Dear Anonymous Donor,
Thank you for your recent generous anonymous gift to Public Invention. I don’t know who you are or why you chose to remain anonymous, but I respect your wishes.
Your gift expresses confidence in the ability of our society to improve itself by using one of our most powerful tools—technological innovation. In a troubled time, it is also an optimistic gesture that we can and should move forward by sharing technology openly, in addition to the myriad other ways we can help each other. It uplifts me and all the other volunteers.
I presume you gave to our small, fledgling organization precisely because we are nimble. Your money will let us do something today, and something different next week, to the best of our ability to decide what to do. We accept that freedom with humility and responsibility.
In the short term, we are going to use that money to purchase parts for our Rapid E. coli detection project to reduce water-borne diseases, to employ a part-time outreach coordinator, and to expand our COVID-19 pandemic response. Possibly that will take the form of growing the VentMon ventilator tester into a true ICU ventilator monitor; possibly it will allow us to start an oxygen concentrator project or some other project unknown to us at this time.
To you and all anonymous donors, thank you!
Robert L. Read, President, Public Invention, June 20th, 2020
