[Noisebridge-board] fiscal sponsorship

Thu Aug 1 19:50:31 UTC 2013

Sounds great! (And lack of bandwidth is a totally acceptable state for NB
wrt this, especially considering all the recent hullabaloo) Thanks. I'll
continue with you offlist.

mediumreality.com
On Jul 31, 2013 8:59 PM, "Danny O'Brien" <danny at spesh.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 11:19 AM, rachel lyra hospodar
> <rachelyra at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have had connections with IAM for many years, and have longstanding
> > connection with their 'leader', who incidentally is the guy who I talked
> > into taking on sponsorship of that LED project.
> >
>
> So I think the most realistic position here is that I personally am
> really not in the position right now to commit to doing anything much
> beyond trying to automate what treasury business we have. My lack of
> replyage in this thread is a bit of a giveaway for that, too. The
> conclusion I came to with Sudo Room was that (partly because of that)
> it wasn't a good fit to umbrella other groups in.
>
> I'm still up for an informal drink and chat about this though -- would
> you want to come over to Liz and ours?
>
> d.
>
>
> > I've run a small business or four, launched dozens of collaborative
> > projects, and admittedly haven't spent a lot of time going down the
> > nonprofit route, although each time I have done lots of reading,
> learning,
> > even attending workshops around business structures etc. My personal
> feeling
> > as an artist and organizer is that i'd like to make a profit, and I don't
> > usually take in enough money to need big tax breaks.
> >
> > This particular project, oaktown hall, is being bootstrapped in such an
> > intrinsically anarchic and doocratic fashion that it seems like a good
> > culture fit with noisebridge.  The folks involved feel this way too.
> Overall
> > it would be a very different thing to seek a relationship with an
> > organization that had leaders, as well as more structure and
> infrastructure.
> >
> > Nobody wants anyone to take on work they don't want to do.  Danny did
> offer
> > to meet with me... I don't even want to waste his time that far if folks
> > don't think the relationship is a good idea.
> >
> > One of the reasons I got involved in the noisetor planning when that was
> > launching was to try and make sure there weren't any surprises later due
> to
> > the intricacies of fiscal sponsorship. It was probably more annoying to
> > folks than anything else to have me involved, since I wasn't doing the
> work
> > on the project myself, but ultimately I felt like I was able to
> contribute
> > to building a smooth process.
> >
> > I am willing to do that again, with more actual involvement on my part
> since
> > i'd be bottomlining the project. I am aware that creating a new financial
> > hiccup would automatically impact the treasurer. I am interested in
> working
> > together with them to make sure this is at an acceptable level.
> >
> > Thanks for sharing your research liz!
> >
> > R.
> >
> > On Jul 30, 2013 11:02 AM, "Liz Henry" <lizhenry at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Aside from whether we *should* do this...
> >>
> >> Whoever actually does the work for this will need to read up on what it
> >> takes and what kind s of extra reporting should happen (both to
> Noisebridge
> >> and from Noisebridge).  I don't know what we currently do for Noisetor
> or
> >> whether we take a percentage of their donations.
> >>
> >> *
> >>
> http://www.tides.org/fileadmin/user/NNFS/NNFS-Fiscal-Sponsorship-Guidelines-for-Comprehensive.pdf
> >>
> >> * http://www.councilofnonprofits.org/fiscal-sponsorship-resources
> >> *
> >>
> http://www.tides.org/fileadmin/user/NNFS/NNFS-Fiscal-Sponsorship-Guidelines-for-Comprehensive.pdf
> >>
> >> It is a bunch of extra work.  Is anyone stepping up to do that work?  If
> >> not then we should not load it onto the treasurer job and just expect
> it to
> >> happen.
> >>
> >> School Factory seems to be an organization specifically to be the fiscal
> >> sponsor for other hackerspaces and projects. They take 10% of donations,
> >> which as I understand it is rather high for the non-profit fiscal
> sponsoring
> >> world. They pay out around 45K in salaries and they spend money on
> >> accountants, promotion, travel, and so on.  I had been looking into how
> they
> >> do things a while back. For example they have a quarterly process that
> looks
> >> like this (at least when they have staff for it... I think this person
> quit.
> >> )   https://atrium.schoolfactory.org/spacefed/node/108300      You can
> also
> >> take a look at their Form 990 from last year:
> >>
> https://atrium.schoolfactory.org/sites/atrium.schoolfactory.org/files/school_factory_-_990_-_2012.pdf
> >> My point here is that they do (and pay for ) a really significant
> amount of
> >> work to maintain this sort of thing.  And I am not actually assured
> they are
