On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 2:45 PM, Eike Rathke <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Rob, > > On Saturday, 2011-08-13 10:51:57 -0400, Rob Weir wrote: > >> Donations went to Team OpenOffice.org, e.V, or to SPI (for US >> donations). I'm assuming that Oracle does not control either of these >> accounts. I'm assuming as well that Apache and the PPMC has no >> control over these accounts. > > For Team OOo that's correct. For SPI that's presumably correct as well. > >> Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think an Apache >> project can have a private fund, or solicit donations for a 3rd party >> one. > > Why not? >
I've formed a US-based non-profit corporation before, so I know some of the concerns. To preserve tax-exempt status, as well as to comply with fund raising regulations, you need to be very careful how donations are solicited and how they are spent. There is a lot of paperwork and a lot of details. I have no experience with doing this internationally, but that certainly increases the complexity. It is very reasonable for Apache not to assume the risks to their non-profit status that would come if they allowed every poding or even project to do its own fund raising. >> Maybe have it point to here instead: >> >> http://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html#Paypal > > I think a donation to Apache in general is different from a donation > specifically to the AOOo project. I didn't see a "designated use" field > in the PayPal form. > Correct. Projects are not independent legal entities. The legal entity is the Apache Software Foundation. But the website does say, "If you have a specific target or project that you wish to directly support, please contact us and we will do our best to satisfy your wishes". But that is different than saying that a project has a fund under their control. >> Higher level question is this: is there any particular reason that we >> think AOOo has fundraising needs that are not covered by Apache's >> fundraising? Apache provides the servers, the domain registrations, >> they have conferences which we are welcome to attend, they have a >> press office, etc. > > Team OOo paid bursaries for individuals that went to OOoCons and > Hackfest, paid hardware for buildbots and pootle servers, paid students > for the OOo internship. Do you think that Apache will cover those > expenses? > Apache provides the hardware. They also have travel assistance for ApacheCon. It is probably premature to talk about the next OOoCon. I'm not aware of any internship sponsorship, but Apache does participate in GSoC: http://community.apache.org/gsoc.html > Eike > > -- > PGP/OpenPGP/GnuPG encrypted mail preferred in all private communication. > Key ID: 0x293C05FD - 997A 4C60 CE41 0149 0DB3 9E96 2F1A D073 293C 05FD >
