equality, democracy, and sharing.</p>

<p>You can help Conservancy fix this problem by <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">donating now</a>.  We seek to

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>

Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, GNOME Foundation, OpenHatch, Open

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

Interest, and APRIL; all encourage you to <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">donate and support it</a>.</p>

<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

  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/node/658">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

  all endorsed Conservancy's plan, and they encourage you to <a href="#donate-box" class="donate-now">donate and

  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),

  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