> >> doing it right and ethically, even so.
> >>
> >> Rachel what about Independent Arts and Media for your fiscal sponsor?
> >> Have you checked them out?
> >>
> >> - Liz
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 10:33 AM, rachel lyra hospodar
> >> <rachelyra at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On rereading I think it might be also helpful to spell out that 'fiscal
> >>> sponsorship' is a term of art for nonprofit accounting that does not
> mean
> >>> 'giving money to' but rather can mean a lot of different types of
> >>> relationships where a project is in some way brought under the legal
> >>> umbrella of the parent org.
> >>>
> >>> R.
> >>>
> >>> On Jul 30, 2013 10:31 AM, "rachel lyra hospodar" <rachelyra at gmail.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Perhaps I haven't been clear about my goals or intent. Some folks I
> know
> >>>> are doing a project to raise funds. They plan to raise those funds,
> >>>> themselves, crowdsource. We are seeking to extract if anything,
> previously
> >>>> executed administrative labor from noisebridge (ie nonprofit status),
> and in
> >>>> return wish to share a percentage of the money they raise with NB. I
> am
> >>>> volunteering to bridge the admin gap with labor, and expect to need
> danny
> >>>> (our current treasurer right?) to need to do some extra work as well.
> The
> >>>> only way noisebridge would be financially involved would be to handle
> >>>> *additional* money raised in another community, and take 5%. At this
> point
> >>>> 'handle the money' means not in an ongoing fashion, but for one finite
> >>>> crowdsource campaign, where as I understand it basically NB would
> receive a
> >>>> lump sum (raised exclusively by this project), one time, and then
> give most
> >>>> of it back to the OTH project, keeping 5%.
> >>>>
> >>>> Does NB fiscally sponsor any projects? Is a big question.
> >>>>
> >>>> This may not be the project to answer it with, but I guess I am more
> >>>> generally curious about this since I understood it to be part of the
> >>>> mission.
> >>>>
> >>>> I remember talking someone out of seeking fiscal sponsorship for his
> LED
> >>>> project a year or so ago, because he needed a bunch of help and also
> had a
> >>>> relationship with another org that was more used to doing this. Tom
> was
> >>>> involved in this discussion, and it was on the mailing list and in a
> >>>> meeting. It would have been way faster to just tell him no, instead of
> >>>> spending a bunch of time talking the guy from that other org into
> >>>> restructuring the relationship with LED guy so his org did all the
> work,
> >>>> instead of us.
> >>>>
> >>>> If we simply don't do fiscal sponsorship that's way easier! But
> again, I
> >>>> have thought that this is a thing we do for some time. Not often, but
> >>>> possible. Only for certain types of projects? Ie technical
> infrastructure
> >>>> that fits under the roof and has 4 members to bottomline it? Projects
> where
> >>>> core membership trusts the bottomline folks to actually execute?
> >>>>
> >>>> R.
> >>>>
> >>>> On Jul 30, 2013 3:54 AM, "Andy Isaacson" <adi at hexapodia.org> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 09:57:09AM -0700, rachel lyra hospodar wrote:
> >>>>> > I realize that a lot of my reasoning relates to, why this idea, why
> >>>>> > right
> >>>>> > now, and I realize the general objection is broader than that. I
> >>>>> > support
> >>>>> > the idea of noisebridge fiscally sponsoring projects beyond what
> can
> >>>>> > physically fit under its roof. One of the reasons I pushed for
> >>>>> > creating
> >>>>> > structure with the tor project was so folks could springboard on
> what
> >>>>> > was
> >>>>> > already done to reuse it at other times for other projects. Perhaps
> >>>>> > if that
> >>>>> > capability/structure exists for sponsoring certain kinds of
> projects,
> >>>>> > let's
> >>>>> > spell out what kinds.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I strongly opposed using noisetor as a vehicle for "cracking open the
> >>>>> nut" of "how to extract money from noisebridge", and I still do.  It
> is
> >>>>> hard to get Noisebridge to spend money.  This is a feature.  Please
> do
> >>>>> not try to build ways for people to more easily extract money from
> >>>>> Noisebridge.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> -andy
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Board mailing list
> >>> Board at lists.noisebridge.net
> >>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/board
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >> .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
> >> Liz Henry
> >> lhenry at mozilla.com
> >> lizhenry at gmail.com
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Board mailing list
> >> Board at lists.noisebridge.net
> >> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/board
> >>
> >
>
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