Dear Joshua and others, Please excuse the slow response, but I wanted to consult other R Foundation members before answering.
The R Foundation is coincidentally discussing fund-raising and the use of funds that are raised by the Foundation. There are costs associated with keeping R going, such as the maintenance of CRAN and R-Forge, and there might well be other areas to which donations can be applied. If the R Foundation decides that it would be desirable to raise more funds, we'll consider your helpful suggestions about how to do so. Best, John -------------------------------- John Fox Senator William McMaster Professor of Social Statistics Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox > -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On > Behalf Of Joshua Wiley > Sent: September-26-11 11:31 AM > To: r-help@r-project.org > Subject: Re: [R] Supporting R/Membership > > 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. ______________________________________________ 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.
