[openbeos] Re: "One Hour for Haiku" - Coordinating Voluntary Cash Donors

Simon Porter wrote:

I was going to email Michael off list but I feel it better to keep
comments/discussion on here.

I wanted to request comments on the following from Michael.

- Would it be possible to add a subscription button on the donations
page for paypal? As you mentioned it would be a quick thing to set up.
Yes. Like is said, prior, I thought that this was something that you could set up yourself via PayPal. We will add this shortly. 


- Koki mentioned Haiku Inc has a board of directors, three including
yourself. Would you mind saying who these other people are?
Me. Everyone else has become inactive. We had some internal discussions about adding more people, but it really didn't go anywhere. The biggest issue was/is that I would like a BOD that is fairly balanced. Right now, we have very few contributors who are not devs. I love devs. I am a dev, at least at my paying job. But I think that we need other (business/marcom, legal, etc) representation. OTOH, there is a lot of concern around inviting people to Haiku who are new, or at least, don't have a lot of knowledge and vested interest. 

> - Hugo mentioned having people elected onto the board much like Gnome
> does.

Would you be open to having someone elected to deal with financials? It
would take the burden off yourself and give more prompt access to
financial information.


The biggest issues with financials are:
1) Disparate information sources. I have bank statements, paypal account info, Network For Good info and receipts. Putting all of that together is a manual process. 

2) There isn't anyone else who can/will/should do it. They would have to be
a) generally trusted by the community
b) have a background of some sort in business/accounting
c) have time and interest in doing the work
3) Honestly, we don't spend a whole lot of money. We have two basic reasons to spend money: 
a) translate dollars to lines of code
b) spread the news about Haiku
We have pursued both of those with varying success. The problem is that doing either really big requires a big investment. Hiring someone full time for development, for example. Taking out an ad in the London Times. Our efforts have been much smaller so far and our successes have been smaller. SCALE was not terribly cheap, but I think that it was worth it. We bought a new computer for a developer whose old one was not usable any more. Also worth it. But that is most of what we have done this year.
4) Previously, we didn't separate WalterCon from Haiku. This year I will have the bank set up a different account for WC(s) to make that easier/better.

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