On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 8:32 AM, Reagan Thomas wrote:
> There *is* a "PayPal button" at FlightGear.org:
>
> http://www.flightgear.org/dvd/
>
> Perhaps Curt will explain if there is another means of directly
> contributing funds.
>
> FlightGear is definitely worthy of support. I vow that if I win the
> lottery, I will make a very significant financial contribution.
>
Here are a couple thoughts.
1. Don't buy lottery tickets ... send the money you would have spent to a
worthy charity. Then the money benefits people in real need rather than
some lottery organization, probably run by the gov't. If someone out there
doesn't agree, take a statistics class (and pay attention.) :-)
2. No one has stepped forward and offered to invest the time and expertise
for setting up a true non-profit. I personally do not have the knowledge or
experience, nor do I have the time to maintain such an organization, keep
records, file taxes, etc. etc. I don't know how much of a time commitment
this would be, but for someone who knows nothing about it I think it would
be a lot of time just to get up to speed, and when you are dealing with
people's money, paying taxes, etc. you don't want to make rookie mistakes.
3. I don't feel comfortable setting up a "donate to FlightGear" paypal
button, but having it go straight to my personal paypal address. It would
make more sense to have some separation, but when money is flowing, there
are tax implications not to mention accountability to the FlightGear group.
That is why I think if we do this, we should do it under some sort of
"official" organizational umbrella like a true non-profit.
4. If someone has a substantial chunk of money they would consider donating
to the project, then feel free to contact me. Maybe we can work something
out ... like purchase some particular developer's time to achieve some key
feature that would be hard to achieve with small slices of volunteer time.
Or maybe fund a trip for several developers to a conference or show to
promote the FlightGear project. But here I would prefer to act as some sort
of broker (I don't know if that's the right word) but have the money go
straight from source to destination without flowing through my hands.
5. This leaves a gap for all of those who might be willing to donate small
slivers of money ($10?) to FlightGear. We don't have a structure or
mechanism to handle that. This doesn't get mentioned very often though.
What would we expect to pull in through a donation box? Who would oversee
that money and that process and how it is spent? A person or organization
would need to report income on their taxes, write off expenses on their
taxes, track everything carefully, etc. etc. ... no small task. If a
donation box pulls in $50-$100 a year ... that's something, but how hard do
you work to create a system to support that. If we would anticipate pulling
in $250,000 a year, then that's a different story ... but honestly, I think
we'd be closer to $100 year ... and if someone had a bigger chunk to donate,
then it might be better to discuss that as a special case.
These are all just thoughts, it's not necessarily the end of the story ...
but it's one thing to say "here's something we should do" versus thinking
through all the steps to make that happen. There could be a ton of
volunteer time and effort that would have to go in behind the scenes to
support and manage all of this. Should we setup a non-profit? Maybe -- but
the right person with the right experience in the area needs to come along
and be willing to put in the requisite amount of time and effort ... and be
willing to commit time and effort going forward year to year. In the
context of a volunteer project, anything involving money has to be handled
with *extreme* care and thought and wisdom or it will blow up in all our
faces.
Regards,
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson: http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/
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