quote:

Originally posted by crbutler:
To be honest, Matt, with what little I could find on line, I could very well see why Saeed would not want to get into it.

$2000 minimum annual donation to Intnl HQ or 30% of the largest fundraiser, whichever is more, registering with the US IRS as a tax exempt org, and opening up his books (at least as far as AR would go, and possibly, knowing the fine folks at IRS.gov, his personal finances?) to the IRS?

Writing a rather long and involved set of bylaws?

Not a real appealing idea to me, and I live here...

Now if all this needs is to get an address and a corporate name, that's not too hard if it is in the US. Maybe Don could help you there, but Saeed sure can't (well, for the time and travel outlay for a busy man, won't) do it.

I suspect there are ways around this for foreign entities, but I suspect it is equally intrusive.

I think we did get 25 SCI members to pony up names and #'s.

You would need a President, VP, and a secretary/treasurer as a minimum? right?

It would probably require a "private area" on AR for members only access for official meetings and such- which may be doable (Saeed can fill that in, but it does kind of go against the grain of AR, as the only protected area is the moderator's forum...)

I suspect we can get a lawyer member on the forum to do the legal stuff gratis once we decide where the physical address for national's purposes is.

I suspect we could convince some members to give some items for raffle/silent auction for the fund raiser, but that will require someone to work it, and moreso, have knowledge of their local laws to avoid getting us in tax issues.

We need some legal and fundraising types to commit to get this to go. Doable? I think so, but very difficult to do over an ISP and more so outside the US...

Did Saeed ever say he would donate more than just the hosting? I suspect we are looking at several grand in startup costs plus commitments from multiple professionals who's time is usually quite valuable....

SCI is obviously very knowledgeable about transparency and openness to them... to the membership, well they have an issue there.