Re: SPI credit cards for regular billing, specifically AWS costs

Dear SPI,

I am the current treasurer and SPI liaison for the
Open Bioinformatics Foundation. One of our major
ongoing costs is hosting fees for the Amazon cloud
computing platform (Amazon web services, AWS),
where we currently run several servers including
our own mailman instance.

Paying for AWS requires a credit card on file.
Currently we use the personal card of one of our
former treasurers, and submit batched expense
claims periodically.

I personally do not have a USD credit card account,
so taking on this role myself would have the additional
complication and personal financial risk of currency
fluctuations.

What would be ideal from our point of view as an
SPI member project, would be to have use of an
SPI credit card for our AWS billing.

This would likely also reduce the burden on the SPI
treasurer by avoiding the current expenses claims.

I note that credit cards or related payment services
are not currently listed as being offered:

http://spi-inc.org/projects/services/

Is this something the SPI could assist us with?

Are any of the other SPI projects in a similar position
with AWS billing?

Thank you,

Peter

--

Dr. Peter Cock,
Open Bioinformatics Foundation, board of directors, treasurer

Peter Cock wrote:
> Dear SPI,
>
> I am the current treasurer and SPI liaison for the
> Open Bioinformatics Foundation. One of our major
> ongoing costs is hosting fees for the Amazon cloud
> computing platform (Amazon web services, AWS),
> where we currently run several servers including
> our own mailman instance.
>
> Paying for AWS requires a credit card on file.
> Currently we use the personal card of one of our
> former treasurers, and submit batched expense
> claims periodically.
>
> I personally do not have a USD credit card account,
> so taking on this role myself would have the additional
> complication and personal financial risk of currency
> fluctuations.
>
> What would be ideal from our point of view as an
> SPI member project, would be to have use of an
> SPI credit card for our AWS billing.
>
> This would likely also reduce the burden on the SPI
> treasurer by avoiding the current expenses claims.
>
> I note that credit cards or related payment services
> are not currently listed as being offered:
>
> http://spi-inc.org/projects/services/
>
> Is this something the SPI could assist us with?
>
> Are any of the other SPI projects in a similar position
> with AWS billing?

SPI does not have any credit cards but does have debit cards that can be
used where VISA and MasterCard are accepted. For several associated
projects, SPI's debit cards are used to pay for recurring services.
Associated Projects usually temporarily change the login information for
a service and share the login with me (as SPI Treasurer) so I can input
the card information.

I'm not aware of associated projects with current AWS expenses but SPI
currently handles the billing for several other similar services.

--
----------------------------
Michael Schultheiss
E-mail: schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org

* Peter Cock <p(dot)j(dot)a(dot)cock(at)googlemail(dot)com> [2018-02-07 09:59]:
> Are any of the other SPI projects in a similar position with AWS
> billing?

BTW, another SPI project applied received $5000/year Azure credits
through Microsoft for Nonprofits recently. (Although looking at the
web site now, I think it's $5000 per legal org so all SPI projects
would have to share that amount.)

He mentioned that AWS gives out $2000 in credits but I don't know the
application process.

--
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/

On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 3:13 PM, Martin Michlmayr <tbm(at)cyrius(dot)com> wrote:
> * Peter Cock <p(dot)j(dot)a(dot)cock(at)googlemail(dot)com> [2018-02-07 09:59]:
>> Are any of the other SPI projects in a similar position with AWS
>> billing?
>
> BTW, another SPI project applied received $5000/year Azure credits
> through Microsoft for Nonprofits recently. (Although looking at the
> web site now, I think it's $5000 per legal org so all SPI projects
> would have to share that amount.)
>
> He mentioned that AWS gives out $2000 in credits but I don't know the
> application process.

Thanks. The OBF has had AWS credits in the past but for a specific
group activity - a codefest/hackathon event, e.g.:

https://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Codefest_2014

If anyone has recently been successful in received AWS credits
for running infrastructure for a non-profit or open source project,
I'd be interested to learn more.

--

Does this mean none of the other SPI projects currently pay for
AWS at the moment?

For larger customers Amazon does offer an invoice based
system for AWS, but I doubt that would be relevant here.

Peter

* Peter Cock <p(dot)j(dot)a(dot)cock(at)googlemail(dot)com> [2018-02-15 16:51]:
> Does this mean none of the other SPI projects currently pay for
> AWS at the moment?

I'm not aware of any.

--
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/

On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 1:37 PM, Martin Michlmayr <tbm(at)cyrius(dot)com> wrote:
> * Peter Cock <p(dot)j(dot)a(dot)cock(at)googlemail(dot)com> [2018-02-15 16:51]:
>> Does this mean none of the other SPI projects currently pay for
>> AWS at the moment?
>
> I'm not aware of any.
>

Thank you Martin,

That is useful to know, even if not the answer I was hoping for.

