[SciPy-Dev] fiscal sponsorship agreement with NumFOCUS

[Matt Haberland]

Thanks, Ralf. I'd like to volunteer, too.

On Sat, Dec 22, 2018 at 9:09 PM Eric Larson <larson.eric.d at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the detailed explanation. Sounds like a great idea. I'd be
> happy to be on the subcommittee.
>
> Eric
>
> On Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 18:56 Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> To start with the idea: I propose that SciPy applies for comprehensive
>> project sponsorship with NumFOCUS, and sign a fiscal sponsorship agreement
>> (FSA) to that effect.
>>
>> Why?
>> ----
>> We're already an "affiliated project", which lets us participate in the
>> small development grants program, the NumFOCUS project mailing list and
>> Slack channel, and a few other benefits. The main difference that
>> comprehensive sponsorship will make is that it will allow us to accept
>> donations, grants and other kinds of funding as a project. In addition we
>> get funding for a representative of the project to attend the yearly
>> NumFOCUS Summit, some hours of high-quality legal help in case we need that
>> (for example in case of licensing questions), and probably a few other
>> things that I'm forgetting right now. NumFOCUS sets a higher bar for
>> comprehensive sponsorship than for affiliation, but we should easily clear
>> that bar. We'll be joining most other core scientific Python projects, who
>> are already sponsored [1].
>>
>> I'll also steal some language from Nathaniel when he made the same
>> proposal for NumPy [2]:
>> The basic idea here is that there are times when you really need some
>> kind of corporation to represent the project -- the legal system for
>> better or worse does not understand "a bunch of folks on a mailing list" as
>> a legal entity capable of accepting donations, or holding funds or other
>> assets like domain names. The obvious solution is to  incorporate a company
>> to represent the project -- but incorporating a company involves lots of
>> super-annoying paperwork. (Like, *super*
>> annoying.) So a standard trick is that a single non-profit corporation
>> acts as an umbrella organization providing these services to multiple
>> projects at once, and this is called "fiscal sponsorship". You can  read
>> more about it here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_sponsorship
>>
>> How?
>> ----
>> We form a subcommittee of 5 people that will sign the sponsorship
>> agreement. Those people mostly should be part of the SciPy Steering
>> Council; there can be an external member. The job of that group is
>> basically to interface with NumFOCUS (in practice there will be 1-2 people
>> as first contacts), and to ensure that if we use funds, that they are used
>> in agreement with the mission and nonprofit status of NumFOCUS. Once we
>> have those 5 people, we can send in a formal application. In practice that
>> takes very little time - probably no more than an hour per year, except for
>> the 1-2 first contacts (they get 1-2 emails per month that need responding
>> to).
>>
>> For more background and details on the how and why, see
>> https://numfocus.org/information-fiscal-sponsorship.
>>
>> Thoughts? Questions? Volunteers to be on the subcommittee?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Ralf
>>
>>
>> [1] https://numfocus.org/sponsored-projects
>> [2]
>> https://mail.python.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2015-October/073889.html
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-- 
Matt Haberland
Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Program in Computing
Department of Mathematics
6617A Math Sciences Building, UCLA
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