[tor] Noisebridge Tor Project test donations

[Michael C. Toren]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 10:05, Michael C. Toren <mct at toren.net> wrote:
> Hey Kelly,
>
> Andy, aestetix, and I are sitting here at CCCamp, and starting to setup
> http://tor.noisebridge.net so we can accept donations for the Noisebridge
> Tor Project.  I just sent a $1 test through, to see if we have the PayPal
> layer setup properly, and in such a way that you can track it properly in
> Xero.  When you have a moment, can you please have a look, and let us know
> if it looks like how you'd like it to, so that you can track the earmarked
> donations?

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 08:29:45PM -0700, Noisebridge Treasurer wrote:
> Can we cc the tor project mailing list or something here?

Certainly!  That's a good idea.  cc'd.

> So here's the deal... At present, there's no way for me to differentiate
> tor donations from other ones like... at all. Xero doesn't import any of
> the fields that would help us differentiate them. So until we migrate to
> another accounting system I will have to look up every donation to check
> if it is a tor donation or not.  Meaning that you have to email
> treasurer@ every time you guys get a donation via paypal. You'll also
> have to keep a log somewhere so that we can check against periodically
> (say, monthly?) to make sure I caught them all.

Oh, I see :-(  I somehow had the misimpression that if we configured
PayPal to accept these donations by selling a widget in a PayPal shopping
cart, or something along those lines, that Xero would be able to integrate
it more easily.

Okay.  Looking at the automated email that PayPal mailed to treasurer
when I sent my $1 test donation through, it looks like we have enough
information in the email to determine in an automated way if a PayPal
transaction is a donation for the Noisebridge Tor Project.  Here's a
snippet from the email:

	-----------------------------------
	Donation Details
	-----------------------------------

	Total amount: $1.00 USD
	Currency: U.S. Dollars
	Confirmation number: redacted
	Purpose: Noisebridge Tor Project
	Contributor: Michael Toren

I can write a script that can search for these emails, and then do
whatever with them to make it easier for you.  Would you like it if I
wrote a script to, say, aggregate the list of Noisebridge Tor Project
donations on a weekly basis, and send out a weekly email with the list of
transactions for the previous week?  We could also expose it so that the
ongoing list was available to you on a password-protected website or
something somewhere.

If you're comfortable with that idea, would it be okay if we enabled the
"Donate" button on http://tor.noisebridge.net/ now?

Thanks,
-mct