On Thu, Dec 08, 2005 at 09:24:19PM -0800, Jared Buck wrote:
Marcello Perathoner wrote on 07/12/2005, 10:21 AM:
What about a small writeup for the donations page that tells people what we do with their money?
That's not a bad idea, Marcello. People do like to know where their donations go to, and for what purpose. It's great that more people are donating, even if they only donate a small amount.
Sure.... we do an annual balance sheet, but it's not that inspiring or informative. I'd list these items as "typical expenses:" - paying our 1/4-time office staff - sustaining our CD & DVD giveaways, by reimbursing volunteers for supplies and postal expenses - colocation and occasional expansion of our servers (pglaf.org and pgdp.net) - costs of doing business, including an annual accountant's fiscal review (we don't have enough money to require a real audit), not-for-profit registration in states that require it, and a few other federal and state bureaucratic necessities - reimbursing individuals for some books, nearly all of which go to Distributed Proofreaders. Our main rule is to not pay more than about $1 per printed book. Many individuals donate books without seeking reimbursement, too Some of the expenses we don't incur are: - legal expenses, other than our accountant. Our lawyers are volunteers - travel expenses, except rarely. Instead, volunteers work wherever they are, and we communicate via email - fundraising expenses, including purchasing mailing lists, sending giveaways, and so forth. We hope to have some sort of t-shirt or coffee mug that people can buy, someday, but keep devoting most of our efforts to making new eBooks - copyright research. We do all our own, using volunteer copyright experts - software, other than occasionally helping an active volunteer with OCR software. Our Web sites and content rely on home-grown and free open source software - office space and equipment. We're decentralized, and own very little equipment: a few page-fed scanners, a few servers, and not much else - board of directors salaries: they're all volunteers, too