Re: [Debconf-team] PayPal donations, and fees
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 10:01:39AM -0600, Moray Allan wrote:
> These fees are shown in the SPI Treasurer's reports, e.g.
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-general/2013-March/003171.html
>
> " Debian
> Debit Card Fee 3.00
> Processing Fees 31.83
> SPI 5% 39.93"
>
> The debit card plus processing fees there seem to sum to about 4.4%,
> meaning that 9.4% of the donated amounts didn't reach Debian, using
> non-Paypal payment methods.
<spi director hat>
The Debit Card Fee is likely related to a prepaid debit card used to enable a
services donation to Debian from Amazon Web Services, and not related to
general donations. The types of fees you're refering to would be part of
Processing Fees.
Exceptions to the SPI 5% are made in some contexts like conference sponsorship,
given the tight budgets - for the details, look at past SPI reports relating to
DebConf or ask Michael Schultheiss - but indeed, there's no way to avoid
external processing fees, except when we receive USD or CAD checks/cheques,
where those are zero or negligible, or those incoming electronic transfers
where the sender covers the cost.
For comparison to other fiscal sponsorship organizations, the Software Freedom
Conservancy takes 10% to cover overhead, which is closer to typical - we're
actually on the low end, and have accordingly low/lean general reserves.
</spi director hat>
- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy@debian.org
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