Re: Proposed: Funding Open Source Accounting software

SPI members:

The Software Freedom Conservancy is proposing to fund the efforts of a
full-time software developer to create NPO accounting software which
will be completely open source and free. SPI could really use such
software.

https://sfconservancy.org/campaign/

As such, I propose that we fund this effort using $10,000 out of our
general SPI funds. I think this is a good idea because:

1) It benefits our member projects by eventually providing more timely
and more transparent accounting of member project funds.

2) It promotes Open Source software by providing a completely free
package to be used at non-profits nationwide*, and eventually worldwide.

3) It promotes Open Source software by making it easier for OSS
nonprofits to have good accounting, and thus establish and maintain NPOs.

4) We have general fund money which is not being used**, and this is the
first project in a long time which is clearly in the interests of SPI's
mission and our member projects.

(* if you check the web page, the Conservancy has already established
relationships with multiple non-OSS NPOs who are interested in the software)

(** As of 3/31, our general reserves were $55,809)

Hi,

On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 11:21:41AM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
[...]
> As such, I propose that we fund this effort using $10,000 out of our
> general SPI funds. I think this is a good idea because:
[...]

Seems like quite a good idea to me. I've read the Conservancy page and agree
something like this is sorely needed, including by SPI, but doesn't exist yet.
The suggested amount even seems reasonable given how much it would help us
scale to the benefit of all associated projects and the few alternative uses
for our general reserves.

We may want to add this to next week's agenda after allowing the intervening
week for feedback here. I see they list SPI as an endorser with our
encouragement to donate and support. It's possible they did this based on
Bdale's quote as SPI president, but I wouldn't have a problem explicitly voting
to endorse (I'd obviously vote yes) for more emphasis.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 11:21:41AM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> The Software Freedom Conservancy is proposing to fund the efforts of a
> full-time software developer to create NPO accounting software which
> will be completely open source and free. SPI could really use such
> software.

Aside from concerns about a 501(c)3 making an unrestricted donation
to another 501(c)3:

What are the relevant factors which would precipitate SPI's switch
to the new software?

Would it be beneficial to participate in the Phase-0 evaluation?
If so, how does that work?

On 05/02/2013 12:40 PM, Clint Adams wrote:
> On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 11:21:41AM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> The Software Freedom Conservancy is proposing to fund the efforts of a
>> full-time software developer to create NPO accounting software which
>> will be completely open source and free. SPI could really use such
>> software.
>
> Aside from concerns about a 501(c)3 making an unrestricted donation
> to another 501(c)3:

It's not an unrestricted donation.

> What are the relevant factors which would precipitate SPI's switch
> to the new software?

Right now? Beta-level quality. Maybe even alpha-level. Right now
we're using a loose collection of ad-hoc software, none of which is
adequate for our purporses. This adds considerably to Michael's
workload, and introduces significant delays into his ability to produce
financial figures for projects.

> Would it be beneficial to participate in the Phase-0 evaluation?
> If so, how does that work?

Join the linked mailing list. I already have.

--Josh Berkus

On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 07:40:01PM +0000, Clint Adams wrote:
> Aside from concerns about a 501(c)3 making an unrestricted donation
> to another 501(c)3:

Hi Clint,

It's my non-lawyer understanding that 501(c)3s may donate to ther
501(c)3s providing it's within the scope of their mission.

Might need someone with a good understanding of this stuff to butt in,
though.

Cheers,
Paul

--
:wq

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Josh Berkus <josh(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:
>
> As such, I propose that we fund this effort using $10,000 out of our
> general SPI funds.

Speaking as a donor (over the last few years, I have directed about $1,200
of my small company's donations to the SPI general fund), I think this would
be an excellent use of SPI resources.

Pace Willisson
pace(at)alum(dot)mit(dot)edu

On 05/02/2013 12:34 PM, Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 11:21:41AM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> [...]
>> As such, I propose that we fund this effort using $10,000 out of our
>> general SPI funds. I think this is a good idea because:
> [...]
>
> Seems like quite a good idea to me. I've read the Conservancy page and agree
> something like this is sorely needed, including by SPI, but doesn't exist yet.
> The suggested amount even seems reasonable given how much it would help us
> scale to the benefit of all associated projects and the few alternative uses
> for our general reserves.

