[Qgis-psc] Improving the effectiveness of my role

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi,

How about splitting the marketing from the financing. Effectively there
is a split already these days - as Horst does a lot of the finances.

As to the country to have a legal entity I think Switzerland would be a
good place. It is relatively easy to found an association. There is
however a threshold value regarding taxes. If the association has a
total revenue >100'000 CHF it has to pay taxes. Also you have to pay
taxes on profits (excl. membership fees) if those are not re-invested.

There are also other forms of legal entities, e.g. a "Genossenschaft"
(like a cooperative), which is a bit more formal than an association but
still on the non-profit side.

Switzerland also honors the European banking norms - they are even more
European than the EU countries, as some EU banks still ask for
transaction fees for cross-border SEPA transactions while most of the
Swiss banks don't.

In any case, we will have to do accounting and taxes at some stage.

Andreas

Am 10.01.2014 08:10, schrieb Paolo Cavallini:
> Hi all.
> QGIS is growing noticeably in many respects, and I feel the role of
> marketing and financial advisor should be strengthened and improved
> accordingly, to intercept more resources to fill up chores nobody wants
> to do, and to improve our perceived credibility as partners for larger
> institutions and enterprises.
> To do so, I believe the basic functioning should be smoother, so it will
> be easier to concentrate on the outreach. I'm therefore proposing to:
> * automatize the processing of donations (Juergen kindly offered to help
> with this - danke!)
> * have a formal book keeper, so to have the current situation and the
> historical trends ready at hand.
> To do so, I think two steps are sooner or later necessary:
> * being a legal entity (NGO-like, I suppose)
> * having an individual bank account.
> Obviously, our finances being still small, we must keep costs down for
> all the above (also, we want the money to go into code, not into paper,
> right?).
> I would greatly appreciate your opinions about this. If we agree this is
> the right course of action, any suggestions on where to establishing the
> NGO and opening a new account (or how to get additional info) would be
> precious.
> Given that most of our activities (many sponsors, most developers, HFs,
> etc.) are in Europe, I suspect this area could be our first choice.
> All the best.
>