[gentoo-nfp] nomination

[gentoo-nfp] nomination

[Brad Cowan]

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Hi,

  I'd like to be considered in the voting for a trustee position.  A
particular interest would be in the form of funding and the possibility
of grants based on recommendations of a "steering committee" if that
model gets approved.

Thanks,

-- 
Brad Cowan <bcowan@gentoo.org>
Developer,
Gentoo Linux    http://www.gentoo.org/~bcowan

Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xB1F16A56
Key fingerprint = C408 75B9 E68D 26E2 EAAE  20CF 4D5E 293D B1F1 6A56

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Re: [gentoo-nfp] nomination

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Sunday 08 May 2005 17:36, Brad Cowan wrote:
> Hi,
>
>   I'd like to be considered in the voting for a trustee position.  A
> particular interest would be in the form of funding and the possibility
> of grants based on recommendations of a "steering committee" if that
> model gets approved.

What do you mean by grants? Maybe I should add that the foundation by no means 
is rich, and financially most if not allmost all money not spend on legal 
fees should be saved for future legal fees and a reserve.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-nfp] nomination, [gentoo-nfp]

[Brad Cowan]

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On Sun, 2005-05-08 at 19:02 +0200, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> On Sunday 08 May 2005 17:36, Brad Cowan wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >   I'd like to be considered in the voting for a trustee position.  A
> > particular interest would be in the form of funding and the possibility
> > of grants based on recommendations of a "steering committee" if that
> > model gets approved.
> 
> What do you mean by grants? Maybe I should add that the foundation by no means 
> is rich, and financially most if not allmost all money not spend on legal 
> fees should be saved for future legal fees and a reserve.
> 
> Paul
> 

  Yes, I understand the current budget situation, these are longer term
goals.  I'm interested in ways to increase our funding to go above and
beyond self sufficient. Spending all our funds on general expenses and
saving all the excess for legal expenses and a reserve for possibly more
legal defense leaves no room for things like research and development or
overall improvements.  I know these last two things depend on the having
more funding coming in than going out, which is what we should be
striving for in my honest opinion. Just because we're a non-profit
doesn't mean all our funds need to be for legal issues or our focus as
trustees needs to be towards legalities does it? 

  As for the grants, I'm not talking about huge sums of money here. For
example the trustees decide that they would like to start a $500 overall
improvement grant (could even be $10...the amount is trivial), they
would then ask the steering committee to decide which area needed the
most improvement and would write up a set of criteria or goals they
would like to see accomplished with this grant. The trustees would then
enact this grant based on the recommendations of the steering committee.
The steering committee would then judge which party should receive the
grant based on all criteria being met and the best model that represents
their goals. This separates the trustees from making the actual
developmental decisions or goals that the steering committee should be
making, but still allowing for contributions towards the overall well
being of the distro.  

  Anyway I'm just scribbling random thoughts, thanks for listening. 

-- 
Brad Cowan <bcowan@gentoo.org>
Developer,
Gentoo Linux    http://www.gentoo.org/~bcowan

Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xB1F16A56
Key fingerprint = C408 75B9 E68D 26E2 EAAE  20CF 4D5E 293D B1F1 6A56

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Re: [gentoo-nfp], [gentoo-nfp]

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Brad Cowan wrote:
>   Yes, I understand the current budget situation, these are longer term
> goals.  I'm interested in ways to increase our funding to go above and
> beyond self sufficient. Spending all our funds on general expenses and
> saving all the excess for legal expenses and a reserve for possibly more
> legal defense leaves no room for things like research and development or
> overall improvements.  I know these last two things depend on the having
> more funding coming in than going out, which is what we should be
> striving for in my honest opinion.

This is the type of grant I thought you were talking about. I'd be
interested in searching and applying for external grants to give Gentoo
funding. Then we could use some of that funding to give out Brad's
flavor of grant.

The only source that comes to mind offhand is LinuxFund. Here's a couple
of related links, since the site seems to be down:

http://wiki.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/LinuxFund
http://lwn.net/2001/0614/a/linuxfund.php3

Most of the funded projects are individual programs rather than
distributions, but I don't see any obvious reason why we couldn't apply.
Alternately, we could go for the LUG-style route mentioned above and
stick an ad on our site for LinuxFund credit cards, from which we would
benefit. I'm sure this could be discussed with them.

