<acronym title="Non-profit Organization">NPO</acronym> community and discovered that many larger fiscal sponsors &mdash; even

  those willing to use proprietary components — have cobbled together

  their own unique systems, idiosyncratically tailored to their specific

  environments.  Thus, good, well-designed, and reusable accounting software

  for non-profit fiscal sponsorship is not just missing in the software

  freedom community; it's missing altogether.</p>

<p>The project that Conservancy proposes will take a modest step

  forward in creating a better solution for everyone. 

  <a href="#quotes">Many NPO leaders and academics agree</a> with Conservancy about the

  immediate need for work to begin on this

  Foundation</a>, The <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/foundation/">Mozilla

Foundation</a>, The <a href="http://www.gnome.org/foundation/">GNOME Foundation</a>,  <a

        href="https://openhatch.org/">OpenHatch</a>, <a href="http://opensource.org">Open Source Initiative</a>,

  <a href="http://QuestionCopyright.org">QuestionCopyright.org</a>, and <a href="http://www.spi-inc.org/">Software in the Public Interest</a> have

  support it</a>.</p>

<p>Conservancy is uniquely qualified to undertake this task.  Using only Free

  Software, Conservancy already meets the complex accounting challenges of

  earmarked, directed donations for over thirty different projects.  We've

  learned much about this work in our first seven years of

  operation, and we're prepared to apply what we've learned to solve

  this problem not just for ourselves, but for anyone who seeks a

  solution that both respects software freedom and handles non-profit

  accounting for all sorts of NPOs, including fiscal sponsors.  General NPO

  accounting is just a “base case” of fiscal sponsorship (i.e.,

  an NPO is just a fiscal sponsor for one and only one specific project),