I have several times been in the position of being appointed treasurer, for various organizations, I think because I am often the "math person". The things I have learned are: I am not a very good treasurer, and organizational skills are much more important than math skills for such a position.
It might be useful to look for someone who is in the Seattle area but perhaps not even a developer, or a minor developer. Detail oriented, likes keeping things organized, and good at communicating. I think some effort towards raising money through donations could pull in quite a bit, even if done in an un-obnoxious way (perhaps especially if low key - public radio pledge drives make me crazy). -Marshall On Oct 22, 2:00 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Sage-Devel, > > There is a Sage Foundation account at UW with some money, often from > private people, and also from book sales (e.g., the Sage Tutorial from > Lulu.com, which is pretty popular). People can also make > tex-deductible donations to this account. > > When managing funds (e.g., with other grants I have with co-PI's > etc.), I personally feel much more comfortable if there is another > person who I can discuss any ideas for spending such money. For > example, right now we're having regular trouble with the trac server > not being robust enough (IMHO). Spending a little money on somebody > to fix this situation would make sense. > > It would be useful to have somebody with an interest in fund raising. > There are numerous people who directly or indirectly benefit > financially from Sage and would like to somehow give back financially, > but perhaps don't know what the best way to do this is, and moreover > don't know how their money will be used. E.g., somebody yesterday > wrote to me that he has started a web-based company that uses Sage, > and wanted to donate some small amount of money as a result. > > I would thus like to open a general discussion about creating an > official position of "Treasurer" for the Sage project. The point of > this thread is to brainstorm about what such a person might do, to > nominate people, etc. Some ideas for possible duties: > > * post a list of how Sage foundation money gets spent on a web page > * keep track of the budget > * provide feedback about ideas for spending money wisely > * make it clear to people how they can donate money to the > project, and precisely how incredibly valuable such donations can be > to us. > > Thoughts? I'm just hoping for a very open ended discussion.... If > people have anecdotal experience being (or knowing) a treasurer for > some organization, they could share that as well. > > I could imagine that several people could be nominated and one person elected. > > -- > > William Stein > Associate Professor of Mathematics > University of Washingtonhttp://wstein.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
