Curtis Olson wrote: > 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.) :-)
The only thing you overlook in your equation is the tax revenue that would have to be made up. Those who pay the lottery lower our taxes. Ben Franklin said "The only fair form of taxation is the lottery, you can decide whether to pay or not." > > 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. A non profit must be formed to perform some service deemed useful to the community. The only benefit of a non-profit versus a not for profit is that those who contribute can write off the donation on their taxes. Other than that from the receiver's point of view, no difference between a non-profit and just not making a profit. > > 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. See the above. There are two choices for where to send the money. A corporation or an individual. A corporation protects the individual who would otherwise be receiving the money. It does little for the person making the donation other than perhaps giving some dubious sense of security. > > 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. What do you hope to gain? > > 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/ > <http://baron.flightgear.org/%7Ecurt/> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > The Planet: dedicated and managed hosting, cloud storage, colocation > Stay online with enterprise data centers and the best network in the business > Choose flexible plans and management services without long-term contracts > Personal 24x7 support from experience hosting pros just a phone call away. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/theplanet-com > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Flightgear-devel mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel > -- “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” – Ben Franklin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Planet: dedicated and managed hosting, cloud storage, colocation Stay online with enterprise data centers and the best network in the business Choose flexible plans and management services without long-term contracts Personal 24x7 support from experience hosting pros just a phone call away. http://p.sf.net/sfu/theplanet-com _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
