Re: [Debconf-team] Special sponsorship

[Jimmy Kaplowitz <jimmy@debian.org>]

Hi all,

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 12:00:40PM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 01:57:54 -0400, Richard Darst <rkd@zgib.net> wrote:
> ...
> > Some of us would just like to make a donation, additional sponsorship,
> > or donate some of our travel sponsorship in order to fund Clint's
> > travel.
> 
> While, as you know, I'm all for this situation being sorted out, I
> have doubts that it's OK to earmark money for an individual's benefit,
> and still put it through the not-for-profit -- at least I'm pretty
> certain that doing that would cause problems for a UK Charity.

I don't want to comment too much in this thread, because Clint and I are
currently both candidates for SPI board (please read about all 4 candidates and
vote!), and anything I say here about his case specifically could be
interpreted as trying to influence that election, which is of course not my
intention. I shouldn't personally coordinate the solution in Clint's case for
the same reason.

There are two things I should say:

1) Anyone who wants to contribute to Clint's travel costs is more than welcome
to. It's great that Richard is volunteering to track that, and certainly
coordination by him as a DebConf organizer who wants to fix the situation will
help ensure a good result. Doing this under the aegis of DebConf is 100% fine
from my perspective.

2) As Phil suspects, it would cause problems for SPI to be the conduit of those
payments. No US 501(c)(3) charity can accept donations specifically earmarked
by the donor for the private benefit of a specific individual. I have no ill
will toward Clint and am only pointing this out because as an SPI board member
I'm required to try to keep SPI out of tax trouble. I'm sure someone can figure
out an alternate way to track or aggregate the donations. If nothing else it
could simply be gathering cash, US checks, or future money transfer pledges at
DebConf and working with Richard to make sure the money is tracked and gets to
Clint.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy@debian.org