There is open source accounting software. LedgerSMB, Tryton, GnuCash...

Why are we reinventing the wheel? If we want to support better NPO
integration doesn't it make sense to start with that?

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. - http://www.commandprompt.com/
PostgreSQL Support, Training, Professional Services and Development
High Availability, Oracle Conversion, Postgres-XC
@cmdpromptinc - 509-416-6579

> There is open source accounting software. LedgerSMB, Tryton, GnuCash...
>
> Why are we reinventing the wheel? If we want to support better NPO
> integration doesn't it make sense to start with that?

Please read the page I linked to. It explains these things.

--Josh

Agreed. In the past I had mentioned Apache's Open for Business project.
It does fairly sophisticated accounting as well as multi-facility
inventory management, customer relationship management, tracking project
hours and manufacturing line control. For actual small to medium size
businesses, the ledger is just a part of the problem.

I think one of the largest gaps for new businesses, especially
non-technical ones, is understanding how to get started. Having a LiveCD
with an easy installer that gave you an accounting appliance with one of
these systems could be a big aid. The software is already there, its the
training and packaging that are the big gap. This is why companies like
Quickbooks and Microsoft are able to sell a fairly expensive product
even though there are Free Software equivalents. A "Mom and Pop"
sandwich shop needs something that they can turn on and use.

On 05/02/2013 03:24 PM, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> There is open source accounting software. LedgerSMB, Tryton, GnuCash...
>
> Why are we reinventing the wheel? If we want to support better NPO
> integration doesn't it make sense to start with that?

Hi,

On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 01:24:21PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >Seems like quite a good idea to me. I've read the Conservancy page and agree
> >something like this is sorely needed, including by SPI, but doesn't exist yet.
> >The suggested amount even seems reasonable given how much it would help us
> >scale to the benefit of all associated projects and the few alternative uses
> >for our general reserves.
>
> There is open source accounting software. LedgerSMB, Tryton, GnuCash...
>
> Why are we reinventing the wheel? If we want to support better NPO
> integration doesn't it make sense to start with that?

They are doing what you suggest. The proposal explains how they're going to
evaluate several existing options and enhance one of them. None of the free
options, or even the proprietary ones, nicely handle the use case which
Conservancy and SPI both need, but of course they can be modified to do so.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 04:10:47PM -0500, Ean Schuessler wrote:
> Agreed. In the past I had mentioned Apache's Open for Business project.
> It does fairly sophisticated accounting as well as multi-facility
> inventory management, customer relationship management, tracking project
> hours and manufacturing line control. For actual small to medium size
> businesses, the ledger is just a part of the problem.

The needs of a NPO are quite different than those of a for-profit business such
as OfB might help, especially a fiscal sponsor like either SPI or Conservancy.
The key difference is a large number of temporarily restricted accounts (for
Conservancy) or earmarks whose purposes we need to respect (for SPI). The
financial statements are also different. Further, most of what you listed
amongst OfB's features are irrelevant to fiscal sponsors like SPI, while of
course they're useful for other businesses.

Quickbooks and Microsoft's equivalents, by the way, don't handle this well
either, though NPOs usually muddle through as best they can. Conservancy is not
reinventing the wheel - they're modifying existing wheels to handle our
weather.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

On May 2, 2013, at 2:21 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:

> The Software Freedom Conservancy is proposing to fund the efforts of a
> full-time software developer to create NPO accounting software which
> will be completely open source and free. SPI could really use such
> software.
>
> https://sfconservancy.org/campaign/
>
> As such, I propose that we fund this effort using $10,000 out of our
> general SPI funds.

Speaking as an associated project, this seems like a great way to use the funds generated in part by the 5% cut taken from project donations. Also, there seems great potential for others amplifying our contribution manifold. Really has the character of a no-brainer to me, frankly.

-hilmar

--
===========================================================
: Hilmar Lapp -:- Durham, NC -:- hlapp at drycafe dot net :
===========================================================

> The needs of a NPO are quite different than those of a for-profit business such
> as OfB might help, especially a fiscal sponsor like either SPI or Conservancy.
> The key difference is a large number of temporarily restricted accounts (for
> Conservancy) or earmarks whose purposes we need to respect (for SPI). The
> financial statements are also different. Further, most of what you listed
> amongst OfB's features are irrelevant to fiscal sponsors like SPI, while of
> course they're useful for other businesses.

