For those of you unaware, there’s been quite a bit of discussion recently in the US Teams Project about the possibility of starting a non-profit organization, to accept donations and to shield individual LoCo teams of liability; the main conclusion has seemed to be that having users sign waivers is good enough for liability, and that “teams have and are more than able to function without funding and without liability coverage” (see discussion here and here).
In response to this, this blog is going to have a fun recurring theme over the next few months: how Joe spends his money. I’ll be keeping you all updated on all the things I spend out of pocket (or other people chip in) for LoCo Team events, and I’ll accept suggestions for alternative methods which require 0 dollars. I will also be making requests to Canonical to fund all of these needs, and letting you know of the results.
I don’t mean to call people out, start a fight, or sound bitter; I’m quite happy with my team, and its situation. Other teams are attempting to get donations, and this strange notion that LoCo teams don’t need money for anything is holding them back. Let me make this clear: not all locations are donated, not all us of have Google, Sun, or Novell offices in our back yard, and not all of us are willing to have advocacy events in our basements. Not every LoCo Team can survive on t-shirts and CDs alone, and it’s time this is made clear to those who refuse to accept that notion.
I encourage other team leaders in a similar position to also keep us updated on what they’re spending money on. Expect an itemized list for our next event on September 22nd.
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David Thomas | 09-Sep-07 at 10:23 pm | Permalink
I sure understand were this is coming from. I’ve spent about $60.00 out of pocket getting ready for Software Freedom day. The software may be free but the Cd’s sure are not. So how are you going to go about recording your expenses I’m sure interested in your methods.
Also the other day you said I could use something to validate my html and css code. what would be a good one to use.
Tony Yarusso | 10-Sep-07 at 12:28 am | Permalink
I would also be very interested to hear your ideas for good, respectable ways for a LoCo to raise funds if they decided to do so.
amachu | 10-Sep-07 at 2:03 am | Permalink
I have registered my comments here,
http://amachu.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/do-we-need-to-dedicate-time-to-focus-on-money/
joe | 10-Sep-07 at 5:16 am | Permalink
@amachu, in response to your post:
I’m not sure what you’re saying here; do you agree or disagree that there are reasons LoCo teams would need money for advocacy? It seems that you’re proving there are, since you’ve stated you’ve 1) spent money, 2) accepted donations, 3) keep a joint bank account to keep track of those donations.
amachu | 10-Sep-07 at 8:16 am | Permalink
for the time being, in my opinion no special effort is needed to maintain & collect funds.. it happened or came our way and we had a bank account to maintain it we do not put or want to put too big of efforts and time in it now..
joe | 10-Sep-07 at 8:36 am | Permalink
@amachu:
My point is: do LoCo teams have reasons to spend money? Your answer is basically yes, proving my point. I’m not concerned with how important it is to you, or how much effort you put into it; you spend money for legitimate reasons, and also collect money, and there are people who claim that’s unnecessary.
JanC | 10-Sep-07 at 10:57 am | Permalink
We have spent quite a bit of (often personal) money with Ubuntu Belgium too: booths at computer fairs, CD-Rs (Canonical doesn’t send enough CDs to cater to all requests anymore), flyers, banners, transportation, …
One way to keep the personal expenses of volunteers as low as possible has been to ask for voluntary(!) gifts when we are at computer fairs. We also got a couple of other gifts (both money & computer equipment). What we get doesn’t cover all costs but it sure helps…
So, do LoCoTeams need money? I would say: in many cases they do. Do they need a bank account? Well, IMHO it’s better for financial transparancy if they have one, instead of using a personal bank account to hold and transfer community money etc. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to incorporate though–at least not in all countries.
David A. Harding | 10-Sep-07 at 9:35 pm | Permalink
I would like to see you talk to Christer Edwards and see if he is willing to reword his statement that, “the LoCo Project and the US Teams Project, including individual teams, should be able to do their advocacy without the need of funds.”
I think that a small adjustment to that sentence, s/funds/a funds clearinghouse/, would probably better represent Mr. Edwards point and would probably invalidate the reason for your experiment. Then you could both discuss the seemingly-valid issues raised by the rest of the discussion amicably without shoving evidence in his face and telling him he was wrong.
Can you please contact Mr. Edwards and see what he says?
Thanks,
-Dave
The Linux Index » Joe Terranova: A Follow-Up on Touchy Subjects | 11-Sep-07 at 3:49 pm | Permalink
[...] a follow-up to this, I figured I should post to let people know that I will not actually be posting a tally of expenses [...]
Joe Terranova » Blog Archive » A Follow-Up on Touchy Subjects | 11-Sep-07 at 11:23 pm | Permalink
[...] a follow-up to this, I figured I should post to let people know that I will not actually be posting a tally of expenses [...]