On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 08:54:14PM +0100, Marcello Perathoner wrote:
Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
why would p.g. want to go into the ad-selling business?
Why would PG want to collect donations?
We spend our money on just a few things. Our fiscal year runs July - June, and we get an annual audit (which also costs money!) 1. CD/DVD giveaways. This was about $10000 in the prior fiscal year. We reimburse volunteers for media & mailing costs; many recipients choose to make a donation after getting their CD/DVD, so this project is largely self-sustaining. 2. States compliance. This will be reduced, since we no longer have enough planned income to justify it - but since 2001, we've tried to follow the often-onerous (sometimes easy) not-for-profit fundraising guidelines from all fifty US states. 3. Office management and related compliance & activities. This is the Wingates shared 1/4 time salary to open the mail, deal with our bank, occasionally field phone calls, and work on #2. 4. Buy books. We reimburse a few bookbuyers who channel into DP, at an average cost of < $1/book. 5. Support DP & PGLAF systems & hosting, occasional scanners & supplies. For example, hosting for DP's colocated server is about $1100/year. 6. Pay Michael. This hasn't happened in a few years, because his target salary is a lot more than all of the above...in order to pay Michael, we'd need him (or someone else) to do some successful fundraising. So, this is a theoretical budget item. We *always* encourage people to seek fundraising opportunities, because there are always some projects we'd like to grow (like the giveaways) or start. But such people should check with me before getting started, since there are some guidelines to follow (partially for our not-for-profit status, partially to keep "on mission"). There's no way we could ever pay for the hugely valuable volunteer labor, so the $50,000/year or so we've lived on for the past few years has been plenty to sustain core production activities. -- Greg