Announcing: CompuMentor Assumes Fiscal Sponsorship for CivicSpace 501c3

Steve,

It sounds like you don’t know much about non-profit organizations. Non-profits have expenses, but often it is difficult for them to raise the money necessary to meet those expenses. Most non-profits struggle to make ends meet, so pooling resources like this is a very good idea.

I don’t know too much about Joomla/Mambo, but wasn’t that a case of previously free software becoming commercial? If so, that is a completely different situation. As for the MySQL example, it is distributed under a dual licensing arrangement, and i don’t see a problem with that.

As for CivicSpace, this move is probably necessary for the project to continue. It sounds like a combination of cost cutting and fund raising. I don’t know whether the CivicSpace folks know that it is legal for non-profits to actually make a profit through commercial activities; if they do, they simply pay taxes on the excess profits which aren’t used for non-profit activities. They may not need to actually split into two groups.

All in all, i view this as positive news because it looks like CivicSpace will be around for a while, and that is definitely a benefit to the Drupal community.

I don't know if this development will necessarily mean faster development of drupal itself, but what it should mean is it's increased adoption by non-profit organisations (who work on issues that many developers/promoters/users would see as putting drupal to good use).

It should enable CompuMentor (one of the largest organisation working on technology use in the non-profit sector) to be able to attract funding and attention for the non-profit part, whilst leaving the commercial part free from commitments.

Thanks

Simon

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[www.headware.co.uk]
Back in the UK after discovering drupal during temporary residence of Vancouver

I doubt there is anything too worry about here. A quick look at what Compumentor does from their homepage is illustrative:

Since 1987, CompuMentor has been dedicated to helping nonprofits enhance productivity and build sustainable technology systems that foster their missions.

In that time, we have developed innovative programs with international reach. One of them is the nonprofit technology website TechSoup.org , which is visited by users from over 190 countries. In addition to providing educational resources, TechSoup distributes technology product donations through its TechSoup Stock service. To date, TechSoup Stock has distributed over 1.7 million technology donations to nonprofits in the U.S and beyond, saving the sector $400 million for other uses.

In collaboration with local and regional partners, we also bring technology implementation and support to San Francisco Bay Area nonprofits , including our namesake mentor-matching program.

Today, we are organization with a staff of 110 dedicated folks. We continue to expand our reach at the local, national and international level to help the 1.6 million U.S. nonprofits and the more than 10 million non-governmental organizations in other countries who lack the knowledge and resources to locate, afford, and implement the technology products they need to better fulfill their missions.

So basically, CivicSpace fits right in there with what they want to do, and in fact their missions coincide quite a bit.

Under the agreement, CompuMentor will provide financial management services for the nonprofit division of CivicSpace, including payroll and benefits processing, as well as office space. By having a financial sponsor, Civic Space will be able to work through CompuMentor to apply for grants that are limited to 501(c)3 organizations. This step will allow Civic Space to focus on essential program development and fundraising activities, without having to invest scarce resources into infrastructure development.

There is also some necessary clarification of fiscal sponsorship. Fiscal sponsorship in the non-profit world does not mean a commercial venture is pouring money into a company or product. It does mean that they take over certain aspects of financial management for the non-profit organization and more importantly it allows the non-profit org to apply for certain kinds of grants.

And I'm not trying to be argumentative but this is a much different business arrangement than the examples you have cited in your post so I felt some clarification was necessary. The majority of the benefit is going to be had by CivicSpace here.

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BuyBlue.org

I like the following statement:

The for-profit entity will focus on paid development work, which will be contributed back to the Drupal core or as Drupal modules.

I'm helping out a non profit to migrate their site to drupal, one of their goals is to use CivicCRM for internal communications.
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