[OOTB-hive] Becoming a non-profit

[Jeff Potts]

Good info, thanks.

I want to separate this issue from BeeCon as they are related, but not
fully dependent on each other. There are ways the conference can accept and
spend money without requiring The Order to have a formal business entity. I
do not want the conference held up waiting on this. Maybe The Order will
form an entity and, if it does, maybe the conference will leverage it, but
it definitely is not a requirement.

Regarding where the entity should be formed, because most board members
(and membership) are based in Europe, I think it probably makes the most
sense to do something in Europe rather than the US.

Jeff

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 10:55 AM, Richard Esplin <
richard.esplin at alfresco.com> wrote:

> As part of the discussion around BeeCon, I spent a little bit of time
> reading about what it would take to organize Order of the Bee so that it
> could accept money. Here are a few things I found:
>
> * Organizing as a non-profit in the US requires incorporating on the state
> level ($100-ish dollars), and then filing for non-profit status with the
> IRS ($750). It probably requires a few days of paperwork. The IRS rejected
> non-profit applications from a few open source projects two years ago.
>
> * I'm pretty good at filling out this sort of paperwork and willing to
> help out, but I won't be able to look at it until the end of August.
>
> * Germany and Belgium seem promising for organizing as a non-profit around
> open source projects.
>
> * OOTBee can become part of the Software Freedom Conservancy, Software in
> the Public Interest, or another foundation that exists to provide fiscal
> stewardship services to the open source community. But as the community
> organization for a commercial open source project, we might not directly
> fit their mission.
>
> * I think CentOS has needs that are the most similar to ours. It looks
> like currently is it legally affiliated with Red Hat.
>
> * We might be able to get some free legal advice from the Software Freedom
> Law Center, Free Software Foundation, or Free Software Foundation Europe.
>
> * I'll get a sense for whether Alfresco would be willing to help OOTBee
> organize as a non-profit.
>
> * I'll ask around at OSCON this week to see how other projects address
> these issues.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
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