For those who don't do accounting, they often thing of "accounting
software" as a single undifferentiated thing. It's not; accounting is
specialized according to the organization that needs to use it. ERP
systems, which are excellent for manufacturers, are all but useless for
law firms, and despite similarites law firm accounting software doesn't
work for other kinds of "time & materials" consultants. And none of it
works for nonprofits. In fact, even within nonprofits, general
charitable foundations, fiscal sponsors, medical NPOs, churches,
performing arts groups and political foundations all have different and
incompatible accounting needs. This project is proposed to only serve
the first two kinds of NPOs/NGOs on that list.

BTW, there used to be a large and diverse ecosystem of proprietary
software for NPO accounting and donor management. However, a single
company, Blackbaud ("the Microsoft of NPO software") bought up all of
the other companies, forcing NPOs nationwide onto its high-priced and
restrictive platform. This is one of the reasons it would be a real
service to open source to have a quality solution out there; NPOs who
don't even care about software freedom would love to have an alternative
to Blackbaud, which can cost over $100,000 in licensing alone, even for
a small nonprofit.

--Josh Berkus

Actually, it sounds a lot like the credit and debit accounts in OFBiz.
These are used for a variety of purposes in businesses. Purchasing
accounts used to restrict departmental budgets, pre-paid cash accounts
for customers to draw against, lines of credit extended to customers,
credit accounts for parts returned to suppliers and so on. Using these
accounts you could not only assign earmark accounts to specific projects
but even allow projects to define budgets for their internal working
groups and define spending limits in advance.

There is some support already for PayPal in OFBiz already so it should
be possible to turn drafts against those accounts into actual payments
to vendors. I know everyone hates PayPal because they are evil and
everything but the reality is that getting ACH support is expensive.
There are some other options like Swipe but they are also proprietary.
Its simply hard to get away from proprietary software in the banking
industry.

I have given some thought to doing a BitCoin integration in OFBiz even
though I don't have a customer for it. Some of Brainfood's
subcontractors might even accept payment that way "just for fun". Its
one of those rainy day projects for sure. The recent BitCoin crash has
definitely given me pause though. Its like keeping your savings in a
highly volatile commodity.

On 05/02/2013 04:34 PM, Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:
> The needs of a NPO are quite different than those of a for-profit business such
> as OfB might help, especially a fiscal sponsor like either SPI or Conservancy.
> The key difference is a large number of temporarily restricted accounts (for
> Conservancy) or earmarks whose purposes we need to respect (for SPI). The
> financial statements are also different. Further, most of what you listed
> amongst OfB's features are irrelevant to fiscal sponsors like SPI, while of
> course they're useful for other businesses.
>
> Quickbooks and Microsoft's equivalents, by the way, don't handle this well
> either, though NPOs usually muddle through as best they can. Conservancy is not
> reinventing the wheel - they're modifying existing wheels to handle our
> weather.

Ean,

Sounds like you should join the mailing list and do an evaluation of
OfBiz for it.

--Josh

Jimmy Kaplowitz <jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org> writes:

> I see they list SPI as an endorser with our
> encouragement to donate and support. It's possible they did this based on
> Bdale's quote as SPI president, but I wouldn't have a problem
> explicitly voting to endorse (I'd obviously vote yes) for more
> emphasis.

I was happy to provide a quote endorsing the project, as it's something
the SPI board has discussed many times over several years and I would
dearly love to see *someone* make forward progress in this area!

I intended to include providing the quote in my report for our next
board meeting. I agree with Josh that SPI should consider offering
funds to support the work, and so including his resolution on the agenda
for next week's meeting would be great.

Bdale

Josh Berkus <josh(at)postgresql(dot)org>
> On 05/02/2013 12:40 PM, Clint Adams wrote:
> > Aside from concerns about a 501(c)3 making an unrestricted donation
> > to another 501(c)3:
>
> It's not an unrestricted donation.

