Are ICOs donations?

I would say no to this question.  In my opinion, these tokens are creating a loop.   First, we had crowd funding where one person would give/ donate another person bitcoin (to do some project) and that would be the end of the financial transaction.  Now we can give the original donor a token and it becomes more of a value for value transaction and possibly an investor.  Now, they can go on the market and get something for their token which should hopefully be more than zero.  As the markets get older, there will be investors with stronger hands looking to get tokens at the market bottom price as well.

Will people still create scams?  Yes, but now each project could have a market where people could get partial refunds if they get cold feet.  Keep an open mind.

So I hope the good guys keep creating small projects that bring value to the world and I’m going to keep investing.