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On Sat, 19 Jun 2010 11:33:35 +0100 tom <tombrough@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 19/06/10 11:14, Neil Williams wrote: > > Which includes a decision about whether the LUG would actually > > benefit from funds or whether any monies larger than current would > > attract unwanted admin and hassle. We cannot attract sponsors > > without having an official accounting method and banking setup and > > that costs money. Why bother? > > I think a "hard core" of the group wish to look at expanding and > growing FLOSS. Yes FLOSS is organic, and it will grow in its own > time, but it doesn't hurt to water the flowers once in a while. True, however there is a debate about whether such growth actually needs funds or simply wants more developer time. Introducing funds generates management and management incurs business costs. It depends what you want to achieve - new code needs developer time without the burden of the commercial imperative. Bug testing *can* benefit from "enterprise exposure" - once the main body of code exists. This has worked well for large projects like Apache, OOo and Postgres. > As > such I think we want to look at potential revenue streams that could > be activated IF the need for funding was identified. Probably better to contribute to an existing fund, like SPI (http://www.spi-inc.org/) because then there is no loss to the fund from the inevitable expenses of running the fund itself. i.e. we currently have no costs, we start funding and we generate costs that reduce that funding - umm, that's not good. Much better to contribute to some other organisation which already has the costs handled and so that our small % is more effective overall. The costs for our small fund could be 10% per annum or more - put that small fund into an organisation with all the expertise in place and their costs as a percentage of our contribution could be 0.1% because the costs themselves are proportionately higher for smaller pots of money. > For example Formal Voluntary Education Courses, or seminars for > business / community, or assisting social mobilisation groups > (Lighthouse / Estwick Project) could all be assisted with funding. True, but not necessarily funding from us. Funding projects is EXPENSIVE, not in the amount you give but in the percentage you have to pay out to banks and quangos in order to make the funding available inside an audit trail. We're used to the liberty of free software but introducing money into it causes distraction, costs and disagreement. Unlike software, you cannot simply give money away, especially anything more than a hundred pounds or so. It always costs money for for-profit or non-profit organisations to give (or receive) money. There are always records to be made and processes to follow. It's called an audit trail and is never, ever, free of charge. > With extended membership it is possible that extra revenues could be > raised to get us to the next phase. .. and all the official documentation and setup costs that existing organisations have already paid. Infrastructure costs real money, now and for every year you use it. We cannot fund formal organisations without formalising our own procedures and paying that cost. These bodies and groups have legally binding processes for accepting monies and they will require us to have the same processes, *especially* if they already accept any kind of monies from government, council or quasi-government sources. Such government / council groups have the legal right to require an audit trail of all monies spent or received, not restricted to their own funding of that non-profit. Fail to keep the necessary trail and the non-profit will be fined and then have all future funding dropped. The non-profit will not take that risk but, instead, require us to provide an audit trail before accepting the money - even in small amounts. I've run a non-profit body before, the admin work is immense and non-profit does not mean free of costs. It can cost several thousand pounds even to get a non-profit up and running and there are ongoing costs too. Even a small charity required one part time member of staff (16hrs a week) purely in admin work. > Of course I'm not talking industrial scale activity, It doesn't have to be industrial scale - if you are considering giving money to any formal organisation or accepting formal sponsorship from any such organisation, you will need to pay costs and comply with their audit requirements. Otherwise, the group you are trying to fund are legally obliged to refuse your offer of funding. Even street collections of a few tens of pounds have to be officially sanctioned - and there is a percentage removed to cover those costs. No charitable gift is (or ever has been) truly 100% available to the beneficiaries of the charity. It's only with the enormous clout of massive charities like the National Trust, Oxfam or the RSPCA where the percentages involved become negligible (or offset by smart investments of their immense reserves). Little charities and non-profits can easily spend 10% of their annual income purely on audit costs, for us it could be a lot higher. > and I'm sure we > want to preserve the "informal" arrangements "informal" doesn't work where money is concerned, only software. Even FLOSS had to get some kind of official structure (namely the FSF, OSI and the legal advice behind the GPL) before it could properly integrate into the wider economy. > that are a core part of > the identity of the group, but we also should be looking at more > innovate ways to operate (as that is the nature of FLOSS). It doesn't have to be thousands but even if you're thinking of growing the funds to only a few hundred pounds per annum, you will lose a horrible percentage in hassle and admin costs which *we* would have to bear. These are absolute costs, much better to put those into the pot of a much, much larger fund where the percentages work in favour of the group being funded. Informal arrangements cannot be accepted by formal organisations. It has nothing to do with FLOSS and everything to do with accountability. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/
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