Peter

On 02/16/2018 08:48 AM, Peter Cock wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 1:37 PM, Martin Michlmayr <tbm(at)cyrius(dot)com> wrote:
>> * Peter Cock <p(dot)j(dot)a(dot)cock(at)googlemail(dot)com> [2018-02-15 16:51]:
>>> Does this mean none of the other SPI projects currently pay for
>>> AWS at the moment?
>>
>> I'm not aware of any.
>>
>
> Thank you Martin,
>
> That is useful to know, even if not the answer I was hoping for.

OpenEmbedded uses AWS for DNS and I pay it via my credit card. It would
be useful for SPI to pay this for me.

So, if it was "easy" to pay AWS bills, this would help at least two SPI
projects.

Philip

>
> Peter
> _______________________________________________
> Spi-general mailing list
> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
>

> On 16 Feb 2018, at 14:58, Philip Balister <philip(at)balister(dot)org> wrote:
>
> On 02/16/2018 08:48 AM, Peter Cock wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 1:37 PM, Martin Michlmayr <tbm(at)cyrius(dot)com> wrote:
>>> * Peter Cock <p(dot)j(dot)a(dot)cock(at)googlemail(dot)com> [2018-02-15 16:51]:
>>>> Does this mean none of the other SPI projects currently pay for
>>>> AWS at the moment?
>>>
>>> I'm not aware of any.
>>>
>>
>> Thank you Martin,
>>
>> That is useful to know, even if not the answer I was hoping for.
>
> OpenEmbedded uses AWS for DNS and I pay it via my credit card. It would
> be useful for SPI to pay this for me.
>
> So, if it was "easy" to pay AWS bills, this would help at least two SPI
> projects.

AWS makes it pretty easy to configure a separate billing account for your organisation. You could use that to create an account for the SPI treasurer so they can manage payment methods.

W.

On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 04:51:03PM +0000, Peter Cock wrote:
> If anyone has recently been successful in received AWS credits
> for running infrastructure for a non-profit or open source project,
> I'd be interested to learn more.
>

I've recently done this for the GNOME Foundation, it's fairly
straightforward and takes about a week from scratch to completion, but
is indeed a per-organisation thing.

Firstly, you need to register with TechSoup (https://www.techsoup.org/)
who verify your 501(c)(3) status. That then gives you discounts on a
number of products, including AWS credits. You can receive $2000 USD
worth, and they last 1 year. You can re-apply each year. There's an
administration fee of $175 USD, but read below.

It's worth noting that there's a TechSoup discount scheme called Boost,
which gives further discounts on the administration fee charged. This
costs $79 USD for a year, and lowers the AWS admin fee to $80 USD, so is
worth while going for. This assumes that the operating budget is less
than $500k USD.

Shout if you want more details.

Neil

On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 8:51 AM, Peter Cock <p(dot)j(dot)a(dot)cock(at)googlemail(dot)com>
wrote:

> Does this mean none of the other SPI projects currently pay for
> AWS at the moment?
>
>
OpenZFS also uses AWS, it would be great to be able to bill directly with
SPI rather than doing receipts / reimbursement.

--matt

> On Feb 15, 2018, at 10:04 AM, Michael Schultheiss <schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org> wrote:
>
>> What would be ideal from our point of view as an
>> SPI member project, would be to have use of an
>> SPI credit card for our AWS billing.
>>
>> This would likely also reduce the burden on the SPI
>> treasurer by avoiding the current expenses claims.
>>
>> I note that credit cards or related payment services
>> are not currently listed as being offered:
>>
>> http://spi-inc.org/projects/services/
>>
>> Is this something the SPI could assist us with?
>
> SPI does not have any credit cards but does have debit cards that can be
> used where VISA and MasterCard are accepted. For several associated
> projects, SPI's debit cards are used to pay for recurring services.
> Associated Projects usually temporarily change the login information for
> a service and share the login with me (as SPI Treasurer) so I can input
> the card information.

I think this might work very well for AWS Billing. My understanding is that they do accept debit cards as payment methods. I have also finally found the time to figure out how to create an IAM user for AWS with permission to administer our billing and payment information.

I also now notice that one can register as tax-exempt within the AWS Billing console, in which case AWS will not charge taxes. Since we (as the SPI associated project) don’t have that documentation and aren’t ourselves the tax-exempt entity, perhaps SPI is familiar with this information?

Michael - I’ll send you the login information and credentials in separate encrypted email.

-hilmar
--
Hilmar Lapp -:- lappland.io