Sat 20 Dec 2008 |
What happened to the donation page?
Written by Elin Waring
Today we removed the donation page and links from the Joomla.org family of sites. We did this because our lawyers advised us that soliciting donations on the web creates a host of problems. When you ask for contributions on the web, you are asking all over the world. It turns out that just inside the United States there are over 40 different sets of laws and regulations that you have to comply with, and there are more in various other countries. To file all of the paperwork to be able to do this would cost thousands of dollars and then maintaining the appropriate records and forms each year would be thousands more. The Project gets about 15 percent of its income from donations via our web form, and the OSM board and core team decided that it does not make sense to spend almost the same amount doing that all that legal work. By the way, this doesn't mean we won't take donations, just that we can't ask for them.
Some good materials about this:
http://www.rsmmcgladrey.com/
http://www.charitableregistry.
The Project cannot really afford to lose this income (15 percent is a lot), but as financial stewards of Joomla! the OSM board is working hard to come up with ways to fill the gap. Some of this we hope will come from increased sales in the Joomla! Shop and we'd like to ask anyone who would like to to help support the project add a Joomla! Shop link to your site (See our new collection of banners).
A lot of people ask me how Open Source Matters is financed. As you can probably guess from looking at our websites, about 75 percent of our income comes from advertising. The rest has come from donations, royalties, shop sales and things like the Google Summer of Code (Thanks Google!) and prizes (Thanks Packt!). As a board we have been working hard to diversify our income sources in order to achieve long term financial stability and independence for the project.
People also ask me what we spend OSM's budget on. In 2007 our budget looked like this:
| Taxes | 18% |
| Administration | 7% |
| Events and conferences | 55% |
| Web sites | 15% |
| Promotion | 3% |
Even though we are a nonprofit we currently have to pay taxes on advertising income, and those taxes consume a large portion of the budget. The taxes are something we are trying to decrease by getting advice from lawyers specializing in tax and nonprofit issues. Early on in the project the team realized it was important to ensure the Joomla! presence around the world and build the Joomla! community by sending people to Joomla! Days, Expos and conferences, and team meetings and that travel has traditionally been our major expense. As the project grows and becomes more complex this mix will doubtless change, but I think that OSM will always be an organization with low administrative overhead (almost all of which is for accounting services). Although, at times I dream of an office that isn't also my dining room table. This year for the first time we started paying for a post office box, and those kinds of basic operating expenses will probably continue to grow gradually.
Like most young nonprofits we're learning as we go. It's challenging, but it's also a pleasure to work with such great people and to have the support of such a vast and passionate community.
2008-12-20 14:31:05
2008-12-20 16:45:41
One thing I know for certain, Elin, is that you are someone who works very hard to take care of this project and that we owe you an enormous amount of respect and appreciation.
Thanks for taking care of things so we can code. I hope very much that your family is able to reclaim your dining room table, as well.
Thanks for all you do. Happy Holidays!
2008-12-20 17:24:30
It's really a shame that one can't simply ask for a donation without causing all kinds of legal nonsense. Why can't a donation simply be just another product like a mug or t-shirt and handled the same way?
I guess it's just time to buy some Joomla! stuff. Buy something and give it to someone as a gift!
2008-12-20 18:03:06
2008-12-20 18:41:03
Potatoes, potatoes, I know, but years back, we were advised by legal to simply change the word from "donation" to "contribution."
Maybe your lawyer would not agree, but it's a thought.
2008-12-20 19:31:55
Many thousands of organisations ask for donations via the web, but they do not register in every country and state that the viewer is based in. This would be almost impossible, impractical and prohibitive.
I am not sure if this would work, but I recommend that you look into setting up the "Joomla Trust Fund" in the most tax efficient country/state possible, set up a dedicated website and any one that wants to donate can visit the site knowing that all proceeds will be donated back into the Joomla community.
The mention of this fund on other sites would not be "asking for money", merely mentioning that "many people donate via The Joomla Fund"...
I am totally new to Joomla, and based in the UK, so if this does not make legal sense in the US then sorry!
2008-12-20 20:37:55
2008-12-21 01:08:47
If we can not make a normal donation page, why don't we do it in other way like selling some Joomla Symbol (like digital Joomla logo, digital certificate of visiting,...
Hope the best to Joomla!
2008-12-21 04:47:22
2008-12-21 10:21:34
One thing to remember is that all of these rules were set up to prevent people from setting up fake charities and collecting money for themselves. The bad guys have used a lot of tricks and technicalities to get people's money so the laws are very detailed. While there are a lot of possibilities we could try, we have decided that it does not make sense financially for OSM to be a test case in this area.
Technically, we can ask New York residents for contributions because we are registered in New York. But to ask them on the sites we would need to check IPs and block the rest of the world from the donation page.
2008-12-24 05:23:38
2008-12-24 22:11:31
2008-12-25 07:23:27
Joomla! Help Site still have a Support Joomla! banner.
2008-12-28 17:12:09
"Network for Good is a registered charity in all requiring states. By processing your donations through the Network for Good DonateNow service, you can save your organization time and thousands of dollars each year."
http://www.groundspring.org/services/dn_faq.cfm#registration
I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if this solves the problem or not. I'm also not sure if other payment processors, like PayPal or Google Checkout, do this as well.
2008-12-28 18:30:18
Yes I've used Network for Good for other non profits I've done sites for; they have really done a service for web based non profits by coming up with a solution to this problem. Once we have our 501c3 status we will definitely work with them or an organization like them.