Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Fundraising
Landon Blake wrote: Frank, Thanks for posting the budget. It was an interesting read. I was impressed with the fact that the Foss4G conference appears to pay for itself. Landon, It is currently an objective that the conference should make a modest profit for the foundation (I think we targetted 5% of gross revenue as profit). But the Victoria conference, due to great management, sponsorship and attendance made $100K. Best regards, -- ---+-- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush| President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Fundraising
Wow! That is awesome work. It makes me wonder if local conferences/seminars might also serve as a fund raising vehicle... Landon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frank Warmerdam Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 9:44 AM To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Fundraising Landon Blake wrote: Frank, Thanks for posting the budget. It was an interesting read. I was impressed with the fact that the Foss4G conference appears to pay for itself. Landon, It is currently an objective that the conference should make a modest profit for the foundation (I think we targetted 5% of gross revenue as profit). But the Victoria conference, due to great management, sponsorship and attendance made $100K. Best regards, -- ---+ -- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush| President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss Warning: Information provided via electronic media is not guaranteed against defects including translation and transmission errors. If the reader is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this information in error, please notify the sender immediately. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Fundraising
Landon Blake wrote: Another thing I've been curious about is how any funds raised will be spent or dispersed. I know we need to pay Tyler's salary. What other things do we need to pay for? Do we help fund the FOSS4G conference? Do we fund work/infrastructure for specific projects? I'd like to learn more about this. I think a web page geared towards potential contributors with a concise explanation of how duns are spent would be an aid to fundraising efforts, if we will ever have any. Landon, The 2008 budget might help you see what we plan to spend money on. http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Budget_2008 Hopefully the 2007 annual report will be finished soon, and it will include a financial report on spending during 2007. Best regards, -- ---+-- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush| President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Fundraising
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Ramsey BTW, one of the things at Refractions that made tasking more visible for go do this roles, like the sysadmin, was entering absolutely every request and job into Trac before fulfilling it. Does anyone thing a OSGeo trac would help or hinder? It might get a little stuffed up with irrelevancies, but it would at least raise the visibility of things that need to be done. I assume SAC is already running one of their own? Paul, The OSGeo Trac instance is intended to be available for a variety of OSGeo organizational purposes. It is used by the incubation, marketting, and system administration committees at the least, though with various degrees of rigor. http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo I have found it somewhat helpful having most SAC issues handled through Trac. Best regards, -- ---+-- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush| President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Fundraising
Regarding the income side of the budget, I recommend looking at IRS form 8734 [1], which will have to be filled out at the end of the 5th year of being a 501(c)(3) organization. OSGeo will have to pass the public support test of getting at least 33% of its support from public sources. That 33%, if I recall correctly must be made up of donations of $5000 or less. That means $35,000 in chunks smaller than 5K for the budget shown. I think this is why Creative Commons had that huge donation push a couple of years ago, when they realized they were about to bump into that. It can be far harder to get a lot of little donations than a few big ones. If OSGeo fails the test, it can cause some major tax and reporting headaches. Better to think about it now and build it into the fundraising. Allan [1] http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i8734.pdf and http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8734.pdf On Jun 16, 2008, at 12:19 PM, Frank Warmerdam wrote: Landon Blake wrote: Another thing I've been curious about is how any funds raised will be spent or dispersed. I know we need to pay Tyler's salary. What other things do we need to pay for? Do we help fund the FOSS4G conference? Do we fund work/infrastructure for specific projects? I'd like to learn more about this. I think a web page geared towards potential contributors with a concise explanation of how duns are spent would be an aid to fundraising efforts, if we will ever have any. Landon, The 2008 budget might help you see what we plan to spend money on. http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Budget_2008 Hopefully the 2007 annual report will be finished soon, and it will include a financial report on spending during 2007. Best regards, -- --- +-- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush| President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss -- Allan Doyle Director of Technology MIT Museum +1.617.452.2111 ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Fundraising
Allan Doyle wrote: Regarding the income side of the budget, I recommend looking at IRS form 8734 [1], which will have to be filled out at the end of the 5th year of being a 501(c)(3) organization. OSGeo will have to pass the public support test of getting at least 33% of its support from public sources. That 33%, if I recall correctly must be made up of donations of $5000 or less. That means $35,000 in chunks smaller than 5K for the budget shown. I think this is why Creative Commons had that huge donation push a couple of years ago, when they realized they were about to bump into that. It can be far harder to get a lot of little donations than a few big ones. If OSGeo fails the test, it can cause some major tax and reporting headaches. Better to think about it now and build it into the fundraising. Allan, Conveniently the Silver sponsorship level for projects, and associate sponsorship levels come in at $3000 and have proven reasonably popular. So, for instance, the seven Silver GDAL sponsors bring in $21000 USD towards that public support test. The other thing is that we have been advised that registration at the conference can be considered a contribution and that brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars in small contributions ($500-$1000). So as long as that is legitimate we should have no problem meeting the public support test. Of course, we will need to document it properly. Best regards, -- ---+-- I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam, [EMAIL PROTECTED] light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam and watch the world go round - Rush| President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[OSGeo-Discuss] OSGeo Fundraising
I stole the following snippet from another of Paul Ramsey's posts. I thought it belonged in a separate thread: Paul wrote: Having a plan to take better advantage of our host nation status. We pay a good deal in terms of administrative overhead to be a fully tax-exempt charity in the USofA, what fund raising plans have we linked to that status? Is that status gaining us anything at all, at this point? The only connection I have *ever* heard was Michael Tiemann saying he'd only contribute if he could get a US tax write-off. I've never seen any type of fundraising plan. Do we have one? If we want to take advantage of our tax-exempt status do we have a list of American companies that might be possible contributors and might also be interested in a tax write-off? Do we need to assemble a team to handle fund-raising efforts? After all, I'm sure that Tyler has his hands full with the Journal and other items... Another thing I've been curious about is how any funds raised will be spent or dispersed. I know we need to pay Tyler's salary. What other things do we need to pay for? Do we help fund the FOSS4G conference? Do we fund work/infrastructure for specific projects? I'd like to learn more about this. I think a web page geared towards potential contributors with a concise explanation of how duns are spent would be an aid to fundraising efforts, if we will ever have any. Landon -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Ramsey Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 9:20 AM To: OSGeo Discussions Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Chickens, Boards and Export Restrictions On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 8:56 AM, Arnulf Christl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But instead, she incarnated in the US, the most backwater place imaginable wrt Open Source. So, this raises two actions items: - Putting our policy online (presumably copied from Apache shamelessly) in a findable location, to conform to the legal norms of our host nation. - Having a plan to take better advantage of our host nation status. We pay a good deal in terms of administrative overhead to be a fully tax-exempt charity in the USofA, what fund raising plans have we linked to that status? Is that status gaining us anything at all, at this point? The only connection I have *ever* heard was Michael Tiemann saying he'd only contribute if he could get a US tax write-off. Both these actions items fall to you, Tyler, could you give us an update? BTW, one of the things at Refractions that made tasking more visible for go do this roles, like the sysadmin, was entering absolutely every request and job into Trac before fulfilling it. Does anyone thing a OSGeo trac would help or hinder? It might get a little stuffed up with irrelevancies, but it would at least raise the visibility of things that need to be done. I assume SAC is already running one of their own? P. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss Warning: Information provided via electronic media is not guaranteed against defects including translation and transmission errors. If the reader is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this information in error, please notify the sender immediately. ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
