Fred

My ‘ich’ is that it is hard to support efforts such as Debian for example, because from a donor’s perspective, there is too much fragmentation. I want to support other efforts as well and this means going through recurring donation steps for each single organization. That is why I started Donorge. But at the same time it helps the receiving organizations, because they enable easier funding and helping each other.

It’s not spam here, just on-topic. You might want to look at Donorge sometime, it’s pretty new at the moment, but already very complete. It’s GPL itself as well.

Another concern is, does physical location matter ?

I have run my own business before and is semi-retired for the moment spending my time mainly on tweaking debian and hopefully I can one day deliver some back office operation to small business/non-profit organizations.

I hope that support for this will materialize. It would help us out a lot.

It is an enormous help to pay someone to keep the dull paperwork and other dull items in order. That’s what money is for, to ensure attention is paid to a dull but important activity. It admittedly can be a challenge to pay for such a person and attention.

Usually non-profit associations handle this by having dues, and members, and the opportunity to donate significantly more to sustain the organization. Generally, if a membership association can’t keep their affairs in order–minimally to maintain a list of interested people (members), it will collapse. So members are often very motivated to sustain and pay for such activity. For example: if there are 1,000 members and they each pay $25 to keep the association going, that amounts to $25,000 to have someone attend to the dull work and mail, operate an office, have archival file cabinets, pay nominal legal expenses, deal with corporate filings, and other archival ephemera. (Even if every scrap of paper is scanned into a paperless non-physical office, someone has to properly manage this dull process.)

I haven’t a clue how SPI/Debian funds its corporate and operational necessities. But it seems to me there are a lot of entities and individuals have a strong interest in SPI/Debian’s continued good health and corporate and board well being, so it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out how to have a revenue stream that will sustain its humble operations.

Someone serving as an assistant to the board is invaluable.
Perhaps titled as “office manager,” to deal with:
-mail,
-forms,
-keep copies of everything,
-perhaps pay approved bills, under the supervision/authority of the treasuerer
-to be a pest when the officers fail to:
— sign papers, file forms,
— respond to requests to coordinate or set dates,
— follow up on the failure of a committee or boarm member to report their activity
and so on…
-as well as keeping track of additional items delegated by the board

An office manager is the typical method to further these tasks, and this person can be priceless if he or she stays involved for 5 to 10 years, and has seen and knows the history of what’s been done, and how its been done, and what has and has not worked.

As an organization gets bigger, an “office manager” tends to be transformed into an “executive director,” a title that reflects the increased authority delegated to that position by the board.