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Re: [Gnu-arch-users] NPO Time?


From: Andrew Suffield
Subject: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] NPO Time?
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:59:27 +0000
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1+cvs20040105i

On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 09:45:28AM -0800, Tom Lord wrote:
> * How much money do you need?
> 
>   I was hoping you'd ask that.
> 
>   Unfortunately, the honest answer has to be: "Uh....I'm not sure."

I was actually going to ask "Do you know?", 'cause I suspected that
you don't.

>   Fees for filing for NPO status are pretty cheap.

I think you've underestimated it a little. In total, in the US, you're
going to need a few thousand dollars to do the administrative stuff
(varies depending on state).

This might not be the best time to sink that much money into a
startup.

>   Recruiting executives and seed funding?   I'm not an expert in those
>   matters.   I can only (wildly) guess -- so I won't.   Other
>   successful NPOs have grown from pretty small seeds, though setting a
>   record in that regard isn't one of my goals.

Since you want it to do actual, practical work, I'd say that you'd
need $50k-100k seed money, for initial capital expenses, and you'll
either need people who will take an IOU in lieu of salary or some form
of regular revenue on top of that.

That's assuming you can make do on a shoestring budget for at least a
few months. These things *eat* money at the very start, and most of
it goes on irrelevant crap that you wouldn't even think of, not
anything really germane to the objectives.

Unlike a regular corporation, it wouldn't have the option of taking
out a hefty loan. That's how most startups do it, that don't take
venture capital.

[I don't have any direct experience in this stuff, but my uncle does,
so I have a general idea what is involved.]


You might want to make a temporary arrangement with an existing
organisation, like the FSF or SPI, to handle arch for now. That way
you get tax-free donations and payment systems that won't make
corporations scream and run away (they really hate personal cheques
and paypal), without having to wait.

Collecting enough money to set up something like this is not going to
happen in the short term. Think months, maybe years, depending on the
sort of contributions you get and how much you personally drain from
the fund in that time. (It's not unreasonably optimistic to think that
you could get it up and running by the end of the year, but not in 1Q
and probably not in 2Q either)

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
 `. `'                          |
   `-             -><-          |

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