Does anyone know of other sources that might help with funding?

Thanks,
Donnie
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[gentoo-nfp] Grants and funding (was: Re: <blank>)

[Corey Shields]

Donnie Berkholz wrote:

>Does anyone know of other sources that might help with funding?
>  
>
We've had some ideas[1], and there is a contact who is great with 
writing grants (the type of grant that Donnie talked about) who is 
willing to help the Foundation, he's just waiting for us to get to the 
point of being able to accept such grants.  In other words, completing 
the 501(c) status.

There are governmental grants that could be applied for, as well as 
vendor grants (IBM is pretty famous for giving grants as tax writeoffs 
with the stipulation that the grant money be spent in a certain quarter, 
thus helping their income in the same token).

As for the kind of grants that Brad mentioned, we've tossed such an idea 
around (similarly) as well but call them "bounties".  The framework for 
such a beast would need to be carefully laid so that everything remains 
legal and we don't end up in trouble with the IRS.  With that 
accomplished, I think bounties are a great idea if the money is there.

To be honest, the current Board is quite new to having money, as we've 
only had funds on hand in the past couple of months[2] and we've been 
around for almost a year.  Nobody is jumping at the bit to spend it all, 
but on the other hand I've heard comments that people give the money 
with the intention for it to be spent and help Gentoo.  It'll be a fine 
balance between money that should be saved for possible legal expenses 
and other suprises like hardware failures, and money that should go out 
(and how much goes to whom).  We have had only one request for funding 
come in (for a hardware upgrade), and the need is going to be fulfilled 
by hardware already within Gentoo's reach.  I know that money will be 
requested around the time of LWE as well to help with PR type stuff.

Anyway, I probably got off track there.  In my mind, funding for Gentoo 
is half of the job of the Foundation, and why I was so excited to see 
the paypal link get off the ground.  Once the IRS NFP filing is complete 
it will open up the doors for things such as grants.

Cheers!

-C

[1] - http://www.gentoo.org/foundation/en/funds.xml
[2] - http://www.gentoo.org/foundation/en/2005q1.xml


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Re: [gentoo-nfp] Grants and funding, [gentoo-nfp]

[Corey Shields]

Corey Shields wrote:

> To be honest, the current Board is quite new to having money, as we've 
> only had funds on hand in the past couple of months[2] and we've been 
> around for almost a year.  Nobody is jumping at the bit to spend it 
> all, but on the other hand I've heard comments that people give the 
> money with the intention for it to be spent and help Gentoo.  It'll be 
> a fine balance between money that should be saved for possible legal 
> expenses and other suprises like hardware failures, and money that 
> should go out (and how much goes to whom).  We have had only one 
> request for funding come in (for a hardware upgrade), and the need is 
> going to be fulfilled by hardware already within Gentoo's reach.  I 
> know that money will be requested around the time of LWE as well to 
> help with PR type stuff.


I should clarify, there have been other bills (legal stuff), so the 
statement of "only one request for funding" was from outside of the 
Foundation.

For an example of what I mean by "legal stuff", we recently approved 
$100 to be spent on the Gentoo trademark renewal (which would also put 
the trademark under the Foundation's name rather than Gentoo 
Technologies).  The Legal counsel we have is pro bono, however, we have 
to pay any application fees once something leaves their hands.

Cheers,

-C
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Re: [gentoo-nfp] Grants and funding, [gentoo-nfp]

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Corey Shields wrote:
> We've had some ideas[1], and there is a contact who is great with
> writing grants (the type of grant that Donnie talked about) who is
> willing to help the Foundation, he's just waiting for us to get to the
> point of being able to accept such grants.  In other words, completing
> the 501(c) status.
> 
> There are governmental grants that could be applied for, as well as
> vendor grants (IBM is pretty famous for giving grants as tax writeoffs
> with the stipulation that the grant money be spent in a certain quarter,
> thus helping their income in the same token).

Great, this is some of the info I was looking for. The ideas on that
page about grants are pretty generic, not really mentioning any specifics.

Thanks,
Donnie
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