According to their web page: "Donations made are general donations to
the Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc.,"

Doesn't general donation == unrestricted?

That's the only serious problem I have with this idea. Accounting
systems in general are a long-running sore. The co-op is currently
looking at extending Prometeo ERP,
http://code.google.com/p/prometeo-erp/ but we have sadly no spare
workers I can use to do a full published evaluation for quite a while.

Thanks,
--
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/

Hi MJ,

On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 02:01:58PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> > It's not an unrestricted donation.
>
> According to their web page: "Donations made are general donations to
> the Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc.,"
>
> Doesn't general donation == unrestricted?
>
> That's the only serious problem I have with this idea. Accounting
> systems in general are a long-running sore. The co-op is currently
> looking at extending Prometeo ERP,
> http://code.google.com/p/prometeo-erp/ but we have sadly no spare
> workers I can use to do a full published evaluation for quite a while.

Glad you're in support of solving the accounting system issue.

If you read the full bullet point from which you excerpted, it's clear that
they're committing to do this work, but don't want the donations to be legally
unusable if they're insufficiently funded. While I'm not a lawyer, I expect
their committment to use the funds as stated if they can while short of the
goal, and to make a complete good-faith effort if they meet the goal, is as
binding as these things usually are. Certainly they're going to act in good
faith, knowing them.

Even if there is some bizarre set of events where they can't make even slow
useful progress toward the goal and have to repurpose the funds, it's hard to
think of a set of exempt purposes more compatible with SPI's than
Conservancy's. At the very least this makes me quite confident of we won't
violate SPI's outbound transfer restrictions with basically any otherwise legal
donation from our general fund to Conservancy.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 12:43:03PM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> It's not an unrestricted donation.

So you're proposing a restricted donation?

> Right now? Beta-level quality. Maybe even alpha-level. Right now
> we're using a loose collection of ad-hoc software, none of which is
> adequate for our purporses. This adds considerably to Michael's
> workload, and introduces significant delays into his ability to produce
> financial figures for projects.

What I meant was: I don't see any requirements from our end. In fact,
this is the first time I'm hearing about inadequacies in our software
solution rather than in process/workflow. I don't have a clear
understanding of what Conservancy will produce with the donations.
Coupled, those things leave me without an understanding of what
evaluation criteria would be used for SPI to adopt whatever Conservancy's
solution is.

At work (an NPO) we use accounting tools based on hledger. Would
Conservancy's output be useful to us? I have no idea. Would our
tools be useful to SPI? I have no idea. Would $10,000 be spent
better in another way more in line with our remit? I have no
idea.

You and Jimmy seem to be pretty confident about this. Is it just
because you know Bradley or is there concrete information from which
the rest of us would benefit?

> Join the linked mailing list. I already have.

I'm on it.

On 05/03/2013 09:45 AM, Clint Adams wrote:
> On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 12:43:03PM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> It's not an unrestricted donation.
>
> So you're proposing a restricted donation?

Ah, I didn't see the "General Donation" note. I'll need to ask Bradley
about that. I agree that I wouldn't be OK with the $10K being repurposed.

> What I meant was: I don't see any requirements from our end.

Part of the project will be developing requirements, as part of Phase 0.
I will be contributing to that portion, and I suspect others from SPI
will as well.

> In fact,
> this is the first time I'm hearing about inadequacies in our software
> solution rather than in process/workflow.

The SPI Board has, historically, been blissfully ignorant of the burdens
its treasurers labor under. Feel free to interview Michael on the
topic, or Jimmy.

> I don't have a clear
> understanding of what Conservancy will produce with the donations.
> Coupled, those things leave me without an understanding of what
> evaluation criteria would be used for SPI to adopt whatever Conservancy's
> solution is.

I understand your desires, but unless you want to vote additional money
to pay for someone's time to develop written requirements independant of
the Conservancy project, it's not going to happen (it might not happen
even if you do). There are 3 people familiar with the real requirements
of SPI's accounting, and none of us have free time, or we'd already be
working on software.

> At work (an NPO) we use accounting tools based on hledger. Would
> Conservancy's output be useful to us? I have no idea. Would our
> tools be useful to SPI? I have no idea.

Again, it's an open source project, with a development mailing list.
Among other things, your experience based on hledger would be valuable,
as would your contribution to requirements.

