[OSGeo Finance] QGIS

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

On 1-Apr-08, at 2:08 AM, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
>
> Hi all.
> As you may know, I have recently been appointed Financial/Marketing
> Advisor for the Steering Committee of QuantumGIS.
> I would appreciate knowing the current state of the finances, and the
> procedures that have been laid out.
> All the best.

Hi Paolo,

I'm just working on our first annual year end financial report, which  
is taking longer than expected.  Reporting will become more regular  
this year, but in the meantime here is a summary:

06/28/2007
Transfer from Micro Resources (Gary Sherman) to OSGeo: $2,669.59 USD
PayPal fee: 	-77.72 USD (3%)
Sponsorship Program: -647.97 USD (25%)
Balance: $1943.90 USD

The report will also outline the general financial processes we have  
in place.  But for your purposes it is quite simple.  On behalf of  
the PSC you can request purchases or transfer funds for you - via US  
dollar check, PayPal, VISA or wire transfer.  You can forward me the  
request in email, cc'ing the PSC or including their approval, with a  
clear explanation of the purpose of the funds.  It's that easy,  
unless you need something more complicated.

OSGeo itself doesn't make any further decisions for how to QGIS  
project funds, since they belong to the project itself and are  
available for the QGIS project committee to deal with accordingly.

As you know, the current funds were transferred from Gary's bank  
account to OSGeo's account for holding.  The funds were to be used in  
accordance with the Project Sponsorship programme.  Can you clarify  
the current state of QGIS Project Sponsorship - what is the plan?  As  
Frank noted earlier, if the project plans to continue to use the  
OSGeo Project Sponsorship programme, then I believe it will need to  
do so a bit more officially - for example from:

http://www.osgeo.org/sponsorship/opportunities

"
Each OSGeo Project has the opportunity to receive funds through  
project-specific donations at several predefined funding levels.  
Funds are allocated by the projects for tasks such as end-user  
support, fixing outstanding issues, and adding new functionality.  
Donors receive public acknowledgement through the project's  
sponorship web page. Currently only the GDAL/OGR project is accepting  
Project Sponsorships.

Read more about GDAL/OGR's sponsorship opportunities (http:// 
www.gdal.org/sponsorship.html)
"

If the interest is there, I would like to add QGIS to the above  
statement and to get a request, from QGIS to the Board, to allow  
OSGeo to officially accept donations on their behalf.  I can then  
provide invoices to your sponsors on your behalf and collect/manage  
the funding in our bank accounts.  Note that the programme is not set  
up to handle numerous, small, personal donations at this time.  If  
this is of interest, please let this list know.

Frank, Dave, feel free to jump in and further clarify where needed.

Hope that helps,
Tyler