[GRASS-PSC] Accounting and organization of sponsorship

Wed Mar 17 06:40:16 PDT 2021

I put it up on the upcoming OSGeo board agenda - there has a been a new initiative setting up sponsorship infrastructure so it is a good timing,

Helena

> On Mar 17, 2021, at 8:24 AM, Veronica Andreo <veroandreo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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). 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/ -> 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/ 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 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
>> 
>> 
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Helena Mitasova
Professor at the Department of Marine, 
Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences
Associate director and faculty fellow at the Center for Geospatial Analytics
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-8208
hmitaso at ncsu.edu

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