That this effort needs to meet the requirements of several existing NPOs
makes it highly probable that it will meet the requirements of a large
group of NPOs who are not directly involved in it.

> Would $10,000 be spent
> better in another way more in line with our remit? I have no
> idea.

I assert that it would not. Especially since that $10K represents money
we have sat on for literally years, and nobody has introduced plans to
spend it any other way.

> You and Jimmy seem to be pretty confident about this. Is it just
> because you know Bradley or is there concrete information from which
> the rest of us would benefit?

Well, this project represents years of conversations with Bradley and
others (from the ASF, PSF, CiviCRM, etc.) on the topic of inadequate
software for NPOs and accounting software. We actually started on this
back in 2008; at the time, I was going to be funded to work on
converting LedgerSMB to LedgerNPO. However, our major funder pulled out
at the last minute and decided to fund a different project which crashed
and burned. The Conservancy and Bradley have been part of the work and
discussions around this for the entire time, since the Conservancy's
accounting needs closely align with SPI's.

--Josh Berkus

On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 10:16:09AM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> > Would $10,000 be spent better in another way more in line with our
> > remit? I have no idea.
>
> I assert that it would not. Especially since that $10K represents
> money we have sat on for literally years, and nobody has introduced
> plans to spend it any other way.

As an example: wouldn't those money (+ a good deal of extra other) be
better spent to pay a professional accountant than in this fund-raising
initiative? I'm convinced that at SPI scale, that would make a real
difference in the quality of service offered to affiliated projects.

Don't get me wrong: I've worked with SPI accountant(s) for many years
and I know they do *a lot* of work. But that doesn't mean they could
scale indefinitely. At some point, given the purpose of SPI, you should
probably question whether accounting is the kind of internal job you
want to keep volunteer or go professional.

That said, I'm torn on this matter. I'm *very* excited by SFC
initiative. I think their goal is laudable, I know how seriously they
work, and that makes me confident that they can be successful with this
initiative and have a real impact on the day-to-day activities of NPOs,
and in particular umbrella organizations like SPI. But that doesn't mean
that *SPI* money are well spent by participating in the fund-raising.

I've only been a "customer" of SPI accounting services, so I might be
missing a lot of details. But from the outside my feelings are very
similar to Clint's: SPI current bottleneck on the accounting front is
more at the level of process/work-flow than at the level of accounting
software. Feel free to disregard this comment of mine if my perception
is wrong.

Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack(at)upsilon(dot)cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

> As an example: wouldn't those money (+ a good deal of extra other) be
> better spent to pay a professional accountant than in this fund-raising
> initiative? I'm convinced that at SPI scale, that would make a real
> difference in the quality of service offered to affiliated projects.

If you look at last month's board meeting, you'll see a rather strident
proposal from me that we hire a new bookkeeper. I think we need to do
that *also*. I agree that that's more important than software we'll get
in a year. Fortunately, we have the money to do *both*.

One of the problems we encounter, though, is that most bookkeepers won't
deal with our wonky ad-hoc system. This puts a lot of ongoing burden on
the volunteer treasurer, and causes the bookkeeper so be less effective.

--Josh Berkus

On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 11:21:41AM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> SPI members:
>
> The Software Freedom Conservancy is proposing to fund the efforts of a
> full-time software developer to create NPO accounting software which
> will be completely open source and free. SPI could really use such
> software.
>
> https://sfconservancy.org/campaign/
>
> As such, I propose that we fund this effort using $10,000 out of our
> general SPI funds. I think this is a good idea because:

Why specifically $10,000 ?

Cheers,
Bill.

On 05/03/2013 09:45 AM, Clint Adams wrote:
> On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 12:43:03PM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> > It's not an unrestricted donation.
> So you're proposing a restricted donation?
>

I talked to Bradley about this. The SFC is willing to consider a
restricted grant from us if that's one of the board's requirements.

