Open Hatch, Open Source Comes to Campus

Project Sponsor(s)

Karl Fogel, OSI
kfogel@opensource.org

Asheesh Laroia, OpenHatch
asheesh@asheesh.org

Project Scope

OpenHatch.org and OSI have signed a fiscal sponsorship [1] agreement that enables OpenHatch to solicit tax-deductible donations for their “Open Source Comes to Campus” (OSCC) program, taking advantage of the OSI's 501©(3) status.

The reason OSI is able to do this is that OSCC fits entirely within the OSI's mission too. (The door is also open, or at least slightly ajar, for doing this with other OpenHatch programs in the future, since everything OpenHatch does also fits within the OSI's mission. But we're starting with OSCC – let's get the kinks worked out with that first.)

Implementation

The donations are made to OSI, but are marked for OpenHatch/OSCC.

The OSI charges a small overhead for administrative costs, and passes the remainder of those donations along to OpenHatch.

OpenHatch is now taking OSCC donations at https://openhatch.org/donate/ That page names OSI as the fiscal sponsor for the program, and a few
 donations have already come in – some recurring, some one-time.

OSI has checked that we can recognize those donations in PayPal (i.e., distinguish them from donations meant for OSI), and Jane Peterman, our bookkeeper, will be breaking out the OpenHatch donations in her monthly reports to the OSI. We've coordinated with Jane to make sure she has everything she needs to do that.

OpenHatch will invoice the OSI for disbursements as needed, providing enough description each time for us to be satisfied that the activities were indeed within OSI's mission as well as within OpenHatch's (not that there's any practical doubt about either; it's just to make sure we're all square in case the IRS ever wants documentation).

When we were originally planning this fiscal sponsorship, we considered having a page at http://opensource.org/ that offers a donation button for OSCC too. But recently Asheesh Laroia of OpenHatch and I talked about that some more, and decided it didn't really make branding sense for anyone and could confuse donors. So OpenHatch will use its own web pages, its own conference table placards, etc; OSI will just faithfully process the donations.

Management & Administration

OpenHatch and OSI will make a joint announcement in the near future (in the next month or so), when OpenHatch is ready to kick the OSCC fund-raising drive into high gear – it's kind of in “beta” testing right now. We'll figure out the content of any such announcements when the time comes; they shouldn't be too hard to write, considering that OSI fully supports what OpenHatch is doing with OSCC.

Documentation

Agreement (view)

Annual Report(s) (view)