THE MUTUAL FUND MODEL
In the interest of profiting from the fundraising intelligence that has accumulated in the corporate world, ®^TMark models its fundraising strategies on those used by publicly owned corporations which borrow enormous amounts of money from individual citizens in the form of shares in the corporations, and which provide "limited liability," or freedom from personal responsibility, to those investors (as well as to their own managers).
    ®^TMark’s core is its list of project ideas, most of which require funding before they can be accomplished. Until recently, these projects were promoted individually to donors, who could donate any sum towards the sum needed for their accomplishment. Such donors can be seen as purchasing stock in the projects, hoping to see a cultural dividend upon the project’s accomplishment. 
    It takes research, time and expertise for an individual non-professional to successfully play the stock market. More importantly, it often takes insider information, or information privy to only select professional brokers. For this reason, many individuals choose not to make all their stock decisions themselves, instead allowing fund managers and professionals in the field to invest their capital, which is pooled together with that of many other investors to gain more buying leverage.
    Recently, it was made clear to ®^TMark that there are a great number of potential ®^TMark donors who are not so taken with any given project that they feel secure investing in its accomplishment. They may not agree wholeheartedly with any specific project, or may not trust that in its accomplishment, it will reflect the intent they impute to the original project description. Or they may like a specific project very much, but may not believe that it can ever be accomplished, and do not enjoy the prospect of their investment sitting idle for what could be years, or even forever.
    To the end of giving these would-be donors a sense of security, of providing them with a simple "calculated risk" strategy, and of assuring them of the relative likelihood that their funds would be used within a reasonable length of time, it was determined to establish a system similar to the "mutual fund" market. In this system, projects with roughly similar intent, risk, or likelihood of accomplishment are grouped into "fund families." There are several flavors of such families, which we have had to design for ®^TMark’s particular needs.
    ®^TMark has not discarded the individual-stock purchasing system, and investors with strong feelings about individual projects can still direct their funds to those projects, exclusive of or in tandem with their contributions to "fund families."

FIRST-COME, FIRST-SERVED FUNDS
The "first-come, first-served" variety of mutual fund is reserved for those families all of whose individual projects (stocks) have been unanimously deemed worthy by the ®^TMark board. A donor to a first-come, first-served "fund family" makes a contribution with the understanding that the first project accomplished will receive it, up to the amount for which the project is funded.
    One representative of this "first-come, first-served" fund type is what we call the "high yield/high risk" family. This group includes expensive, potentially dangerous, and relatively difficult projects, each of which has a high likelihood of waiting years for accomplishment, but all of which have been unanimously deemed worthy of funding, and are likely, when accomplished, to yield very high dividends in the form of published media reports. 
    Investment in this type of mutual fund is advantageous to the donor, who can expect that cultural dividends will be forthcoming in the relatively short term. But it also benefits the workers for the funded projects.: some grouped projects might individually have little chance of being funded, but by being so grouped can partake of the kitty as needed. This first-come, first-served approach effectively funds every project completely, so long as there is always at least the maximum of all project requirements in the "mutual fund" (i.e. if the greatest reward for a project is ten thousand dollars, and that amount is present in the "mutual fund," every project in that group can be assured of recuperating its full reward upon accomplishment, so long as projects are accomplished singly and not serially in a short space of time).

INDIVIDUALLY-ALLOCATED FUNDS
Another flavor of "fund family" is the individually-allocated variety; some of the less-risky, more stable funds fall into this category. In these families, not all projects (sometimes no projects) have met with the unanimous approval of the ®^TMark board. Rather than attempt to distribute donations to these families according to the original votes, ®^TMark allows the families’ fund managers to decide, based on their experience with similar projects, how to allocate the families’ funds.
    The advantage this fund has over the "first-come, first-served" variety is that investors may be confident that the managers will select funds entirely on merit. This can prove essential when more than several projects within the fund are accomplished in a short space of time, so that funds are not exhausted by possibly less worthy, but sooner accomplished, projects.

CELEBRITY FUNDS
The latest elaboration of the ®^TMark mutual fund system is the use of "celebrity fund managers" to handle some of the funds. Management of these funds is based on the judgment and personal taste of people ®^TMark has judged uniquely qualified for the task by their own staying power in returning high cultural dividends. We have secured the cooperation of several such individuals, and are accepting nominations for more.
    Individuals without the qualifications of these cultural producers may submit themselves for consideration. In these cases, choices are usually made based on the candidate’s ability and willingness to contribute financially to the upkeep of a fund, much as honorary degrees are conferred by universities in exchange for donations, etc. 

OVERVIEW OF FRONT ENDS
Falling into one or more of the above categories--"first-come, first served," individually allocated, and celebrity funds--are groupings of projects presented to the investor with names intended to signal the core features of each fund.
    The High-Yield Fund, described earlier, contains what may be the cream of the crop of ®^TMark projects, ones that will, upon completion, yield the highest cultural dividends. They may take quite a while to bear fruit, however, even when grouped in a fund.
    The Safety Fund contains a variety of projects selected by the ®^TMark board because of their quality and diversity. Although they may not yield the great cultural dividends of the High-Yield Fund, they make up for it in stability and reliability.
    Finally, Subject funds contains projects that fall into similar areas of interest. Examples include The Environment Fund and The Intellectual Property Fund. These projects may also be part of the High-Yield Fund or Safety Fund.