raise $75,000 to employ a 

developer for one year to make substantial progress on this project.</p>

<p>This project has the potential to save the non-profit sector

millions in licensing fees every year.  Even non-profits that continue to use proprietary accounting

software will benefit, since the existence of quality Open Source and Free

  Software for a particular task curtails predatory behavior by proprietary

  software companies, and creates a new standard of comparison.</p>

<p>But, more powerfully, this project's realization

will increase the agility and collaborative potential

for the non-profit sector — a boon to funders, boards, and employees —  bringing the Free Software and general NPO communities

into closer collaboration and understanding.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance for <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">helping us</a> develop Free Software to benefit all

non-profit organizations, and the 

populations they serve.</p>

<p>Donors of $500 or more will be acknowledged in the THANKS file and other

  appropriate places in the codebase itself.</p>

<p><a href="#endorsements">Endorsers of this effort</a> include Fractured Atlas, The Free Software

Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, GNOME Foundation, OpenHatch, Open

Source Initiative, QuestionCopyright.org, and Software in the Public

<h3>Background</h3>

<p>Like many non-profit organizations (NPOs) in the USA, Conservancy's

  financial accounts are audited annually by an independent accounting firm;

  we recently completed our fiscal year 2011 audit.  As usual, our auditors

  asked plenty of questions about our accounting software.  Conservancy uses

  only Free Software, of course, centered around a set of straightforward reporting

  scripts that we created to run on top

  of <a href="http://www.ledger-cli.org/">Ledger CLI</a>. (Conservancy's

  current configuration using Ledger CLI

  is <a href="https://gitorious.org/ledger/npo-ledger-cli">publicly

  documented and explained</a>.)</p>

<p>Our auditors were only familiar with proprietary accounting software, and

  so our system seemed foreign to them, as it relies on Ledger CLI's text files, Emacs and

  version control.  During their questions

  about our setup, we asked them to hypothetically prescribe a specific

  proprietary software setup as a model for  managing Conservancy's

  accounts.  Our chief auditor started by mentioning a few well-known

  proprietary solutions.   But then he paused and continued:  <q>Given

  that Conservancy's a fiscal sponsor with so many temporarily restricted

  accounts, existing systems really wouldn't do that good of a job for