annotated mind-map:

* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-Spreadsheet-Final.xls - Microsoft Office Excel
* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-Spreadsheet-Final.ods - OpenOffice.org Calc
* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-MindMap-Final.mm      - Freeplane/FreeMind

The printable PDF documentation:

* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-Spreadsheet-Final.pdf         (2pp)
* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-MindMap-Final.pdf             (157pp)
* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-MindMap-Final-Summary-A3.pdf  (2pp)
* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-MindMap-Final-Summary-A4.pdf  (1pp)

The transaction authentication documentation:

* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-Transactions-Banking-Redacted-Final.pdf
* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-Transactions-PayPal-Redacted-Final.pdf

Miscellaneous Documentation:

* AUM-2010-Dana_Cloud-MindMap-Final-Summary.jpg