On Oct 26 2024, at 11:37 am, Martin Owens doctormo@gmail.com wrote:
Administration overhead: we have to everything ourselves or pay for it for example a tax consultant. Most likely we would end up contracting more.
The board (of the association) becomes personally liable for any law breaking as there would be no legal office checking on decisions.
This hints at, but I want to ensure that a cost that is taken into account is insurance. For example, for most events we'll need event insurance. This is currently done under the SFC policy for a very reasonable fee for the size of events we hold. The board will need liability insurance (you can sue a board for failure on their duties, most non-profits protect the board members' individual estates through insurance) that we don't need (PLC isn't technically a board, just the SFC board is). Also legal costs. The SFC has arranged for tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal work for Inkscape that we haven't had to pay for. We should expect to have that as an expense. Lastly bookkeeping. Not just tax prep. Bookkeeping is also a really critical service. I didn't see a place to put it, but one benefit to having an EU organization of some type is that, in general, it seems EU governments are starting to have grants and other funding for software in the public good. I believe that Inkscape would qualify for some of those grants but would require an EU based organization to apply/administer those grants. Doesn't seem likely the US is going to have something similar anytime soon. Ted