--Josh Berkus

Hi Zack,

On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 08:45:27PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> Don't get me wrong: I've worked with SPI accountant(s) for many years
> and I know they do *a lot* of work. But that doesn't mean they could
> scale indefinitely. At some point, given the purpose of SPI, you should
> probably question whether accounting is the kind of internal job you
> want to keep volunteer or go professional.
>
> That said, I'm torn on this matter. I'm *very* excited by SFC
> initiative. I think their goal is laudable, I know how seriously they
> work, and that makes me confident that they can be successful with this
> initiative and have a real impact on the day-to-day activities of NPOs,
> and in particular umbrella organizations like SPI. But that doesn't mean
> that *SPI* money are well spent by participating in the fund-raising.

I agree with everything Josh said in his reply - we should proceed on both
fronts. I'm mainly replying because of the next paragraph:

> I've only been a "customer" of SPI accounting services, so I might be
> missing a lot of details. But from the outside my feelings are very
> similar to Clint's: SPI current bottleneck on the accounting front is
> more at the level of process/work-flow than at the level of accounting
> software. Feel free to disregard this comment of mine if my perception
> is wrong.

Yes, the software workflow available to Michael as Treasurer and Josh as
Assistant Treasurer is very inadequate. The software available formerly to Josh
as Treasurer and especially me as the preceding Treasurer was even more so.
While we need professional bookkeeping help, both their work and the Treasurer
volunteers' work will be much more streamlined with better software.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

+1 in general with the idea.

Based on the 31st Dec 2012 vs 31st Dec 2011 treasurer's reports; SPI's
general funds increased by $11k from $35k to $46k last year, so $10k sounds
like a sensible figure to choose too.

On 4 May 2013 03:16, Josh Berkus <josh(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:

> > What I meant was: I don't see any requirements from our end.
> Part of the project will be developing requirements, as part of Phase 0.
> I will be contributing to that portion, and I suspect others from SPI
> will as well.

It might be helpful to have some "one sentence" requirements/problem
statements as to what's not working at the moment for SPI. I gather at
least one issue is "SPI's bespoke system isn't usable by external
bookkeepers, reducing the work that can be cheaply outsourced by the board."

For comparison, over the last couple of years Linux Australia has switched
to using Xero for its accounting -- it's a New Zealand based, proprietary,
software-as-a-service solution, that partners with banks to make inputting
data fairly easy, and has been a very effective solution, both at making it
easier on the volunteer treasurers involved, and in helping the
organisation scale to do more things. I'm not actually sure if SPI's
mission these days includes something like "promoting free software" per
se, but if so, this seems like an area that definitely needs it, and IMO
would justify the investment, even if SPI's accounting was already working
perfectly. I don't know how much (if anything) they're paying for that; I
think it's included under the ~$5000 of accounting services in the annual
report, but presumably no more than $770 pa based on the prices on Xero's
website. With that basis, a one-off $10k would certainly be a lot to invest
(though not necessarily an unreasonable amount) if the /only/ outcome of
relevance was to be improving SPI's accounting systems.

Cheers,
aj

--
Anthony Towns <aj(at)erisian(dot)com(dot)au>

Jimmy Kaplowitz <jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org>
> If you read the full bullet point from which you excerpted, it's clear that
> they're committing to do this work, but don't want the donations to be legally
> unusable if they're insufficiently funded.

I did read the full bullet point, but didn't think the rest needed
quoting.

The problem is not my reading comprehension. The problem is that the
above reasoning makes no sense to me: if they're committing to do this
work, why do they need the donations to be unrestricted? Surely if
the donations are insufficient funding, they need to add more funds,
not use these funds for other work. We should donate restricted for
the project, not for the outcome, so it'll be usable towards it even
if the total is insufficient.

> Even if there is some bizarre set of events where they can't make even slow
> useful progress toward the goal and have to repurpose the funds, it's hard to
> think of a set of exempt purposes more compatible with SPI's than
> Conservancy's. [...]

I don't trust the Conservancy like I trust SPI. I have a perception
that they're more like a perpetuating trust than an autonomous and
open association, and rather more conservative than liberal. I didn't
find a page about its current purposes or bylaws on its website, but
that may be partly due to my lack of familiarity with US numbered
forms. The form 990 for the latest year only lists the most
significant activities and largest three programmes. The annual
report doesn't show the current purposes or bylaws either.

Please would SPI restrict its donation to this software project?

