(back on solid ground, have a ton of notes to post over the next couple of days) On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 13:57:51 +0000, Vladimir Zlatanov <vlado@dikini.net> wrote:
Joining SPI would basically enable us to collect tax deductible donations from US citizens. Nothing more and nothing less. There is a similar organisation in .de but due to German tax laws they cannot _guarantee_ that we will get the money that people send to them on our behalf. I suspect that they say this to cover their legal behind, but... Also, this would only be applicable to people paying taxes in .de. Tax deductions are good, but not the only thing which matters. Things that matter IMHO are:
Vlado makes a good point, and I think that is how we should approach the construction of a foundation. What do we need it to do? As I see it, there are actually only 3 things that are absolutely required, and everything else comes down to support functions. * have legal standing as some sort of entity which can do things (like own * be able to receive money (i.e. open a bank account) * pay out money While some sort of "foundation" would be a nice-to-have, I think a structure that handles those items would be a good start. Donations and tax-exempt status are additional issues. I'm putting my "general" notes underneath the Developer Sprint: http://drupal.org/node/18269 I've got a page on governance that is going to go up, which essentially recommends setting up some working groups not just for development (e.g. Metadata, Media & File, etc.) but also for management. We already partially have this with, for example, the Documentation mailing list, but we need a few more. The Community group would handle non-technical community issues. See my notes, then lets keep this momentum going! -- Boris Mann http://www.bryght.com