[Board] Project Donations

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

This month I have heard several people talk about the idea of  
receiving donations on behalf of OSGeo projects.  The only mechanism  
(correct me if I'm wrong) that we have identified is to receive  
project-specific donations through the Project Sponsorship Program:

http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Project_Sponsorship

This is focused on recurring, annual, and fairly large ($500+) levels  
of donation from companies.  So far, GDAL/OGR project has been the  
only one using this.  25% of the funds remains for general OSGeo  
expenses such as marketing, infrastructure, etc. while the remaining  
75% is allocated for the Project Steering Committee to spend.  All  
the funding is managed inside OSGeo bank accounts and financial  
processes.

This program is not designed to handle smaller personal donations  
that users may be interested in providing.  In these cases, I do not  
think it makes as much sense to take the 25% overhead as the  
potential donations are likely going to be very small.  Also, the  
donors are not looking for any sort of promotional status, such as  
being called a Sponsor.

I would like other opinions on how to best handle this.  Perhaps we  
can set a maximum limit for these donations - i.e. single (personal  
or corporate) donations of less than $500.  For anything more than  
that, then the project would be obligated to handle it through the  
Project Sponsorship methods - including recognising the donor as a  
Sponsor for the project.  The PSC would still have to choose this  
option and would be responsible for deciding how the funding would be  
used, so it doesn't end up being a fee-for-service kind of arrangement.

I can write up a wiki page to describe it in more detail, but it is  
meant to be a fairly simple idea.
What do you think?

Tyler