On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 21:46:20 -0500
Michael <mb_trinity_desktop(a)inet-design.com> wrote:
On Wednesday 22 April 2020 07:46:27 pm David C. Rankin
wrote:
I haven't checked if TDE has any formal
organization behind it that was
created in the past few years, but if not, doing a quick non-profit may
make sense.
Probably the best way with Tim 'owning' the non-profit.
In theory, we should probably incorporate, but this introduces accounting and
tax-reporting requirements we haven't had to deal with up to this point.
Still, we should move away from any single person being solely responsible for
managing funds and resources—that's why we have a problem in the
first place.
==========
You would be surprised. Many of the business forms S-Corp, LLC, etc... leave
the formalities up to the officers or members, (In many small businesses, that
means you are lucky if you can find the back of a napkin that contains an
outline of any of the major decisions made...)
Michael is correct regarding the income and profit accounting requirements for
non-profits being a bit more than for a for-profit company, but even there it
is no more than basically keeping a checkbook and showing outflows went to
support the stated purpose of the organization and not a trip to Disney for
one of the members and his kids.
The benefit for TDE is that it would give the organization itself an existence
and allow it to open a checking-account so it could handle the T-shirt type
issues rather than it being some poor soul who has to do that through their
personal checking account.
Being open-source, there isn't a lot of prospect for profits except through
the support side of things (you could always become the Red-Hat of desktop
environments :)
If in the US, you can pick any state and the filing requirements are generally
~$350 to the Secretary of State along with a 1-page form defining the purpose
(which can be "For all legitimate purposes") and takes about 14 days to get
the charter or articles of organization back. Many state SOS have a word or
.pdf fill-in form available for download you can use for creation.
There aren't nearly as many onerous requirements imposed by operating as a
separate entity as you may envision. It is a rather simple way that would put
an official face to TDE and provide an identifiable group of folks that are
the contacts and decision makers for things like the T-shirt issue, and
handling any other of the business like needs for TDE.
Well worth considering.
--
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
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