[kde-usa] Discussion with SFC lawyer

[Jeff Mitchell]

On 05/29/2012 11:53 AM, Steve Hay wrote:
> I've removed the board from my response, just to reduce chatter back
> and forth from them.  Your conversation below was a rather interesting
> one.
> 
> One thing that struck me is that a lighter-weight presence here might
> be advantageous from a cost perspective. I do not know the legalities,
> but what if there is a simple way to just forward all contributions to
> the EV? This would be a rather lightweight non-profit and could

Old post, but answering for the record:

We asked the SFC about this a long time ago. In fact, wanting to do
exactly this is what kept things stalled for a year while they looked
into the possibilities of doing that (in the time that they had to look
at it, natch). Basically, it's problematic. IIRC it's problematic for
both an umbrella organization with an associated project wanting to do
that, and for any non-profit wanting to do that.

I think the reason was that you have to be able to show your
expenditures are consistent with what's allowed for a non-profit. For
instance, non-profits can spend money on their own organization, and for
salaries, and toward their mission statement, but they can't just spend
money on anything they want.

Think of it like this: if this was allowable, you'd have major companies
donating huge swaths of money to a non-profit that they set up which
would send the money to an overseas "non-profit" -- which Uncle Sam
doesn't really trust because it has no oversight with overseas corporations.

I believe if we wanted to do that the only chance we'd actually have
would be under an umbrella, since it would be a smaller percentage of
their expenditures. But it's problematic for them, too.

--Jeff

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