[GRASS-PSC] Accounting and organization of sponsorship

Wed Mar 17 05:24:59 PDT 2021

Thanks for looking at all this, Moritz, and for the explanation, of course
:)
Asking OSGeo to be fiscal host then seems the way to go

Vero

El mié, 17 mar 2021 a las 8:40, Moritz Lennert (<
mlennert at club.worldonline.be>) escribió:

> Most foss4g projects are not legal entities, just a bunch of nice people
> organizing to create beautiful software. As they are not legal entities
> they cannot open a bank account, provide invoices, etc. This is what
> fiscal
> hosts are for. They are legal entities that allow groups to act like a
> legal entity by allowing them to open accounts, etc. For more info:
> https://opencollective.com/become-a-host.
> <https://opencollective.com/become-a-host.>
>
> OSGeo is already playing the role of fiscal host for GitHub sponsoring:
> https://github.com/sponsors/OSGeo. <https://github.com/sponsors/OSGeo.>
>
> For our current banking account our fiscal host is OSGeo.eu.
>
> OSGeo could become a fiscal host at opencollective and so allow all OSGeo
> projects to organize sponsoring through there. I'll ask the board.
>
> Otherwise we could use another fiscal host. Fiscal hosts can ask for a fee
> for their services, usually around 5%, but they don't have to.
>
> Opencollective uses stripe for credit card payments and also allows
> payment via PayPal. Those payments generally also come with a small fee, so
> a few percent of the money people give is lost on the way.
>
> Moritz
>
> Am 16. März 2021 21:35:57 MEZ schrieb Michael Barton <
> Michael.Barton at asu.edu>:
>>
>> I believe that a 'fiscal host' is a place where you can deposit money and
>> keep it until needed or moved to a different local. It could be a bank
>> account or other account.
>>
>> Michael
>> _____________________________
>> C. Michael Barton
>> Director, Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
>> Director, Network for Computational Modeling in Social & Ecological
>> Sciences
>> Associate Director, School of Complex Adaptive Systems
>> Professor, School of Human Evolution & Social Change
>> Arizona State University
>> Tempe, AZ  85287-2402
>> USA
>>
>> voice: 480-965-6262 (SHESC), 480-965-8130/727-9746 (CSDC)
>> fax: 480-965-7671(SHESC), 480-727-0709 (CSDC)
>> www: http://shesc.asu.edu, https://complexity.asu.edu,
>> http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton
>>
>> On Mar 16, 2021, at 12:12 PM, Veronica Andreo <veroandreo at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Moritz,
>>
>> Thanks a lot for this initiative! Open collective seems like a pretty
>> cool complement to other existing ways of collecting money.
>>
>> I was inspecting a bit which other organizations are there, and I found
>> many well known companies and NGOs (See for example:
>> https://opencollective.com/babel
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://opencollective.com/babel__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!JYQHuCCW-r_wk5ZkIBeP49QU77SHS7hiB50Ncbo81102GGGA-Ce_UmCsrjjKdZlGL5ENBLQ$>).
>> Furthermore, it seems it also allows for recurring contributions with
>> different categories.
>>
>> I do not understand the fiscal host part, but as you say maybe OSGeo can
>> become a fiscal host. Would you ask them too?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Vero
>>
>> El sáb, 13 mar 2021 a las 16:34, Moritz Lennert (<
>> mlennert at club.worldonline.be>) escribió:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> FYI, for our accounting I have created a continuous ledger in
>>> https://nextcloud.osgeo.org/
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://nextcloud.osgeo.org/__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!JYQHuCCW-r_wk5ZkIBeP49QU77SHS7hiB50Ncbo81102GGGA-Ce_UmCsrjjKdZlGqAq9PRw$>
>>> -> GRASS-PCS -> Accounting and have filled
>>> it with all transactions in our PayPal and bank account since 2018. The
>>> idea is to use this as our central accounting tool and note all coming
>>> transactions in this ledger. This will allow to easily extract annual
>>> accounts and follow our current financial situation.
>>>
>>>
>>> As already discussed we should also review the way we collect
>>> sponsorship money, for different reasons:
>>>
>>> - The current PayPal Money pool runs over my personal account which is
>>> not very bus-factor resilient.
>>>
>>> - Venka's experience has shown that from some countries it is not easy
>>> to contribute without a PayPal account, e.g. with a credit card.
>>>
>>> OSGeo uses a Github sponsorship system which we should advertise as
>>> people can dedicate their contribution to a specific project. However,
>>> AFAIU, the Github sponsorship system is limited to people with a Github
>>> account and only allows deciding on a continuous (monthly), not a
>>> one-shot donation.
>>>
>>> In light of this, I would suggest the following for our sponsorship
>>> system:
>>>
>>> - https://opencollective.com/
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://opencollective.com/__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!JYQHuCCW-r_wk5ZkIBeP49QU77SHS7hiB50Ncbo81102GGGA-Ce_UmCsrjjKdZlGhkvh6nE$>
>>> for flexible one-shot, credit-card based
>>> sponsorships, including a series of different options and advantages
>>> (ex: receipts) for sponsors. How we organize this exactly (via fiscal
>>> host) is still to be determined (maybe OSGeo can become a fiscal host
>>> for all OSGeo projects ?).
>>>
>>> - https://github.com/sponsors/OSGeo
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/sponsors/OSGeo__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!JYQHuCCW-r_wk5ZkIBeP49QU77SHS7hiB50Ncbo81102GGGA-Ce_UmCsrjjKdZlGW7mvivA$>
>>> for recurring sponsorship.
>>>
>>> - Our bank account for direct money transfer, mostly within Europe.
>>>
>>>
>>> Does this sound reasonable for everyone ? If yes, I will look into the
>>> details of Open Collective and create our system.
>>>
>>> Moritz
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> grass-psc mailing list
>>> grass-psc at lists.osgeo.org
>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-psc
>>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-psc__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!JYQHuCCW-r_wk5ZkIBeP49QU77SHS7hiB50Ncbo81102GGGA-Ce_UmCsrjjKdZlGnTm0oAE$>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> grass-psc mailing list
>> grass-psc at lists.osgeo.org
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-psc__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!JYQHuCCW-r_wk5ZkIBeP49QU77SHS7hiB50Ncbo81102GGGA-Ce_UmCsrjjKdZlGnTm0oAE$
>>
>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-psc/attachments/20210317/05dfc25e/attachment-0001.html>