[gentoo-nfp] RFC: OSUOSL Fundraiser

[gentoo-nfp] RFC: OSUOSL Fundraiser

[Alec Warner]

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Hi,

In our last meeting (the AGM) we briefly discussed giving to the OSL, who
graciously host much of the equipment for Gentoo Foundation Inc at no cost
to us (including space, bandwidth, cooling, and power[0].) We have not
given the OSL money in a few years.

 - $50.00 in 2009
 - $6,000 in 2013
 - Possibly a $2,000 payment in 2017; the board approved this payment but
it's unclear we made it (I sent mail separately to follow up on this.)

The OSL is itself a tax-exempt 501c3 tax-exempt organization. Currently we
are not, so it seems more efficient to just raise money directly to the
OSL. I see 3 options here:

(1) Create a fundraiser page that talks about why we need to raise money
for the OSL and the donate link goes to the OSL donation page.
(2) Create a fundraiser page that talks about why we need to raise money
for the OSL, and the donate link goes to a paypal account that is
specifically for this fundraiser and is time limited (is not our normal
paypal account.)
(3) Create a fundraiser page that talks about why we need to raise money
for the OSL, and the donate link goes to our normal paypal account.

I think (1) is probably 'best' but their donation system seems to only take
credit cards and I suspect many of our users are more familiar with paypal.
The difference between (2) and (3) is mostly a question for the CPA as to
whether, if we do 2 we can avoid paying taxes on these funds (which we are
basically raising on behalf of a tax-exempt organization.) If there is no
clear tax advantage for (2) then we should do (1) or (3).

Thoughts?

-A

[0] In 2017 Robin wrote:
"Gentoo has at OSL:
* a full-height 42U rack, with 2x 15A 120V power circuits.
** 10U is production infra (including VM hosting), full-depth.
** 10U of this is dedicated releng systems, full-depth.
** 13U presently unused.
** 9U (half-depth) is network/power
** 5U+ of half-depth releng systems (shared w/ network-power)
* Access to PowerPC POWER8 releng VMs."

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[gentoo-nfp] Re: RFC: OSUOSL Fundraiser

[Alec Warner]

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https://budgeting.thenest.com/pay-income-taxes-money-received-fundraiser-34381.html
seems to imply that if we have a separate account for fundraising we might
be in a good position to avoid paying taxes on fundraising proceeds. But we
should still follow up with the CPA on this to see what else we should do
for this.

-A

On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 12:58 PM Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> In our last meeting (the AGM) we briefly discussed giving to the OSL, who
> graciously host much of the equipment for Gentoo Foundation Inc at no cost
> to us (including space, bandwidth, cooling, and power[0].) We have not
> given the OSL money in a few years.
>
>  - $50.00 in 2009
>  - $6,000 in 2013
>  - Possibly a $2,000 payment in 2017; the board approved this payment but
> it's unclear we made it (I sent mail separately to follow up on this.)
>
> The OSL is itself a tax-exempt 501c3 tax-exempt organization. Currently we
> are not, so it seems more efficient to just raise money directly to the
> OSL. I see 3 options here:
>
> (1) Create a fundraiser page that talks about why we need to raise money
> for the OSL and the donate link goes to the OSL donation page.
> (2) Create a fundraiser page that talks about why we need to raise money
> for the OSL, and the donate link goes to a paypal account that is
> specifically for this fundraiser and is time limited (is not our normal
> paypal account.)
> (3) Create a fundraiser page that talks about why we need to raise money
> for the OSL, and the donate link goes to our normal paypal account.
>
> I think (1) is probably 'best' but their donation system seems to only
> take credit cards and I suspect many of our users are more familiar with
> paypal. The difference between (2) and (3) is mostly a question for the CPA
> as to whether, if we do 2 we can avoid paying taxes on these funds (which
> we are basically raising on behalf of a tax-exempt organization.) If there
> is no clear tax advantage for (2) then we should do (1) or (3).
>
> Thoughts?
>
> -A
>
> [0] In 2017 Robin wrote:
> "Gentoo has at OSL:
> * a full-height 42U rack, with 2x 15A 120V power circuits.
> ** 10U is production infra (including VM hosting), full-depth.
> ** 10U of this is dedicated releng systems, full-depth.
> ** 13U presently unused.
> ** 9U (half-depth) is network/power
> ** 5U+ of half-depth releng systems (shared w/ network-power)
> * Access to PowerPC POWER8 releng VMs."
>

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Re: [gentoo-nfp] RFC: OSUOSL Fundraiser

[Aaron Bauman]

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On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 12:58:59PM -0700, Alec Warner wrote:

[snip]

> I think (1) is probably 'best' but their donation system seems to only take
> credit cards and I suspect many of our users are more familiar with paypal.
> The difference between (2) and (3) is mostly a question for the CPA as to
> whether, if we do 2 we can avoid paying taxes on these funds (which we are
> basically raising on behalf of a tax-exempt organization.) If there is no
> clear tax advantage for (2) then we should do (1) or (3).
> 
> Thoughts?

Maybe we could do a "media campaign" to raise awareness of OSUOSL's
support for Gentoo. Through the campaign, we can inform our supports and
direct them to make a donation to the OSUOSL directly via [1]. Also,
maybe OSUOSL can setup a direct link to track the donations on behalf of
Gentoo or we could simply ask that individuals leave a comment as to why
they are donating on the page.

This would avoid any worries regarding taxes and setting up accounts
then transferring monies.

[1]: https://osuosl.org/donate/

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron

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