Re: donation : money : small amount : recurring

[Jelle Hermsen <jelle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 07/02/2012 12:17 PM, Siju George wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Juan Francisco Cantero Hurtado
> <iam@juanfra.info>  wrote:
>> For deduce taxes from donations, the dragonfly project needs create a
>> non-profit organization and this is something complex and time
>> consuming.
>>
> OpenBSD project hesitated for a long time due to the same reason. The
> I guess developer Bob Beck to the initnksative to start the OpenBSD
> foundation. If some body needs info on how to do this I guess he might
> be able to help.
>
> Thanks
>
> Siju
I think there are two important distinctions to make here. First the 
OpenBSD foundation is based in Canada, and secondly they are not a 
registered charity because of the paperwork and overhead this would 
cause. Being a non-profit doesn't automatically make your donations 
tax-deductible. In our case this would mean, on top of starting a 
non-profit, we would need to apply for 501(c)(3) 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501%28c%29_organization#501.28c.29.283.29> status. 
Regarding the paperwork and administration, starting a non-profit is 
relatively easy, and achieving and maintaining a charitable status is hard.

However if we just started a non-profit we could start accepting 
donations without an individual (i.e. Matthew Dillon) being personally 
responsible for the taxes, potentially creating a difficult bookkeeping 
situation for him solely.

We could just start a non-profit so we can start accept donations right 
now and get to tax-deductibility later on. I'm not an American citizen 
(I'm Dutch), but if we do decide to start a non-profit I would be more 
that willing to help sort everything out.

Cheers,
Jelle