[OSGeo-Discuss] Proposal: Microdonations for OSGeo

[Frank Warmerdam]

Markus Neteler wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)
> <tmitchell at osgeo.org> wrote:
>> On 12-Mar-09, at 11:27 PM, Markus Neteler wrote:
>>> I would like to bring up the idea of accepting microdonations
>>> as general donations to OSGeo:
>>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Microdonations
>>>
>>> Given the success of OSM, Wikipedia and others in that area of
>>> fund-rising I don't see a reason why OSGeo does not accept
>>> small donations from community members and likeminded people
>>> to keep OSGeo running.
>> I was looking more at this idea this week and I just realised that we do
>> already accept these donations. We do have the PayPal donation button on the
>> website front page (top right corner).  Was there more you think we need to
>> be doing?  Anyone can donate through that already, are you suggesting a
>> change to that?
> 
> Ok, fine - do you have any insights in how well that works?

Markus,

It is very rare for us to get a donation through this mechanism.  I would
also note that these are undirected donations.  You cannot donate through
this mechanism and have it go to a particular project or activity.  It is
just booked as a generic donation by Tyler, and I'm not aware of any
acknowledgement process (or tax receipts).

The hard part of microdonations isn't so much receiving them via something
like paypal, it is managing small pools of money "on the books" for many
sub-projects, and trying to keep track of who donated to what and when.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent