[drupal-devel] Drupal foundation / non-profit

[Chris Johnson]

Karoly Negyesi wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> My opinion is that given the diversity of Drupal it's almost impossible to 
> strive for an entity which can give tax-deductions. You'd need a non-profit 
> entity in USA, Canada, UK, Germany and Belgium just to cover the main 
> areas.
> 
> If Boris or anyone else is able to rise a foundation which can accept money 
> in the name of Drupal without paying taxes I'd say that's good. If we set 
> up tax-deduction entities per country then the money flow between our 
> entities will become a problem.


If we had non-profit *tax-deductible*[1] entities in USA, Canada, UK, Germany 
and Belgium, they could all voluntarily be members of the "Drupal Federation" 
(a legal, international organization *without* tax-deductible status).  They 
could also all voluntarily donate money to that Federation, and the Federation 
could be responsible for managing spending on global/international Drupal 
activities.  The country-local non-profits could also do whatever they felt 
was appropriate within their own countries.

Therefore I propose we create the "global" Drupal "federation" organization[2] 
without concern for it being tax deductible, as a place to be the fiduciary 
body for Drupal money handling to start.  Then folks in each country can 
create non-profit, tax-deductible Drupal foundations there if they want.

I think tax-deductible foundations in several countries are a good idea, too.

--
Chris Johnson



[1] In the USA, any business can be a non-profit if so organized and 
registered in whichever state it is registered.  Getting tax-deductible status 
is a federal-level IRS thing, and is much more work.  That is:  non-profit != 
tax-deductible or tax-exempt, although most tax-deductible or tax-exempt 
organizations are non-profits.

[2] This formally organized federation/organization should be created in one 
country, and then maybe eventually go through the process of legally creating 
registered subsidiaries/foreign branches/whatever works best in each country 
where there is lots of Drupal activity.  This would require some research to 
see if it is helpful to do so or not.  It might not be necessary.  But if so, 
it is far less work than creating a tax-deductible organization, at least in 
the USA.