Clearly I must chime in here, though I rather not at all. On Fri, 2011-07-15 at 14:57 -0400, Mike Rathburn wrote: > > I think the most important thing we should discuss and come to a consensus > about is how to avoid this scenario in the future where all of our eggs are > shoved into a single individual's basket.
FYI the eggs used to be in many baskets, and there was no coordination nor anyone knew who was responsible or doing what. One by one each egg was dropped, and cracked. Till I picked up each egg repaired them, and put it into a single basket. All services should remain on a single server or cluster. From there, several people should be administrators, and have backups. In case that server/cluster is lost move to another. I was doing that just did not have the time to grant others aspect or deal with mentoring, overseeing, etc other administrators. > The 'smart' action to take would > be to incorporate the LUG and formally elect officials for the entity. That was how it was in the past. But then the JaxLUG must have money for annual legal fees. That was a problem to raise, and people were paying out of pocket. Till that stopped happening and the entity went away. There is no requirement for any legal structure. That adds on more complications, and the small things are not being done now. So by all means, add on complicated stuff to make even more work for everyone to not do. > My > wife has agreed to also attend and explain to us the in's and out's of > incorporating as a not-for-profit (that's her ballywig and she does it well > for multi-million dollar organizations). It's a somewhat complicated > process and requires great attention to detail, but the benefits will be in > the form of garnering corporate sponsorship for meetings, technology, etc., Corporations can still sponsor. Only benefit of a NPO is if its a 501c3. Dealt with this in Gentoo quite allot, and Gentoo is not 501c3. That is a 5yr process where you house must be in order with annual reporting to the IRS. Fail in the 5yrs, and no 501c3 status, and anyone who wrote off donations as charitable, have to go back and change that. Gentoo not being 501c3 has not stopped many companies from donating and sponsoring several tens of thousands of dollars a month in hosting services, much less capital contributions etc. > allowing those corporations to receive certificates of contribution. > Additional benefits could include sponsorship at trade shows, formal Linux > training and/or certification, annual or semi-annual trips to regional or > national events, etc. Your talking serious time to coordinate such. When most times we lack presenters and topics. A very simple and minor thing in comparison. Crawl before you try to walk or run. > LUG's running as official NFP's is not a new concept. We've done some > research and have found many samples around the country - both good and bad > (including the JaxLUG). Unless someone or member of the LUG is a CPA and you have plans to raise capital to cover legal expenses and fees. Then its really a concept left for further down the road. When more people are actively contributing to the JaxLUG. I don't mean posting to list or showing for a meeting. I mean presenting, helping to organize things, provide services/resources, etc. -- William L. Thomson Jr. Obsidian-Studios, Inc. http://www.obsidian-studios.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive http://marc.info/?l=jaxlug-list&r=1&w=2 RSS Feed http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml Unsubscribe [email protected]
