fund raising was: Re: [Typo3-dev] Extension Repository on typo3.org / suggestion

[Juergen Egeling]

* Rene Suthoelder <t3 at 1zu6-design.de> [040601 22:39]:
> 4 weeks ago, i presented kasper an idea on how to get money for the
> typo3.org-mentioned "official" projects (like DAM, workflow etc.). the whole

:-)) Around the same time I presented him basically the same ;-) (should
have been mid of april). The idea: Small companies (like us), are IMHO 
willing to give smaller amount of money, but when we first digged around
how to transfer money to "the right" people, it was quite frustrating.
I did not want to give away cigars (beeing frightened the programmers
dies with cancer ;-)) ), or other things. And money seemed to be only 
an issue about certain number, which looked very arrogant to me. So we
added it up here for some projects to come and send one bigger number.
Anyway, the problem still was alive.
Some weeks later, we stumbled into organizing the eurobsdcon2004
(http://www.eurobsdcon2004.de), where we are faced with exact the same 
problem: Raising relativ small amounts of money, with having to give
away an invoice and collecting the money. As we did not find anything
we are busy programming an extension that automates this task.
(donating, making an invoice, waiting for the bank transfer, taking care
of VAT, booking, make TAX people happy, etc. etc. etc. all the "nice"
things, that quite generate an overhead.)
The extension *should* be done be mid of may, but we are still in the
testing phase, as things turned out to be more complicated. But we
*will have* it for http://www.eurobsdcon2004.de and we will make the
extension public. (after testing it with this one site, adding things
from this experience, etc. pp.)

OK, from than on the community has the right tool to collect the money.
(I think getting invoices is a big benefit for companies, so that their
good intensions are also TAX deductable ;-)) ) So from than on smaller
amounts of money can be collected and given away.

The problems:
a.) Bank money transfer. This is *no* problem at all from all people
transferring money from the EURo zone. It is EU law, that it does not
have to cost more money than to transfer the money within the same
country. So there is quite a potential. For the rest of countries I
really suggest paypal or something else, as Credit Card charges about
3.7% as a handling fee as well. (there *is* an overhead to deal with
money!).
b.) trustworthyness of the people that collect the money. My idea:
Open up a bank account with internet access. Than a couple of people
that are trustworthy could check the money thats in the bank and the
money that should be there generated by the system, and see where
the differences come from (usually there will be a delay in payments,
wrong bank transfers, and some small money will be lost by giving it
to the bank for some fees.) I think as long as all decisions are made
public we are on the right track, so everyone can see what was happening
before with the money, and there might see what could happen to his money
as well. We should not come in the crossing line, that people that give
money argue where it should be going. This ends up endless discussions.
It sounds harsh, but those people could give the money directly if
they want to sponsor something directly.
c.) TAX problems. The following problem need to be taken care of:
Whoever writes the bills (either a trustworthy company in the first step
or a "club" or whatever) has infact TAX problems, as the money is
*his* money, and he has to make it TAX aware. So the problem will arise
if they cannot get rid of the money ;-) by sponsoring it within the same
fiscal year.
e.g. Lets say they get 1000.- EUR in donations in 2004 but do not
receive bills in 2004 for sponsoring people they in fact have a "win"
of 1000.- EUR in 2004 and have to tax it, which is about 43% goes to
the german TAX people (even without saying thanks!), so in fact it has
to be made sure, that most of the money goes to the developers, and this
means that there need to be people making sure that the money *goes*
to the developers and that they have the freedom to give the money away
to developers what *they* think is right. And ALAS I TELL YOU, THIS will
be the problem! The other idea would be to say that all money not taken
away by 15th of december of each year automatically goes to Kasper
(which might not be the badest idea I think.)

OK, long posting. There are things going on, question is how to proceed.
The extension that helps will be there "real soon" (we need it, and we
will give it away), but maybe we should give some more thoughts on how
to organize it.

have fun
Juergen
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