[drupal-devel] Drupal foundation / non-profit

[David Norman]

Chris Johnson wrote:
> 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.
More on the point of non-profit != tax-deductible, I think it's
important if the local foundations are to ever get significant corporate
donations, the tax-deductible part will be essential.

Speaking of membership, there are AFAIK three basic ways to organize the
directors of a non-profit corp (speaking for Florida).

1) Membership - members elect a board of directors
2) No membership - the bylaws establish a self-perpetuating board of
directors and often specifically prohibit the corporation from having
"members".
3) Wholly owned subsidiary - when the board of directors is appointed by
another corporation

I get the feeling (3) would be something the core developers would be
interested in, but I'm pretty sure the other corporation would also have
to be incorporated in the same state. I think the way around that would
be to do the membership style and just make an application process where
only recognized, key people could become members - everyone else is just
a donor. Moreover, I don't think the board has to be all native
citizens, though I think having at least one native is probably a good
idea. Option (2) doesn't really seem (to me) like a good option for
anything other than a family business.

Robin Monks wrote:
> You might be interested in contacting the Mozilla Foundation about how
> they do this.
Does anyone have contact(s) with Mozilla Foundation to see if someone
will join in on this thread?