Yesterday I wrote about Wikipedia’s refusal to tap sustainable capitalism to fulfill their mission, instead choosing to rely on donations. I made the point that I consider it a waste of my giving budget to sustain something perfectly capable of sustaining itself. I love and use Wikipedia but any good organization should be self-sustaining if it can be.

That post exploded on Hacker News and on Twitter with hundreds of comments, tweets and posts.

A good number of those comments were focused on the fact that Wikipedia would “lose its objectivity” and be “subject to bias” if it used ads or affiliate links to raise its annual budget.

• Never mind that Wikipedia could use an ad network to avoid a direct relationship with any advertiser.
• Never mind that Wikipedia already accepts donations from the corporate interests that so many of the commenters decry as evil.
• Never mind that Wikipedia keeps the identities of more than 200 of their major donors a secret, not allowing us to know who has influence over them. (How is THAT more transparent than an ad?)

The commenters from this point of view betray a distinct lack of understanding of how the indirect model works, whether we’re talking business or non-profit.

In the direct model, your incentives are focused on who gives you money. Your customers.

In the indirect model, users are the stakeholders who drive the real value. Without users, you have very little. So your incentives change and the person writing you the check is no longer the most important stakeholder in your mission. The user is.

My company, Riskalyze, is a great example. We’re building an incredible free product to help self-directed investors search the world’s investments to find a portfolio that fits them.

And that is spawning a marketplace for investing ideas and execution, which will involve connecting a small percentage of our users with partners, in a way that indirectly makes us money.

95% of our users might never do anything that makes us money, but the indirect model allows us to sustainably empower 100% of the world with an incredible investing tool they would never have had access to otherwise.

Our user community has to be first and foremost in our minds when we make product decisions. We know that maximizing user delight and satisfaction is what will actually drive our growth and maximize our revenue from partners.

Sustainable capitalism, especially as implemented in the indirect business model, is a huge force for good in the world. Wikipedia should give it a try.