2024.06.05-Transition_to_Apereo_Foundation as_Fiscal_Sponsor/PROPOSAL.md

[serapath]

@dat-ecosystem/consortium

@cblgh
@dpaez
@Frando
@ninabreznik
@serapath
@zootella

According to our dat-ecosystem manifesto, I'm submitting this Proposal for everyone to review. If nobody objects it will be considered accepted in 2 weeks from now (2024.06.05).

If everyone approves actively we can speed up the process and proceed faster, which would be important, so I hope all of you can find the time to do that or share requests for improvement you think are required.

Thank you everyone :-)

[Masson-Apereo]

Sorry for the delay; I just saw your "toot." I sent a reply via our previous email thread as well. Let me know if you get it. Also, feel free to just use [email protected] if you like. Looking forward to chatting - patrick

[dpaez]

Looks good! I left some suggestions/tweaks.

[Masson-Apereo]

Sorry for the delay; I just saw your "toot." I sent a reply via our previous email thread as well. Let me know if you get it. Also, feel free to just use [email protected] if you like. Looking forward to chatting - patrick

Hi all,

I am back from my conference and campus visits and clawing my way out from under my backlog. I have reached idat's fiscal sponsorship inquiry. While I was traveling, I had Apereo's Controller look over your information, and we have a few initial concerns that I think will impact your interest in joining Apereo.

First, Apereo does not have a mechanism to accept crypto donations, and we have decided to specifically exclude crypto-currencies from our acceptable funds options because they are too risky for us and require a burdensome level of paperwork/compliance here in the U.S. Thus, we would need to liquidate the crypto donation at, I believe, Code for Science and Society.

Next, in order to join Apereo, dat would need to close out any other fiscal sponsorship relations. This means that no funds may be managed/maintained by another organization. In a previous email (3/15/24), you note, "we are hoping to find a new one [fiscal sponsor] which would consider supporting us through https://opencollective.com/dat." Looking at https://opencollective.com/, is this only an accounting, fundraising platform--offered by Open Collective the company, and independent of Open Collective, the non-profit? We would need to completely separate dat from OpenCollective as a fiscal sponsor; however, if OpenCollective is offering a service as a company that dat chooses to use (no different than CiviCRM for community management, Drupal for website management, etc.), then you may be able to continue its use. We simply are not familiar with where OpenCollective the company and platform end and where OpenCollective the organization and fiscal sponsor start.

There are a couple other issues as well: we'd also have to discuss moving any IP dat has with OpenCollective to Apereo (do you know how dat's IP is currently managed?) and dat's fiscal sponsorship analysis would have to be migrated off of Github to our accounting services so we have unified books for our reporting requirements with the US Internal Revenue Service.

I'm not sure if one (or all) of these is going to be a deal breaker, so maybe we should set up a time to review your status. I've sent this same message to Alexander via email and attached a questionnaire that we can start the review with and discuss any issues we discover.

Hope we didn't scare you off,
Patrick

[ninabreznik]

Sorry for the delay; I just saw your "toot." I sent a reply via our previous email thread as well. Let me know if you get it. Also, feel free to just use [email protected] if you like. Looking forward to chatting - patrick

Hi all,

I am back from my conference and campus visits and clawing my way out from under my backlog. I have reached idat's fiscal sponsorship inquiry. While I was traveling, I had Apereo's Controller look over your information, and we have a few initial concerns that I think will impact your interest in joining Apereo.

First, Apereo does not have a mechanism to accept crypto donations, and we have decided to specifically exclude crypto-currencies from our acceptable funds options because they are too risky for us and require a burdensome level of paperwork/compliance here in the U.S. Thus, we would need to liquidate the crypto donation at, I believe, Code for Science and Society.

Next, in order to join Apereo, dat would need to close out any other fiscal sponsorship relations. This means that no funds may be managed/maintained by another organization. In a previous email (3/15/24), you note, "we are hoping to find a new one [fiscal sponsor] which would consider supporting us through https://opencollective.com/dat." Looking at https://opencollective.com/, is this only an accounting, fundraising platform--offered by Open Collective the company, and independent of Open Collective, the non-profit? We would need to completely separate dat from OpenCollective as a fiscal sponsor; however, if OpenCollective is offering a service as a company that dat chooses to use (no different than CiviCRM for community management, Drupal for website management, etc.), then you may be able to continue its use. We simply are not familiar with where OpenCollective the company and platform end and where OpenCollective the organization and fiscal sponsor start.

There are a couple other issues as well: we'd also have to discuss moving any IP dat has with OpenCollective to Apereo (do you know how dat's IP is currently managed?) and dat's fiscal sponsorship analysis would have to be migrated off of Github to our accounting services so we have unified books for our reporting requirements with the US Internal Revenue Service.

I'm not sure if one (or all) of these is going to be a deal breaker, so maybe we should set up a time to review your status. I've sent this same message to Alexander via email and attached a questionnaire that we can start the review with and discuss any issues we discover.

Hope we didn't scare you off, Patrick

Hi, Patrick,

very sorry for the late response. @serapath and I are very busy with one grant application and will most likely be free towards the end of next week. But I quickly checked the open questions and it seem to me all are solvable, so hopefully we can address them next week and then see how to proceed.

Thanks for your understanding and have a nice weekend!

