Fundraising

This page is provisional, and the following declarations are not appoved by the OSGeo board.

The foundation will require funding for infrastructure (internet servers + bandwidth), promotion, administrative and legal expenses. The foundation may hire a part-time or full-time staff member as executive director. It is also hoped that the foundation can collect and administer money to support work on foundation projects.

To collect that funding there will be a Fund Raising Committee, and a series of fund raising initiatives. It is currently expected that the majority of foundation funding will come from a sponsorship program.

Individual Donations

It is anticipated that the foundation will be a 501(c)3 charitable corporation in the USA. This allows US individuals to donate money to the foundation and write it off on their taxes as a charitable donation. Citizens from other countries would not get the same tax deduductability, and it is not planned that the foundation would setup similar corporations in other countries due to the legal overhead to do so.

While such individual donations are welcome, and will be put to good use. However, time and effort spent on commmittee work, development, documentation, testing, user support, and advocacy are the preferred form of contribution from individuals.

Conference

The foundation will operate an annual conference starting in 2007, following up on the FOSS4G conference. Conferences can be money making ventures, but putting on a broad and well attended conference is also seen as one of the primary goals of the foundation for it's community building, and promotional benefits. So current plans are that the foundation should aim for a roughly revenue neutral conference.

Note that the conferences have traditionally solicited conference sponsors, and are expected to continue doing so.

Other

A few other ideas that have been suggested.

• Selling swag like tee-shirts, mugs, etc.
• Selling CDs with pre-built software.
• Charging membership fees.
• Submitting grant applications to other charitable foundations or governments.
• Providing contract development services (seen as conflicting with the charitable status of the foundation, and in direct competition with consulting organizations).