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<p><a href="https://flattr.com/thing/1296704/Campaign-to-develop-Free-and-Open-Source-Non-Profit-Accounting-Software" target="_blank"><img src="https://api.flattr.com/button/flattr-badge-large.png" alt="Flattr this" title="Flattr this" border="0" /></a></p>

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<h2>Fundraising Campaign: Non-Profit Accounting Software</h2>

<img src="/img/conservancy-accounting-campaign-logo.png" alt="Conservancy accounting campaign logo" style="float:left;" />

<p>Conservancy has a plan to help all non-profit organizations (NPOs) by

creating an Open Source and Free Software accounting system usable by

non-technical bookkeepers, accountants, and non-profit managers.  You can

help us do it by donating now.

</p>

<p>To keep their books and produce annual government filings, most NPOs rely

on proprietary software, paying exorbitant licensing fees.  This is

fundamentally at cross purposes with their underlying missions of charity,

equality, democracy, and sharing.</p>

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>

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="http://sfconservancy.org/campaign#endorsements">Endorsers of this effort</a> include Fractured Atlas, 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

  you</q>.</p>

<p>Indeed, Conservancy reached out into the broader fiscal sponsorship

  community beyond the <acronym title="Free, Libre and Open Source Software">FLOSS</acronym>

  <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

  effort.  <a href="https://www.fracturedatlas.org">Fractured Atlas</a>, <a href="http://fsf.org">Free Software

  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

<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),

  and Conservancy therefore believes a solution that handles fiscal sponsors

  will also handle the simpler case as well.</p>

<h3>The Plan</h3>

<p>Conservancy proposes to hire a software developer for one year to

  accomplish the first two phases of this project.  Conservancy seeks to

  raise $75,000 toward this project to help cover salary and benefits for a

  full-time staffer to work on this project.  We ask that you give generously

  via the donation buttons on this page to support our work.</p>

<h4>Phase 0</h4>

<p>Meanwhile, even if an organization is not a fiscal sponsor, non-profit

  accounting is <em>just different</em> than for-profit accounting, particularly in

  the USA.  For example, for-profit-oriented systems often make problematic

  assumptions about the workflow of accounting tasks (often because NPOs

  rely primarily on donations, rather than fee-for-service or widget-selling

  income).  Also, non-profit income is categorized differently than

  for-profit income, and the reporting requirements vary wildly from their

  for-profit equivalents.</p>

<p>Conservancy's existing system is working adequately, but requires daily

  the relatively more expensive time of a highly technical person to do the

  job of bookkeeping.  Also, the system cannot easily be adapted in its

  current form for another NPO, unless they also have a

  skilled technical employee to act as bookkeeper.  This project aims to build

  on what Conservancy has learned and produce a non-profit accounting system

  that corrects these flaws.</p>

<p>Finally, Conservancy's mission (as stated

on <a href="http://sfconservancy.org/docs/conservancy_Form-1023.pdf">our Form

1023 with the USA IRS</a>) includes producing Open Source and Free Software.

Thus, this project is a great way to pursue Conservancy's mission and address a

specific need that so many NPOs (including us) have.  If no one steps up to create Free Software to replace the widely used

proprietary software, NPOs in aggregate will pay <em>much more</em> money for

proprietary licensing than Conservancy will ever spend in developing a

<a id="quotes"></a>

<h3>Statements of Support For This Project from Others</h3>

<p><q>As a national fiscal sponsor with over 3,000 arts and cultural projects

under our umbrella, Fractured Atlas is ecstatic about this effort's

potential. After 15 years wrestling with Quickbooks and other inadequate

options, the idea of an open source tool designed specifically for this niche

of the field is beyond welcome. We wholeheartedly support the Conservancy's

work on this front and look forward to seeing where it leads.</q> &mdash;

<a href="https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/bios/staff/1/Adam%20Forest_Huttler">Adam

  Huttler</a>, Executive Director, <a href="https://www.fracturedatlas.org">Fractured Atlas</a></p>

<p><q><a href="http://QuestionCopyright.org">QuestionCopyright.org</a> is

just one of many organizations that would benefit from a Free Software

accounting system that is usable by non-technical people.  We

enthusiastically support the Conservancy's campaign to create one, and look

forward to using the result.</q>

&mdash; <a href="http://questioncopyright.org/speakers/karl_fogel">Karl

Fogel</a>, Executive Director,

  <a href="http://QuestionCopyright.org">QuestionCopyright.org</a></p>

<p><q>As a fiscal sponsor organization with over 30 currently-associated Free

Software projects, Software in the Public Interest shares the Conservancy's

     members and we welcome this useful initiative by Conservancy.</q>

     &mdash; Simon Phipps, President, <a href="http://opensource.org">Open Source

     Initiative</a></p>

<p><q>The <a href="https://fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a> is committed to doing all of its work,

both public-facing and internal, using only free software. We are thankful to

the developers of SQL Ledger for providing the accounting software that has

served us well for many years. As we have grown, so have the complexities of

our finances.  Because of our own needs and our mission to help other

organizations — both inside and outside of the technology sphere

— run their operations on exclusively free software, we wholeheartedly

support this Conservancy initiative.</q> &mdash; <a href="view-source:http://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board#johns">John Sullivan</a>, Executive

Director, <a href="https://fsf.org">Free Software Foundation</a></p>

<p><q>Open source is a great way to solve new problems and make software that

is more flexible and responsive to the needs of the people who use it. That's

as true for the finance industry as it is on the web.</q>

&mdash; <a href="http://blog.mozilla.org/press/bios/mark-surman/">Mark

Surman</a>, Executive

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

Foundation</a></p>

<p><q>As a young free software non-profit, OpenHatch is thrilled to see this

effort; it would let us spend more of our time on programs and less on

Executive Director, <a href="https://openhatch.org/">OpenHatch</a>.</p>

<h3>Some Important Details for this Fundraiser</h3>

<ul>

<li>Donations made are general donations to the Software Freedom

  Conservancy, Inc., a 501(c)(3) charity incorporated in New York.

  Conservancy is committed to doing this work described herein, but cannot

  promise to complete the work if the fundraising goal is not reached.  If

  the fundraising goal is not reached, Conservancy will do its best to make

  progress on the plan above with the resources available.  It's expected

  that work will simply proceed, but more slowly and take more time, if the

  fundraising goal is not reached.</li>

<li>The license for the project is not yet chosen, since Phase 0 might

  prescribe contribution to particular upstream projects, and Conservancy is

  committed to contributing to upstream projects under their chosen license,

  where possible.  However, Conservancy promises that all software that is

  written will be released under a license that is both approved by

  the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses">FSF as a Free

  Software license</a> <strong>and</strong> by the OSI as

  an <a href="http://opensource.org/licenses">OSI-approved license</a>.  New

  documentation that is written will be released under some license

  compatible with <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/">CC BY-SA 3.0 USA</a>.</li>