[serapath]

@Masson-Apereo Thank you for reaching out here.
I have responded via email as well now. Below is a copy of my email response:

---

Hello Patrick,

We are not promoting crypto nor do we maintain an active crypto address to donate to dat-ecosystem via crypto.
We have received a crypto donation in the past that was bound to one of our regular website domains and CS&S has claimed it for us.
They have immediately sold it for USD, because they also don't hold crypto.
Sadly - exactly at that time - Open Collective decided to wind down their 501c(3) as a fiscal sponsor and since then we can't receive any donations.
As far as I know, as soon as some 501c(3) would register with OpenCollective and offer their services to dat-ecosystem, CS&S (Code for Science and Society) could then just transfer the remaining funds in USD to Apereo Foundation. So yes - the Crypto Donation is already liquidated, but can't be transferred. I don't know the amount we are talking about due to volatility.
I assume it is somewhere around 10-20k USD, but I could be wrong.

We do not have any funds managed by anyone and don't plan to have any funds managed by anyone else than our fiscal sponsor, which would be the Apereo Foundation.

Looking at https://opencollective.com/, is this only an accounting, fundraising, platform--independent of Open Collective the company or Open Collective the non-profit?

YES, that is correct.
Open Collective as a fiscal sponsor is separate from opencollective.com, which can be used by any 501c(3) to offer their services to open source projects like dat-ecosystem.

We would need to completely separate dat from OpenCollective as a fiscal sponsor, however if OpenCollective is offering a service, as a company that dat chooses to use (no different than CiviCRM for community management, Drupal for website management, etc., then you may be able to continue its use.

YES, dat ecosystem will be completely separated from Open Collective as a fiscal sponsor. The platform opencollective.com is very much like CiviCRM, etc...

we'd also have to discuss moving any IP dat has with OpenCollective to Apereo (do you know how dat's IP is currently managed?)

There is no IP that is with OpenCollective. The IP is still with CS&S and I am sure they are happy to migrate it to the Apereo Foundation.
If you want, we could include CS&S Representatives in this conversation as well.

dat's fiscal sponsorship analysis would have to be migrated off of Github to our accounting services so we have unified books for our reporting requirements with the US Internal Revenue Service.

Could you elaborate on that and what is meant by migrating off of Github?
We are an open source software project and we have strong developers in the community, so maybe we could use additional API or Webhooks or other kind of integration to do what you have in mind?

Our core mission statement (manifesto) includes that over time, we want to migrate away from any for profit proprietary software platforms as soon as feasible and instead use peer to peer based systems dat-ecosystem projects are actively working towards. Now We can't yet easily replace github. We could replace it with a self hosted solution, but that would then run on AWS or other cloud hosts, which didn't get us much further compared to what we could do with peer to peer technology and we are getting closer. The big advantage for us in using github is, that github underneath is still git and we try to minimize using custom features in github to a minimum (we also use github issues in a very basic way), so we can later scrape and migrate easily. We do not use "Github Sponsors", if that is what was meant.

But I can share more details as soon as I understand the issue better :-)

Lastly, I can't see any attached documents or questionnaires to fill out.
I have sent it in the past, but all the questions and answers are also transparently visible in our internal, but public "pull request" that follows our Manifesto (=Articles of Association) and how the dat-ecosystem consortium governs dat-ecosystem.

Here is a link. If you prefer to receive it as a PDF, I can export it and send it as a PDF.

https://github.com/dat-ecosystem/organization/blob/573c3ee5e4d661beee4c220267daf2338b98fd88/consortium/decisions/2024.06.05-Transition_to_Apero_Foundation%20as_Fiscal_Sponsor/answers.md

[Masson-Apereo]

Hi all, I just replied and suggested a call to review the application, resolve any issues, and hopefully finalize things. I suggested this Weds. July 10 at 1 PM ET. If that works, let me know, and I will send over an agenda reflecting our review of the application, open issues, and next steps. Thanks- Patrick

[Masson-Apereo]

Hi all, I just replied and suggested a call to review the application, resolve any issues, and hopefully finalize things. I suggested this Weds. July 10 at 1 PM ET. If that works, let me know, and I will send over an agenda reflecting our review of the application, open issues, and next steps. Thanks- Patrick

Update: I just sent Alexander and Nina an invite--initially for 1:30, but updated to 1:00 PM ET with an agenda as I just wanted to get this on the calendar. Please accept if this works, but understand if it does not, and feel free to send over some times that work better for you all. Also, feel free to share with others who may want to participate.

I also started an agenda--feel free to add any topics you like; we might too :-)

Dat Ecosystem Application Review and Discussion
Agenda

General

• Alignment with Apereo Mission, “to foster, develop, and sustain open technologies and innovation to support learning, teaching, and research."
• Review of Dat-Ecosystem’s Fiscal Sponsorship Application.
• Review Apereo Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement
• Review Apereo Fiscal Sponsor Handbook

Open Issues

• Options for crypto-currency held by Code for Science and Society
• Continued use of OpenCollective platform.
• Integration of book-keeping and business processes with Apereo

Dat-Ecosystem questions

• What fees does Apereo Foundation expect from its fiscally sponsored projects? (see Handbook above)
• Can Dat-Ecosystem continue operating through Open Collective? (see above)
• In case of future cryptocurrency donations, could Apereo Foundation support the process of claiming these funds?
• What are the guidelines and rules of the process for terminating fiscal sponsorship agreements by either party?