Thanks for the insight, Ben. I can appreciate not wanting the hassle of administration, and I suppose there are already sufficient funds for the fixed costs of stuff like the website.
I like the idea of an intermediary that would handle all the issues related to donations, non-profit, etc. Then funds could periodically be transfered to the R Foundation or if there were specific related community projects (useR and crantastic come to mind), it could also support those. I do not see a reasonable solution to the trust issue, though. The only people I think the community could get behind as trustworthy are the developers, which gets right back to R core dealing with administration. On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Ben Bolker <bbol...@gmail.com> wrote: > Spencer Graves <spencer.graves <at> structuremonitoring.com> writes: > >> >> On 9/25/2011 9:57 AM, Berend Hasselman wrote: >> > Joshua Wiley-2 wrote: >> >> So we have at least three people interested, maybe not call for a >> >> totally new system. What about a PDF form that could be filled out >> >> digitally, saved, encrypted using the R Foundation's public key, and >> >> emailed? GPG keys are free, and I can make a fillable PDF. Is that >> >> sufficiently secure? Are there risks I am missing? In fact, attached >> >> is a sample of how the form could work. For the overall signature, >> >> you could just retype your name, but for the credit card, the field is >> >> a digital signature. >> >> >> >> I know what you mean about being uncomfortable sending credit card >> >> details by mail---I'd almost just as well send it in plain text via >> >> email as plain text via post. >> >> >> >> Anymore thoughts? I did check out Paypal again, even for a nonprofit, >> >> there is a 2.2% transaction fee + additional fees for currency >> >> conversion + international fees. >> >> Just brainstorming: >> >> 1. What are the charges for alternative methods of >> payment? Josh said Paypal charges 2.2 percent. What about various >> credit and debit card clearing services plus paper checks and electronic >> funds transfers? >> >> 2. In which locations and currencies does the R Project >> incur costs? >> >> 3. Answers to these two questions could help us design a >> system that makes it easy for people to contribute while also maximizing >> the portion of the money contributed that actually supports the R >> Project (minimizing losses to bank charges). [Getting this information >> is not easy, because financial institutions have innovated to increase >> the complexity of the services they offer, because this makes it easy >> for them to charge higher fees then they could if consumers could more >> easily compare what are essentially commodity services. See, e.g., >> Stiglitz 2010 Freefall, Norton, esp. ch. 6.] >> >> My biases are to avoid if possibly the large multinational banks, >> because the evidence I've seen (e.g., from Stiglitz and others) is that >> the largest banks are primary drivers of political corruption and >> instability in the global financial markets. My biases tend toward >> credit unions, at least some and perhaps all of which are officially >> owned by their customers and are legally constrained in their lending >> practices to avoid the most risky and destabilizing types of >> investments. However, those are issues largely independent of what the >> R Project can do to maximize revenue from contributions and ease of >> managing its finances while minimizing losses to bank charges. >> >> Best Wishes, >> Spencer >> >> >> >> >> Josh >> >> >> > I would also be interested. >> > A similar pdf form for donations could also be considered. >> > >> > It's most likely I would want to transfer money directly into the R bank >> > account. >> > >> > Berend >> > >> > >> > -- > > Just a few cents on this topic. By extrapolation from previous > conversations with one R-core member and general observation of the R > scene, and at the risk of putting words in their mouths (they can > always speak up if they disagree), R-core are not tremendously > interested in increasing the stream of donations. They would be > unlikely to object, but because almost any major expansion of revenue > would mean a lot more time doing R administration (i.e. figuring out > how to spend the money and spending it), my impression is that they feel that > getting lots more money would be more trouble than it's worth. > > Of course, anyone else could set up an "R bank" (they could then send > the money to the R foundation, or alternatively disburse it in some > sensible way as specified in advance or requested by the donor -- > e.g. administering a bounty system, giving grants, etc.) -- if people > trusted them not to run off with the money. But then whoever it was > would have to deal with all the administration, establish non-profit > status to avoid tax burden, etc ... > > http://www.r-project.org/foundation/donations.html states that the R > foundation is not registered as a non-profit organization in the US, > which might make it difficult to get Paypal non-profit rates (I don't > know how they go about deciding on the status of a foreign non-profit > ...) > > My own personal feeling is that if anyone can figure out how to do > this, even a 2 or 3% banking overhead would be worth it -- 97% of > something is a lot more than 99% or 100% of nothing! > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Joshua Wiley Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology Programmer Analyst II, ATS Statistical Consulting Group University of California, Los Angeles https://joshuawiley.com/ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
