On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 21:46:20 -0500 Michael <mb_trinity_desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: trinity-users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: trinity-users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Read list messages on the web archive: http://trinity-users.pearsoncomputing.net/ Please remember not to top-post: http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/mailing_lists/#top-posting
