[clue-admin] On sponsorship and donations

[David L. Anselmi]

Crawford Rainwater wrote:
> Folks:
>
> As mentioned in Jed's email about sponsorship and donations this has been a touchy subject.
> There are some that feel that CLUE should register as a non-profit 501(c)3 with the tax ID and do
> the annual paper work for such.  Jeff Cann looked into this IIRC and noticed that the costs of
> doing such out weighted what was expected to be donated funding wise by quite a bit.

We would likely have to look for low cost or donated help to become a non-profit, but that's 
possible.  Trickier is the management of such an organization.  The board essentially owns the 
organization so it's important to spell out roles and responsibilities.  If I'm still involved in 
CLUE when I retire I'll take it on (and perhaps provide an umbrella for Free Software in Colorado) 
because it looks like fun.  But it's several orders of magnitude more time than I have right now.

> I endorse the idea of sponsors (Linux ETC has been assisting with the CLUE server related items
> since 2004; I myself use to run CLUE-North and the Installfests before David A's tour).  I would
> like to find a mutually acceptable way though for donations and such to taken in by CLUE where it
> will not have any legal or IRS ramifications though.

I don't think the IRS cares.  Likely our contributions are gifts to an individual, not taxable to 
the recipient and only taxable to the giver over $10k/yr.  But of course I'm not an accountant.

I suspect we (various people trying to do well for the group) could have legal liability for any 
misunderstandings that arise related to donations.  Probably not criminal though so that would 
depend on law suits and we're somewhat protected there by the high cost of legal proceedings.  Just 
don't take any money from MS lawyers. :-)  IANAL, either.

So for those of you who consult with accountants or attorneys, feel free to prove me wrong.

Dave