Managing the Finances of an Open Source Non-Profit

  • Overview of information and stats on the Apache Software Foundation (see http://www.apache.org/foundation/)
  • An overview of the requirements for a foundation
  • Direct contributions via Paypal
  • One reasonable source of funds was http://donateacar.com/
  • ~ $50k from Google
  • ~ $25k from conferences
  • A quick overview of the history of finances at the ASF
  • A quick overview of the requirements for the various forms of US non-profits
  • Justin mentions that the ASF received excellent help from the Software Freedom Legal Center (http://softwarefreedom.org) - pro-bono, but only for FLOSS projects

Tools

  • SVN is used to keep a consistent log of activities
  • Quickbooks