[Board] OSGeo vs 501c3 status - inpur required

[Jeff McKenna]

For what it's worth, here are my feelings briefly:

- keep the project sponsorship program
- hire a professional bookkeeper to manage the financials as of January
2013 (among the responsibilities such as mentioned in this email [taxes,
IRS, non/profit status, financial institutions etc.], his/her main
responsibility will be a monthly financial report submitted to the
Board, preferably as short as one side of a page)
- create a taxable subsidiary

I think this would lesson the load on our great (yet small) pool of
OSGeo volunteers, and at the same time let us continue with the
sponsorship program (and hopefully expand it someday).

-jeff




On 12-11-09 4:44 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:
> Board,
> 
> Maybe my mail from yesterday was too long and you missed the question
> targeted at you. So just in case here it comes again, and please let me
> know what your preference is if you have one, or if you don't know then
> it's okay to say so, but at least acknowledge that you read this email.
> 
> Our deadline to respond to the IRS is next week. I'll try to get another
> extension from them, but we need to make a decision on which way we go
> soon in order to craft a response.
> 
> So the question we need to ask ourselves now is:
> 
> "Do we want to maintain the project sponsorship program and setup a
> taxable subsidiary for it, or do we drop the project sponsorship program
> completely?"
> 
> I think the taxable subsidiary is manageable, but to justify it, we'd
> need to put more efforts in the project sponsorship program since at
> this time it is mostly dormant. (OpenLayers and GRASS are interested but
> I've kept them on hold, and GDAL is... well, quiet)
> 
> 
> Unless I hear back from other board members with a strong position one
> way or the other, I am planning to continue trying to qualify as a 501c3
> foundation with a taxable subsidiary for the project sponsorship program
> and whatever other taxable activity we may have in the future.
> 
>