[OOTB-hive] Becoming a non-profit

[El Gigantes]

Hi Bees
I am in agreement with Jeff that this should be thought about of in Europe as this is where most of our members are situated, I will however caution against registering the order as a business entity of any sort as that would require much paper work that I am not sure we can commit to at this time. We would need to be registered within a nation’s border (address an’ all) and our activities cross border may/would also incur unnecessary legal and bureaucratic work every time we would want to do something e.g. BeeCon. Unless, that is, we choose to ground ourselves officially within one border.  I am of the belief that this is too early to take on right now. At least not until we have our first BeeCon, such that we can have an idea as to what it takes to get it off the ground to begin with.

Lanre Abiwon
_________________________________________
If you do things right, people won’t know that you’ve done anything at all.

> On 21 Jul 2015, at 01:05, Boriss Mejias <tchorix at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> Heiko Robert already discussed the idea of having the Order of the Bee registered as a legal entity, He knows a lot about how important is this in Germany, so he might have good insights on this. 
> 
> I'm actually really bad on these kind of tasks, so even though I'm Chair of the Gov committee, I prefer not to be involved in the tasks of this project. I will follow up and comment, but I rather not take the responsibility of carrying associated task.
> 
> I will certainly concentrate my energy on the organization of BeeCon.
> 
> cheers
> Boriss
> 
> On 20 July 2015 at 20:52, Tahir Malik <tahir.malik at contezza.nl <mailto:tahir.malik at contezza.nl>> wrote:
> I Agree with Jeff,
> 
> In Europe it's not needed to be a registered company to receive or spend money. Sure it's easier. And even to become one is in most countries just to file a paper pay about 100€ and you're done.
> 
> So I also think we should do this related to Beecon, but with it also comes a great amount of administrative tasks which we'll need to perform. In case we have an accountancy company which files the tax files, then we need a yearly income to cover the costs.
> 
> This is sure possible by doing a Beecon yearly but it's an extra headache we'll have.
> 
> Have a good weekend!
> Tahir Malik
> From: Jeff Potts <mailto:jeffpotts01 at gmail.com>
> Sent: ‎20/‎07/‎2015 20:34
> To: Richard Esplin <mailto:richard.esplin at alfresco.com>
> Cc: Order of the Bee <mailto:ootb-hive at xtreamlab.net>
> Subject: Re: [OOTB-hive] Becoming a non-profit
> 
> 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 <mailto: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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