On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 04:02:30PM -0500, John R. Frank wrote: > >> In the case of going with the OSGeo Project Sponsorship program, the > >> OSGeo acts as our fiscal agent. As a 501(c)(3) (US tax code) > >> organization, they can accept tax deductible contributions toward OSGeo > >> projects. > > > > Their application is still pending acceptance. So, it could be a few > > months before they start giving out receipts for tax purposes. > > The tax exempt status of the donation channel is probably crucial --- at > least for US-based donors. Other solutions can't really compete with > OSGEO without that also having tax exempt status. 501c3 applications are > not complicated but they take calendar time. > > OTOH, until OSGEO gets approved to process donations to projects, they are > an expensive savings account :-) > > If a donor shows up *before* OSGEO can make the donor's donation tax > exempt, we might as well just open a bank account at regular bank.
I'm not sure who "we" is in this case -- It's either a person (which then means that a single person is taking on the liability) or "MetaCarta". The latter has serious social issues with it, since the only way I can see collecting money in that situation is people writing a check directly to MetaCarta -- which hardly seems likely to go over well. (Perhaps there is some other way that I'm missing?) > 1) PSC agrees that OL should find a tax exempt donation channel > > 2) PSC hopes that OSGEO will soon be that channel > > 3) PSC agrees to seek donations while #2 sorts itself out Note that we can still *accept* donations even before #2 sorts itself out, and I think that's worthwhile. If people are willing to dnate money to an organization which is not yet completed with 501c3 status -- as they might in the "open our own bank account" above -- then I don't see a reason to tell them "no, you shouldn't". (It's not clear from the above if you agree on this point.) Regards, -- Christopher Schmidt MetaCarta _______________________________________________ Dev mailing list Dev@openlayers.org http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
