Hi,
On Saturday 30 January 2010 10:35:13 am Torsten Dreyer wrote:
> > Where does the donation money go ? To who ? And for what ?I dont like
> > donating money when I have no idea what Im donating to.
> >
> > This is just another idea since I dont know how one would set this up
> > ... How about an FSWeekend fund to help out the crew that puts in a good
> > amount of work , time , and probably money out of thier own pockets do do
> > this event.
> > I would certainly donate something to that , if I knew what it was going
> > to , and my reward is the stories , pictures and videos of the event .
> > Maybe with the total to date displayed somewhere so that we could dig a
> > little deeper as the event draws near. :)
> > Cheers
>
> Actually, the FSWeekend/LinuxTag crew thought about founding a non profit
> (called "gemeinnütziger Verein" in Germany) last year, but didn't pursue
> that idea any further.
I remember being involved in the discussions. I've also been thinking about
the possibilities of setting up a non-profit organization for the support of
various aspects of FlightGear. Under dutch law, a non-profit organization
("stichting" in Dutch or "foundation" in English (I gues)) is tax exempt (as
in most countries I guess). What I was thinking about was setting up a
foundation that serves as a granting agency: I collecting money though
donation / memberships, etc etc. Individuals who wish to organize something on
behalf of FlightGear could then write a proposal that will be used by the
foundation to distribute the funds. As far as I can see, this is the most
transparent way in going about these issues. The main drawbacks, however, are
that it requires quite a bit of Bureacratic overhead that I'm not sure I'm
willing to handle, and that the international nature of FlightGear complicates
things. Nevertheless, it's an idea worth pursuing.
> Although the booth comes at no cost, there is usually a good amount of
> money that has to be spent by the participants. Not only accomodation and
> travel, but insurance for equipment was once an issue. Last year, we bought
> six (IIRC) big side screen displays. Donations from a few of us made that
> possible.
>
For FSWeekend, we've managed to organize everything at a reasonably low cost
so far. Every year, I'm investing a little bit, but I've been trying to keep
an eye toward general usability. During the last event, my main investment
consisted of a very nice projector screen, (in addition to a triple screen
linux box, which I had already ordered for the previous show, but which didn't
arrive in time; and two printed banners). The screen actually has an
interesting history, because we ended up not being able to take it back to my
place. So eventually Torsten took it home, and he liked it so much that it
eventually changed ownership... :-)
I certainly wouldn't object against donations for FSWeekend, but part of the
fun is to try to get everything organized with minimal cost.
Cheers,
Durk
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