[Board] Legal Entities for OSGeo

[Daniel Morissette]

BTW, for everyone's benefit OSGeo currently has three types of fund 
raising activities described at

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


1- Fondation sponsors is fine for a nonprofit 501c3 if we treat them as 
donors and only thank them in a "thank you" page with their logos (a 
minimum change of terminology in the website would fix this)

2- Project sponsorship is not acceptable for nonprofit 501c3 because 
that is a taxable activity that competes with private businesses. That 
is why a new taxable subsidiary would be required to manage this if we 
continue it.

3- Conference sponsorship falls in a grey area. As long as we treat the 
sponsors as donors and only thank them with their logo then we're fine. 
However if the sponsors get a 1/2 page ad in the conference program or a 
booth then that part of the sponsorship amount (corresponding to 
500-1000$?) is not a donation, it needs to be treated as "unrelated 
business income (UBI)". A nonprofit can have a maximum of 15% of its 
revenues in UBI (you may also have to pay taxes on that UBI income).


On 12-11-13 3:27 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:
> Hi Cameron,
>
> I'm not sure I understand this part of your response:
>
> On 12-11-13 3:17 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
>>
>> For purposes such as fund raising, I think we should be working with
>> sister organisations, be they an OSGeo local chapter, LocationTech, OGC,
>> or something else.
>>
>
> Fund raising, i.e. donations are acceptable for a 501c3 nonprofit. It is
> also okay to have a "thank you" page on our website to thank our donors
> and showing their logos.
>
> What is not acceptable is advertizement for our sponsors, i.e. any kind
> of marketing talk/ads posted on behalf of the sponsors in our website or
> conference program. Advertizement is bad, thank-you-logos are acceptable.
>
> For this reason I believe all our existing fund raising activities (i.e.
> foundation sponsors) are fine, they may just need a bit or terminology
> changes. Being able to deal with money is the main benefit of getting a
> legal status, so if we have to go through sister organizations for fund
> raising as you suggest then that defeats the point of getting a legal
> status in the first place.
>
>


-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/
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