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FreeBSD Donations Liaison
=========================
Monetary FreeBSD Foundation Donations
-------------------------------------
The FreeBSD?Foundation's fund-raising efforts are essential to keeping
FreeBSD free. As the Project grows, so do the costs.
By donating to the foundation, you are helping us fund and manage
projects, sponsor FreeBSD events, and provide travel grants to FreeBSD
developers. You are also helping us represent the Project in executing
contracts, license agreements, copyrights, trademarks, and other legal
arrangements that require a recognized legal entity.
To make a monetary donation to the FreeBSD?Foundation, please visit the
`FreeBSD?Foundation `__
donation page.
Contents
--------
- `Donations Liaison Goals <#goal>`__
- `Donations Liaison Charter <#charter>`__
- `Donating to the FreeBSD Project <#donating>`__
Other Donations Links
---------------------
- `FreeBSD Project Want
List `__
- `List of FreeBSD Donations `__
Project Goal
------------
As FreeBSD's userbase has grown, the number of people who want to donate
materials or funds to the Project has grown. The Donations Liaison is
intended to streamline the handling of these donations, and to ensure
that they are handled in a timely and reasonable manner.
Donations Liaison Charter
-------------------------
The purpose of the Donations Liaison Office is to encourage and guide
donations according to a set of community-accepted rules. The DLO has
the following responsibilities.
- to establish and maintain a clear set of procedures for handling
donations.
- to respond to donation offers in a timely manner.
- to maintain a list of equipment and resources desired by the FreeBSD
community.
- to coordinate donation offers with the FreeBSD developer community.
- to shepherd donations through the entire donation process.
- to work with a small team to ensure a timely, informed, and correct
response is available at all times.
- to publicly acknowledge donors and donations when the donation is
complete.
- record the status of all loans to the Project.
- provide open records of all donations to the FreeBSD developer
community.
Donating to the FreeBSD Project
-------------------------------
So, you want to donate something to the FreeBSD Project? Great! We
strongly rely upon user donations to accomplish our goals. Please read
below to see how to contact us about your donation.
If you don't know what you want to give, take a look at our `list of
needs `__. We would
appreciate any items on this list. If you have equipment you'd like to
donate, read on.
Tax Credit for Donations
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The FreeBSD Foundation can act as a charitable organization for tax
purposes. If you live in the United States, your donation can be
deducted from your taxes under certain conditions. If you want a receipt
for tax purposes your contribution, please let us know when you send
information on your donation.
A tax credit is not as easy as it might seem. The donations team must be
informed of the desire for a tax deduction so the foundation may be
notified, and informed when it has been shipped. The Foundation will
also need to know when the item has been received by the intended
individual. The Foundation must then be able to demonstrate that the
donation is in the *public good*. All of this together means that while
we probably have developers who would be interested in that big box of
ISA cards in your closet, you probably cannot get a tax credit for them;
the total work needed to process, ship, and document them far exceeds
their total value.
The FreeBSD Foundation will provide a receipt for delivery of equipment.
They will not, however, provide a fair-market valuation of the equipment
-- in fact, the law forbids them to do so. We recommend checking
elsewhere for valuations of hardware donations. Since many of our
donations are obsolete, making fair market value hard to judge, we
suggest searching on Ebay or other used equipment sites for prices paid
for similar equipment.
To receive a tax receipt for a donation, you will need to complete a
`Hardware Donation
Form `__
from the FreeBSD Foundation website.
How to Donate
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part of the goal of the Donations Liaison Office is to match donations
with developers who can use them. We don't accept just any donation; we
only handle those that have a home with a developer who can use them to
improve FreeBSD. This saves time all around, and also helps assure
donors that what their contributions are actually supporting the FreeBSD
Project. The down side is that we need some information about your
donation before accepting it.
Donations generally fall into three categories:
- `Financial <#money>`__
- `Complete Computers <#systems>`__
- `Computer Components <#components>`__
If you have something to offer that doesn't fall into one of these
categories, don't fret! Just contact us at donations@FreeBSD.org with
your offer. Just because it's not the run-of-the-mill offer doesn't mean
that we're not interested.
Financial Contributions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The FreeBSD Project does not directly accept financial contributions. A
sponsor organization, the `FreeBSD
Foundation `__, accepts financial
contributions for us. Please see their Web site for details on financial
contributions.
Complete Computer Systems
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The FreeBSD Project always needs computers. If you have a computer that
you would like to donate to the Project, please contact us with the
following information:
- Hardware specifications: architecture, motherboard, CPU, disk space,
memory.
- Does this system currently run FreeBSD, or is it unsupported? If
possible, please attach a dmesg from a FreeBSD install on this
system.
- Are you willing to ship this system?
- Your physical location. We try to make shipping as easy and
inexpensive as possible.
- Also mention if you want a `tax credit <#taxcredit>`__ for this
system. (Note that not all donations can realistically receive a tax
credit, as the cost of supplying the credit may exceed the value of
the donation.)
Computer Components
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you have hardware that you would like to donate to the Project,
please contact us with the following information:
- The hardware description: model, part number, manufacturer, etc. If
you have an exact link to the manufacturer's Web page for this
component, that would be helpful.
- Is this hardware currently supported in FreeBSD?
- What documentation do you have? A piece of hardware is not sufficient
to write a driver; driver authors need detailed chipset data from the
manufacturer. (Don't worry too much if you don't have this
documentation, as it may be available elsewhere.)
- Are you willing to ship this system?
- Your physical location. We try to make shipping as easy and
inexpensive as possible.
- Also mention if you want a `tax credit <#taxcredit>`__ for this
hardware. (Note that not all donations can realistically receive a
tax credit, as the cost of supplying the credit may exceed the value
of the donation.)
What we Do with this Information
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once we have a description of the donation, the Donations Liaison Office
will contact the developer community and offer the resource to them. If
we have a developer who would like the item, we put the donor and the
recipient in contact and let them work out shipping information. If
there are multiple developers interested in a resource, we try to learn
what each developer would use the resource for and allocate it most
effectively for the Project. If no developer is interested, we turn down
the offer.
Our goal is to place (or decline) all donations within 7 days of receipt
of complete information.
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