On Fri, 2012-11-30 at 16:01 -0500, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
Bryce Harrington wrote at 17:03 (EST) on Thursday:
One other question that came up was if this income would include "pass-through" funds, such as situations we've had in the past where Google or some other organization sponsored travel or funded work by a developer by donating it to Inkscape via the Conservancy, and then the developer was paid via Inkscape. Would the rule cover this type of income as well?
The two examples you give are generally handled differently. For true reimbursement of expenses (e.g., Google gives us the exact amount of a flight, as part of a program that reimburses only travel costs), Conservancy has generally not taken 10% of that. From an accounting perspective, "income" and "reimbursement of expenses" are accrued differently.
For anything that's actual income, like a donation from Google, or anyone else, that's income to Conservancy. The IRS sees it that way fully. Conservancy does have an agreement with the Inkscape developers to say that we'll keep that money in the Inkscape Fund and spend on stuff that (a) advances Inkscape, (b) is approved by the Inkscape Committee, and (c) is fitting with Conservancy's IRS charitable mission.
What Conservancy now does for all new projects, (and most of our founding ones too, who have converted), is that 10% of any of that Income goes into Conservancy's general fund, and the rest goes into the Project Fund.
With this clarification that "income" and "reimbursement of expenses" are treated differently and that "reimbursement of expenses" is not included in the 10%, I vote yes to change our agreement with SFC to give them 10% of our earmarked revenues.
Tav