Regards,
--
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/

MJ,

> The problem is not my reading comprehension. The problem is that the
> above reasoning makes no sense to me: if they're committing to do this
> work, why do they need the donations to be unrestricted? Surely if
> the donations are insufficient funding, they need to add more funds,
> not use these funds for other work. We should donate restricted for
> the project, not for the outcome, so it'll be usable towards it even
> if the total is insufficient.

Yes, there have been a couple of calls for making the grant restricted.
I think that's probably the way we should go ... we'll discuss it at
the Board meeting next week.

--Josh Berkus

On 5/7/2013 1:29 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:
> MJ,
>
>> We should donate restricted for
>> the project, not for the outcome, so it'll be usable towards it even
>> if the total is insufficient.
>
> Yes, there have been a couple of calls for making the grant restricted.
> I think that's probably the way we should go ... we'll discuss it at
> the Board meeting next week.

Don't know if I can make the meeting, but wanted to add my voice as
another SPI Contributing Member in support of this as a restricted
donation. I think it's a great cause and one of the better things we
can do with the SPI cash we have!

--Joe

Hi,

On 3 May 2013 04:21, Josh Berkus <josh(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:
> The Software Freedom Conservancy is proposing to fund the efforts of a
> full-time software developer to create NPO accounting software which
> will be completely open source and free. SPI could really use such
> software.
> https://sfconservancy.org/campaign/
> As such, I propose that we fund this effort using $10,000 out of our
> general SPI funds. I think this is a good idea because: [...]

Did anything happen with this? I got the impression there was general
support for it on the list, but don't see a resolution to actually do
it on
http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/resolutions/

According to the link above, they got almost $54k of their desired
$75k and have started work. Looks like there's some preliminary
results available at http://npoacct.sfconservancy.org/

FWIW, at linux.conf.au last month, the Linux Australia council
reported donating $1300 to the project, matching their costs for the
proprietary cloud solution they're currently using.

Cheers,
aj

--
Anthony Towns <aj(at)erisian(dot)com(dot)au>

On 02/15/2014 12:06 PM, Anthony Towns wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 3 May 2013 04:21, Josh Berkus <josh(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:
>> The Software Freedom Conservancy is proposing to fund the efforts of a
>> full-time software developer to create NPO accounting software which
>> will be completely open source and free. SPI could really use such
>> software.
>> https://sfconservancy.org/campaign/
>> As such, I propose that we fund this effort using $10,000 out of our
>> general SPI funds. I think this is a good idea because: [...]
>
> Did anything happen with this? I got the impression there was general
> support for it on the list, but don't see a resolution to actually do
> it on
> http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/resolutions/

It was approved, but I don't know that anyone ever transferred the
money. Since I most likely would have been the one to transfer the
funds, and I haven't, I suspect that they haven't gone anywhere.

Board?

--Josh Berkus

On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 04:59:28PM -0500, Josh Berkus wrote:
> On 02/15/2014 12:06 PM, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 3 May 2013 04:21, Josh Berkus <josh(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:
> >> The Software Freedom Conservancy is proposing to fund the efforts of a
> >> full-time software developer to create NPO accounting software which
> >> will be completely open source and free. SPI could really use such
> >> software.
> >> https://sfconservancy.org/campaign/
> >> As such, I propose that we fund this effort using $10,000 out of our
> >> general SPI funds. I think this is a good idea because: [...]
> >
> > Did anything happen with this? I got the impression there was general
> > support for it on the list, but don't see a resolution to actually do
> > it on
> > http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/resolutions/
>
> It was approved, but I don't know that anyone ever transferred the
> money. Since I most likely would have been the one to transfer the
> funds, and I haven't, I suspect that they haven't gone anywhere.
>
> Board?

This came up at the meeting this week; we had received some suggested
wording from legal counsel to accompany the donation that would ensure
we were acting within our charter, but we hadn't got as far as passing
this on to the SFC to confirm they were ok with it. I did so a couple of
days ago and assuming they're happy with the text we expect to make
progress shortly.

The vote for the donation wasn't presented as a resolution, but was
dealt with back in August last year:

www.spi-inc.org/meetings/minutes/2013/2013-08-08/

J.

--
If I could, I would, but I can't, so I won't.