Ask Slashdot: How To Get Open Source Projects To Take Our Money?

New submitter wkaan writes "Last financial year, we had an underspend at work, and it was suggested and agreed that we should give some cash away — $20k to be exact — to open source projects. Four projects were selected. A management catch was that it could not appear to be a donation and it had to be for something we had notionally received in the current financial year. At that time it was early June, our financial year finishes at the end of June. The four projects were emailed using the most relevant looking contact address on their website. Often this was 'Finance' or 'Donations' contact. What do you know, none of the projects that were contacted could work out a way to accept our money. We were unable to give a cent of the twenty grand away, not even a cent. All somebody needed to do was invoice us for something (perhaps 'support' or whatever) and they'd have received $5000. Of the projects contacted, two never replied to our mail — perhaps they thought it a scam? The other two contacted couldn't work out what to invoice and just went away. Is open source too rich to need the money? Have you got a funny donation story? Better still, do you have a way this can be streamlined when we have our next underspend? The goal was not to have a funny (sad) story, but to support the projects that support our business." For those of you with open source projects for which would you would like to take donations but sometimes cannot, what complications get in the way?

Comments

Try actually donating?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your company seems to have a problem understanding what 'donate' means.

Re:Try actually donating?

[gstoddart]

Why was it important to management that the money be earmark for a specific invoiceâableâ item?

Likely because of how companies do their accounting.

You've got your capital budget, your operating budget, approved projects, and who knows what else (not an accountant).

The company trying to make the 'donation' needed to keep it within the same bucket and needed the potential recipients to give them an invoice.

In this case, it was "we'd like to 'give' you money, but it needs to look like on your side like you billed us for something". And generally when someone needs you to account for something in a special way, you might need to ask if you can (or should) actually do that without causing yourself problems.

And if I'm a charity and someone says "we'd like to donate, but can you make it look like you sold us a car instead" -- my first impulse is going to be a little wary of that deal. Because, it's no longer a donation, it's money being disguised as something else, and the recipient potentially gets themselves into legal trouble by trying to do that.

So, you try calling the Red Cross and say you'd like to donate $1 million, but they need to make it look like they sold you an island you could get the same problem. They didn't sell you an island, and as much as that $1 million might be shiny, needing to stay strictly within the rules means you might just have to say "if you want to donate $1 million, awesome, but we can't do magic accounting to make it look like something else".

Varnish Moral Licence

[beebware]

Did you consider buying a Varnish Moral Licence ?

Budgets, not tax. Jeez.

[damacus]

"Dodging" tax laws has a negative connotation. Tax laws related to donations *benefit* companies generally as write-offs. I think your post was unfair and presumptuous as to the original poster's intentions.

I don't think the original poster's intentions / considerations had anything to do with tax laws and instead are directly relevant to financial budgets, hinted at by the "underspend" part. Budgets are different from a wallet or general corporate account. You don't want to get into dealings with the administration on misappropriation of budgeted funds.

As far as misappropriations are concerned: if your underspend is on a 'services' or 'software' category, and you use a lot of open source software, it isn't necessarily a misappropriation of funds (and the spirit of the account) to help ensure the projects on which your company depends stay in good health. The groups could've sold a $5,000 consultation or Support Meeting and just talked about how the org. used the software in question and had a chance to present ideas to them. And then at the end of the call or meeting, the project is $5K richer.

TL;DR large organizations that may have money to spend sometimes need some flexibility.