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gwillen comments on Open thread, Oct. 13 - Oct. 19, 2014 - Less Wrong
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It probably includes finding a person with expertise on the subject matter. That means it's easier if you reduce the level of abstractness and specify the issue at least a bit.
I'm happy to specify completely, actually, I just figured a general question would lead to answers that are more useful to the community.
In my case, I'm helping to set up an organization to divert money away from major party U.S. campaign funds and to efficient charities. The idea is that if I donate $100 to the Democratic Party, and you donate $200 to the Republican party (or to their nominees for President, say), the net marginal effect on the election is very similar to if you'd donated $100 and I've donated nothing; $100 from each of us is being canceled out. So we're going to make a site where people can donate to either of two opposing causes, we'll hold it in escrow for a little, and then at a preset time the money that would be canceling out goes to a GiveWell charity instead. So if we get $5000 in donations for the Democrats and $2000 for Republicans, the Democrats get $3000 and the neutral charity gets $4000. From an individual donor's point of view, each dollar you donate will either become a dollar for your side, or take away a dollar from the opposing side.
This obviously steps into a lot of election law, so that's probably the expertise I'll be looking for. We also need to figure out what type of organization(s) we need to be: it seems ideal to incorporate as a 501c(3) just so that people can make tax-deductible donations to us (whether donations made through us that end up going to charity can be tax-deductible is another issue). I think the spirit of the regulations should permit that, but I am not a lawyer and I've heard conflicting opinions on whether the letter of the law does.
And those issues aside, I feel like there could be more legal gotchas that I'm not anticipating to do with Handling Other People's Money.
You should probably chat with Sai, of Make Your Laws. (http://s.ai/) He's spent a bunch of time recently petitioning the FEC to answer questions about various crazy ways his organization would like to funnel donations. (Specific technical questions, like: "If someone gives us a donation whose recipient is conditional on a condition that won't be known until 6 months from now, [question about how some regulation applies].") I bet he can at least help you find answers.
Sai once gave a talk advertising LessWrong at the Chaos Computer Congress (CCC) in Berlin.
At the flight to Berlin he just boarded the plane with fruit juice. He got it on the fruit by declaring it as a medical drug that he needs to keep his glucose level up. He said he knew the TSA rules better than the TSA folks. Then he asked how he can listen to the cockpit radio and got kicked out.
He took the next plane and allegedly took undetected enough pure caffeine with him to blow up the plane and allegedly told the crowd at the CCC about it which was probably a dumb move.
While he's no lawyer by trade, I think he knows very well to navigate the rules and is likely supportive of creative projects like this.
Is caffeine explosive or did you mean to type some other word instead?
It's been four years so my memory might be faulty but if I remember right it was caffeine. Normal dosage of caffeine that Wikipedia lists is 500 milligram.
For obvious reasons the part where he allegedly spoke about it isn't in the video. I allegedly told the audience that he will demonstrate the explosive capabilities of the substance later that day. Unfortunately there was some official of some agency in the audience that didn't find this funny and who then walked around with recording equipment to record any further word that Sai said, so Sai didn't go into further details.
It's illegal to carry something on a plane that can blow up the plane but obviously TSA rules can't check for every possible substance that's explosive. The idea that fluids are the only thing that's explosive is obviously also mistaken. Disclosing security vulnerabilities is very much in the spirit of the Chaos Computer Congress. So it was the substance he choose when they illegally forbid his fruit juice (and he sued them for not allowing him fruit juice with he carries with him for health reasons, a bit later)
For me Sai was a very impressive character.
Thanks, I'll look him up.