The Budget
Or lack thereof. Some are sure to wonder about the non-budgetary approach, so the following is an explanation of this choice of operation.
Resources
Our material resources are few. We are not a big network with private donations and government funding, nor do we wish to be, for reasons explaned later. Lacking massive resources, we decided to see what could be done without these. The answer seems to be "a lot". First of all, none of our tasks require expensive equipment above the standard home or office computer, and even that is not needed by all. Second, great campaigns to make people aware of "the will for peace" are not something that we deal heavily in; plenty of organizations exist already that do this quite well. Third, what is needed in the way of materials is fairly cheap. This is mainly envelopes and stamps for letters, along with occasional paper refills. People will usually have or acquire these themselves. Fourth, most staff normally hired works with organising funding and keeping the budget up to date. This self-feeding bureaucracy seems too wasteful to spend great effort to sustain.
Funding
The deathblow of many otherwise great projects has been sudden lacks of funding. Even in surviving organizations, the unending quest for funding is time consuming, often requiring a fair share of funding itself. To avoid becoming dependent on the goodwill of others, we decided that we would skip this part entirely.
Free Alternatives
Most things that once drained budgets heavily are now available at low cost or entirely free through different offers. Our Internet presence is based on this fact, making use of the plentiful offers of free E-mail, free webspace and existing newsgroups. Nothing we do oversteps any sort of copyright law, or even "acceptable behaviour". So paying for something available for free would not only be unnecesary, it would be outright silly.
Participation
Most organizations have membership fees, which must be paid to become a part of the work. There are two reasons why we want to avoid this. One is, that it seems immoral to "allow" helpful people with an interest in improving the life of others to help an organization function, and then dump the costs in their laps. The other is, that especially young people, such as students, hesitate with joining things that require fees, even if the fee is relatively low. And while they go looking for other things to use their potentials on, that organization looses material more valuable than any $25/year. This is even more true for people already members of one or more organizations.
A Special Breed
Finally, we are looking for a special sort of people. Not just people who want to feel good about themselves by donating a part of their salaries to a good cause. There are plenty of good causes around, who can do a lot more with that money than we ever could, those people should go there. No, we are looking for people, who will spend a little time every now and then to actually do something; write a couple of letters, go talk to a specific person, keep an eye on local events, or some of the many other things, that will help us towards our goals. And as noted above, demanding a fee from such people would be very rude.