Donnie Berkholz wrote:

>Does anyone know of other sources that might help with funding?
>  
>
We've had some ideas[1], and there is a contact who is great with 
writing grants (the type of grant that Donnie talked about) who is 
willing to help the Foundation, he's just waiting for us to get to the 
point of being able to accept such grants.  In other words, completing 
the 501(c) status.

There are governmental grants that could be applied for, as well as 
vendor grants (IBM is pretty famous for giving grants as tax writeoffs 
with the stipulation that the grant money be spent in a certain quarter, 
thus helping their income in the same token).

As for the kind of grants that Brad mentioned, we've tossed such an idea 
around (similarly) as well but call them "bounties".  The framework for 
such a beast would need to be carefully laid so that everything remains 
legal and we don't end up in trouble with the IRS.  With that 
accomplished, I think bounties are a great idea if the money is there.

To be honest, the current Board is quite new to having money, as we've 
only had funds on hand in the past couple of months[2] and we've been 
around for almost a year.  Nobody is jumping at the bit to spend it all, 
but on the other hand I've heard comments that people give the money 
with the intention for it to be spent and help Gentoo.  It'll be a fine 
balance between money that should be saved for possible legal expenses 
and other suprises like hardware failures, and money that should go out 
(and how much goes to whom).  We have had only one request for funding 
come in (for a hardware upgrade), and the need is going to be fulfilled 
by hardware already within Gentoo's reach.  I know that money will be 
requested around the time of LWE as well to help with PR type stuff.

Anyway, I probably got off track there.  In my mind, funding for Gentoo 
is half of the job of the Foundation, and why I was so excited to see 
the paypal link get off the ground.  Once the IRS NFP filing is complete 
it will open up the doors for things such as grants.

Cheers!

-C

[1] - http://www.gentoo.org/foundation/en/funds.xml
[2] - http://www.gentoo.org/foundation/en/2005q1.xml


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